Misdiagnosing ADHD

Kids can’t be kids anymore?

by Bruce Burnett, CH

 

There’s a popular T-shirt that reads, “I don’t have ADHD, I’m just ignoring you.” We all know that ADHD is no laughing matter, yet, as with much humour, there’s a grain of truth in the joke.

It’s axiomatic that Americans are addicted to pharmaceutical drugs. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, writes in his review of Overdosed America by Dr. John Abramson, “some of the nation’s worst drug dealers aren’t peddling on the street corners, they’re occupying corporate suites. Overdosed America reveals the greed and corruption that drive health care costs skyward and now threatens the public health. Before you see a doctor, you should read this book.”

According to Dr. Abramson, “This is the mother of all sleights of hand: the transformation of medical science from a public good whose purpose is to improve health into a commodity whose primary function is to maximize financial returns.”

Nothing illustrates this more disturbingly than new research by Todd Elder, an assistant professor of economics at Michigan State University. According to Elder, almost one million children in the US are possibly misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest in their class. Immaturity is therefore mistaken for ADHD. These children are significantly more likely than their older classmates to be prescribed behaviour-modifying stimulants such as Ritalin. Elder said the “smoking gun” of the study is that ADHD diagnoses depend on a child’s age relative to classmates and the teacher’s perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.

“If a child is behaving poorly, if he’s inattentive, if he can’t sit still, it may simply be because he’s five and the other kids are six,” said Elder. “There’s a big difference between a five-year-old and a six-year-old, and teachers and medical practitioners need to take that into account when evaluating whether children have ADHD.”

ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioural disorder for kids in the US, with at least 4.5 million diagnoses among children under age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, as Elder has noted, there are no neurological markers for ADHD (such as a blood test) and experts disagree on its prevalence, fuelling intense public debate about whether ADHD is under-diagnosed or over-diagnosed.

In 2000, a series of Ritalin class action federal lawsuits were filed in five separate US states. All five lawsuits were dismissed by the end of 2002. The lawsuits alleged the makers of Methylphenidate (Ritalin) and the American Psychiatric Association had conspired to invent and promote the disorder ADHD to create a highly profitable market for the drug. The lawsuit also alleged CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) deliberately attempted to increase the supply of Ritalin and ease restrictions on the supply of Ritalin to help increase profits for Novartis. Indeed, some even argue that ADHD is merely a disease manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs.

Fred Baughman, MD, has been an adult and child neurologist in California for nearly 40 years. He leads the opposition to the over and misdiagnoses of ADHD. Dr. Baughman has been striving for many years to bring the truth about this so-called ‘disease’ to the attention of as many people as possible. In his book, The ADHD Fraud, he writes, “They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive – termed them a ‘disease.’ Twenty-five years of research, not deserving of the term ‘research,’ has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically – the ‘epidemic’ having grown from 500,000 in 1985 to between five and seven and million today – this remains the state of the ‘science’ of ADHD.”

Dr. Mercola, founder of mercola.com, an online natural health newsletter, raises concern about “the frightening rise of ADHD drugs among children and their parents.” Mercola writes, “Parents of children already taking such medications are almost 10 times more likely to take one themselves. Even worse, some 60 percent were mothers, although ADHD had been thought to be almost three times more common among males.”

These dire numbers come from a review of prescription claims generated by more than 100,000 children (ages 5-19) and their parents in 2005 by Medco Health Solutions. More alarming statistics:

• The chances of a second child in the same family taking an ADHD drug doubled when a parent also took one.
• In cases where both parent and child took an ADHD drug, parents began drug therapy first more than 40 percent of the time.
• Adults began taking an ADHD drug at age 43 while children start at age 13.
• According to an earlier Medco analysis, ADHD drug use among women had exploded 164 percent from 2000-05.
• According to Mercola, “There’s no need to expose your family or yourself to a potentially hazardous ADHD drug that can cause hallucinations, especially when there are safer and more natural solutions available. A few to consider:
• Avoid processed foods.
  Rebalance your intake of omega-3 fats by taking a high quality fish or krill oil daily.
• Reduce, with the plan to eliminate, grains and sugars from your diet.

So is ADHD real or not? The ‘disease’ has been attributed to anything from pesticide exposure to too much television. The jury is still out, but parents are advised to at least get a second opinion before drugging their child, especially if he or she is among the youngest in the class.

References:
Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by John Abramson, MD.
The ADHD Fraud by Fred Baughman, MD.

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Based in Ladysmith, BC, Bruce Burnett is a chartered herbalist, an award-winning writer and author of HerbWise: growing cooking wellbeing.

illustration © Kirsty Pargeter