ADHD Drugs Prescribed to ‘All Academically Struggling’ Children

ADHD Drugs Prescribed to ‘All Academically Struggling’ Children

Dees Illustration

Lisa Garber
Activist Post

There is a frightening new trend in the medical community: prescribing
psychoactive stimulant medication to children from low-income families
to boost their academic performance. To be more clear, doctors are
actually prescribing ADHD drugs to students who are academically
struggling. Here’s the kicker: the kids don’t have attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).


Evening the Scales

One proponent of the trend, Dr. Michael Anderson, says that ADHD is a
“made up…excuse” for the real illness, which is a social and educational
environment unwilling to spend money on changing the environment and
instead opting to change the child. A self-professed “social justice
thinker,” Anderson knows that many families cannot afford behavior-based
therapy for their children. He sees the practice of issuing Adderall to
children without ADHD as “evening the scales a little bit.”

Dr. William Graf, a pediatrician who also sees many
children from poor families, has his concerns with the practice. “These
children are still in the developmental phase, and we still don’t know
how these drugs biologically affect the developing brain.”

When the New York Times tried to contact educators to speak on
the topic of ADHD, many resisted interviews and some—like a
superintendent of a major school district in California—only spoke
anonymously.

“It’s scary to think…how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this.”


ADHD Drugs and Dangerous Side Effects

Despite a growing body of knowledge that the drugs in question—like
Adderall and Risperdal—cause devastating side effects, prescriptions are
on the rise. In 2010 alone, doctors drew up 18 million prescriptions of
Adderall. Companies have even been struggling to produce enough ADHD drugs due to the massive increase in prescriptions.

Some of the side effects of ADHD drugs include:

• Growth suppression
  
• Raised blood pressure
  
• Seeing people and hearing voices that aren’t there
  
• Psychotic episodes
  
• Suicidal thoughts
  

More shameful than the cavalier attitude with which prescriptions are doled out and accepted
is that Big Pharma values dollar signs more than the lives of children.
Though schools are not blameless, they may be inadequately funded and
short-staffed, poorly equipped to deal with societal disadvantages of
many of their pupils, or may simply be poorly run.
Diet can Prevent and Help with ADHD

New studies now say, however, that ADHD—if it is indeed not something
made-up, as Dr. Anderson suggests—is a largely preventable condition. In
example, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of the Harvard
School of Public Health found that children of mothers with high mercury levels
after childbirth are 40 to 70 percent more likely to experience ADHD
symptoms, but those of mothers who ate lots of fish low in mercury
actually decreased their chances of ADHD by 60 percent.

The journal Pediatrics published an analysis of 70 studies,
concluding that a diet high in fiber, folate, and omega-3 fatty acids is
crucial to a child’s psychological wellbeing. That’s right, simple dietary changes, and not ADHD drugs, can be the answer for children labeled as having ADHD.

Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/10/adhd-drugs-prescribed-to-all.html