Please send me the citation for the study discussed in the ADHD show.

Thank you,
Patricia R. Attia, PhD

In my own case, there was zero tv until the child in question was 4 years old, and there are no video games in our two-parent household. On the other hand, there are plenty of single parent, overly stressed, overly electronified households with comletely adhd-free children. I'm sure you're right that certain lifestyles may aggravate or perhaps trigger a condition that lies in the biological make-up of child but believe me this is not a new condition or one that is purely a product of lifestyle. Try to remember the kid who was always in trouble back in your schooldays. Good chance he could have used some ritalin.

I think the comments from parents are really important, and have to be considered. Ditto the woman who works as an educator.

But I wonder to what extent macro factors - like the advent of the electronic age and a drastically changed workplace - has shaped the "discovery" of ADD/ADHD.

I have two friends whose children had to be put on Ritalin. But it had never occurred to them that television or video games were inappropriate for their very young children in the years before they were "diagnosed." These fathers were also, thanks to their demanding careers rarely at home, and in both cases, the parents were divorced and the mother was out of the picture.

Please understand that is not to suggest in the least that parents are at fault. But I think we're failing to look at this from a larger perspective - our society has changed radically, and those changes in turn affect children.

Responding to those who advocate exercise as a cure - of course it's a good & important thing! But if we're really talking about adhd, it's just a drop in the bucket. We did the karate route (the kind we tried was not helpful - too much standing still in the posing) and we do occupational therapy and have always included regular exercise and movement. If it were that easy to fix the problem, there would be no problem. The medication works for us way, way beyond any bevioral therapy and physical activity.

I'm 38 and was diagnosed with ADD 3 years ago. It's comments like "kids should not be taking drugs" and the general attitude that ADD is a joke that made me wait so long to go to a doctor. There are real physical characteristics to ADD, a week after I started Adderall I sat down to read a novel and tears came to my eyes because the 'racing feeling' and dizziness I had always felt when reading was gone, it became effortless and enjoyable. I was so upset that I had wasted so many years struggling through school and even though I love being a photographer, I'm sure a major reason for choosing my career was because it did not require extensive reading. To say that it is 'low-grade speed' is ignorant, nitroglycerin is used for heart problems...I guess they should stop that too. Vaccines are based on the disease they cure, I guess we shouldn't use them either.
I'm very happy now, but I will always wonder what I would have done with my life if I was diagnosed twenty years earlier.

#11:
"Limited emergency interventions to sedate or stimulate underaged brains until you figure out how to re-organize their lives are one thing; pumping kids full of mind altering substances until you produce the correct, socially acceptable form of outward behavior is something else."

One of Vedantam's more interesting points is that well-cared for children saw a drop-off in effectiveness using the drug after approx. a year and a half. But children from less stable, less wealthy homes benefited more while they were on the drug/enrolled in the study, and it is questioned whether the issue was that they were using the medication, or if they were simply more supervised and better cared for once they had been enrolled in the study.

God help us if they'd given the Marx Brothers ritalin or adderal. We'd have had three more professional class wankers and no "Duck Soup" or a "Night at the Opera."

My child has been taking meds for 6 years. It seems to work as well now as it did in year 1. The 1st year after diagnosis we did not medicate but had intensive therapeutic behavioral support & parent training. We continued that another year after starting medication. Therapy was helpful for understanding issues and devloping a good structure in our house but it was the meds that made a dramatic difference. Because of the growth issue, he does not take meds vacations or weekends so we are able to judge the difference in his functioning without and without meds. In terms of maintaining focus and regulating his body and impulse control, there is no comparison. He is much better able to concentrate and interact appropriately when on medication even after all these years. I can't help but wonder how this study measures long term benefit. Are they saying the medication itself stops working, that it no longer aids concentration and control? Did they observe and take data while children engaged in challenging academic work with and without medication? Did they judge the self-concept and self-esteem of children who are reprimanded at school repeatedly for their behavior over time because of unmedicated ADHD behavior vs. children who are able to regulate themselves at school thanks to medication? Did they find a way to compare the effect of academic delays unmedicated ADHD children suffer because they cannot attend to lessons versus more typical academic achievement that might be accomplished while on medication? Are they saying that without medication, the children would have developed just as well, would be able to focus, learn, and respond to stimuli just as well had they never had medication? I would never want to unecessarilyl medicate my child and in fact resisted doing it for at least a year after the diagnosis. I want to understand this study, but I find it extremely hard to understand or believe when I consider our own experience.

PBS Frontline has just aired an excellent and terrifying report on Medicating Children.

Based on their reporting, to call child psycho-pharmacology "witch-doctory" would be an insult to witch doctors.

We don't know how the drugs work; in many cases we don't know whether they work much in children at all (in fact, many of these drugs have been shown not to have any effect in kids, after being prescribed for children for years on end); and we don't even know whether many of these "medical conditions" (which are "scientifically" defined by the reigning consensus among witch doctors) make sense when applied to kids.

To me, it all seems very sketchy. Except for this: We do know that drug companies are making money hand over fist. Which they wouldn't be if parents and communities were able to organize themselves for more mutual support and education, more time off work for child rearing, and more using a "village to raise a child."

Limited emergency interventions to sedate or stimulate underaged brains until you figure out how to re-organize their lives are one thing; pumping kids full of mind altering substances until you produce the correct, socially acceptable form of outward behavior is something else.

what a shock when one of the callers said exercising her kid rid her child of much of his hyperactivity. we should not be drugging our children! take them away from the tv and get them to run around outside.

Americans use way too many pills.
Some of these so called disorders use to be called personality traits. Kids especially should not be taking drugs. Nobody said parenting would be easy.

Adderall is a methamphetamine salt: of course kids are losing weight and having insomnia problems — it's low grade speed. Adderall has been used in celebrity circles to lose weight for years.

I am a crisis intervention teacher who works for the New York Department of Education in a Harlem elementary school. I educate 32 students who are primarily diagnosed with emotional disability/disturbance. As you may know, this is the area of education to which children with ADD/ADHD/OCD are often referred, since these diagnoses do not neatly fall into a federally-protected category.

I see daily the incredible benefits concerta/adderol/reperidol/ritalin substantially benefit a child's education. We teachers know when children fail to miss the daily dose. Behavior and education suffer with this oversight.

Pharmaceuticals should be use in concert with other therapies, and perhaps we should reconsider the long-term effectiveness of these drugs.

BUT I STRONGLY URGE PARENTS WHO ARE LISTENING TO THIS TODAY TO PLEASE KEEP THEIR CHILDREN ON THESE DRUGS IN CASES WHEN THEY ARE DEEMED EFFECTIVE. Fourteen months of effectiveness is more than a year in educating your child. Don't lose that!

I've taken adderall and do not have ADHD. That stuff is CRAZY. The fact that kids take it is nuts. It is SPEED and is one of the stronger things I've ever taken.

I obviously can't speak for the larger findings, which may or may not be true, but I can attest that our son has been treated using these meds for 2-3 years now, and the short-term day-to-day effects are both substantial and beneficial.

So far, we haven't seen any meaningful drop-off in their effectiveness, and he's a big, healthy kid. His ability to focus and thrive in school, though, will clearly have a long-term benefit. We always try to be as thoughtful as possible about anything as important as this, but so far, keeping him on this program clearly seems like the right thing to do for him.

THere is another class of drugs for ADHD-- the dopamine reuptake inhibitors (not stimulants), like Wellbutrin.-- do they work better?

Instead of popping pills kids many times show improvement with movement therapies like karate if the method used is adapted to calming ADHD as a goal. We teach kids in this way. Nipping it in the bud at the right age (age4-10) can change a child's / person's life. http://fitnessforfocus.com

I'm over 50 & have been taking concerta/ritalin for over a year & a half - not for adhd but due to extreme drowsiness form an anti-depressant. I'd been through about 20 mood stabilizing drugs over 5 years & still suffered from mood shifts & deep depression. since I've been taking ritalin I have been more even & well functioning as any time in my life. I feel good.

Thank you, Shankar Vedantam, for writing these important articles.

Sadly, Vedantam's work confirms the suspicion that the current level of arrogance, corruption and incompetence occurring in our nation's financial institutions may well be eclipsed by the pharma-medical-insurance industrial complex - should we ever investigate.

But I doubt we'll ever have such an investigation, for the simple reason that we as Americans care a great deal about our money. But our health? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Also: check out Vedantam's piece on the rational roots of irrational anger vis-a-vis the bailout. And thanks to Brian for featuring him.