Is there a connection between Ritalin and the recent school shootings?

[Lvis]

Great post Hayabusarider

 

[tcsenter]

Somehow the topic of ADHD and the use of Ritalin came up. He's vehemently opposed to it's use and lectures parents and school groups about it.

Ah yes, the quackery of chiropractition. No doubt that this chiropractor was advocating his own 'natural alternative' therapy for ADHD, probably through some joint manipulation, or maybe he has an accupuncturist trying to start-up a clinic in his office. These weirdos think they can treat everything with joint manipulation and supplements.

There have been a couple good points raised, a biggie is that most people have never seen a child with ADD nor do they understand what early ADHD proponents were referring to. These are not children who merely lack concentration or are hyperactive in a way that is rather normal for all children, though that is how these terms have been interpreted by the public. They suffer from SEVERE deficits that prevent them from learning or performing the most simple tasks that seem to come naturally for other children.

I also agree that it is misdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, for two reasons:

The pharmeceutical companies pushing and promoting their products for obvious reasons - $$. We see this happen all the time, a drug that is approved only for a very specific and narrowly defined disorder or illness, over time and with steady pressure from the drug companies, soon becomes prescribed for a wider range of maladies.

ADHD is a 'syndrome', there is no test nor any series of tests that one may reasonably infer 'positive' or 'negative' with a high degree of confidence. A syndrome requires a physician to make a professional or clinical judgement call, based on a number of factors that may point to a particular diagnosis. This process inherently involves an element of trial and error. There are going to be misdiagnosis, especially if the drug companies are promoting their drugs for everything which bares a similarity to the disorder for which the drug is approved.

Physicians themselves can be blamed for failing to properly understand the disorder and keeping current on the literature, or failing to be the physician when a parent comes in and demands that he put their child on Ritalin, this parent who doesn't know a neurotransmitter from a radio transmitter, but who now has a medical degree because they read an article in Redbook or Reader's Digest.

It would be a terrible mistake to presume that because ADHD is misdiagnosed, and because a lot of people don't understand it, the disorder must therefore not be a "real" disorder.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: L vis
Great post Hayabusarider

I second that! Thank you, that was good information.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

How much does poor parenting and overexposure to medias like television play a part in this so-called "disorder"?

Behave

On any given day in North America, almost five million kids will take a powerful psychostimulant drug. The geographical caveat is important: more kids in North America are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and given drugs like Ritalin to "help" them behave than in the rest of the world combined. In fact, the US and Canada account for a startling 95 percent of worldwide Ritalin consumption.

In the midst of this drug epidemic, April 2001 appeared to signal a backlash. Two television magazines, PBS?s Frontline and A&E?s Investigative Reports, pondered the massive increase in use, as did a five-part series in Canada?s National Post newspaper. Still, of all the critical reports in recent months, none has come any closer to facing the hard facts about Ritalin than have the hundreds that came before.

Fact one: While medical "experts" and the media persistently deny it, developmental studies have now established that certain differences in caregiving and fam-ily structure cause some children to be-come impulsive and hyperactive. In a recent example, a ten-year, federally funded study in the US, reported at the April meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, found that the more time children spent in daycare the more unmanageable they became. Kids who spent more than 30 hours a week in daycare scored significantly higher on such things as "explosive behavior," "talking too much," "argues a lot," and "demands a lot of attention" ? the very behaviors that so often lead to stimulant treatment.

Fact two: Ritalin is little more than coke for kids. "Cocaine, which is one of the most reinforcing and addictive of the abused drugs, has pharmacological actions that are very similar to those of methylphenidate [Ritalin], which is the most commonly prescribed psycho-tropic medication for children in the United States." This conclusion, reported by Nora Volkow and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory, appeared in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1995. A follow-up study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1998, found that the pharmacological actions produced by oral, therapeutic doses of Ritalin were comparable to those produced by recreational doses of intranasal cocaine. Researchers are quick to point out that children prescribed Ritalin do not (usually) snort or inject it, which alters the drug-taking experience. But do we really believe parents would give their kids cocaine, even if it was only in pill form?

Fact three: Ideology is driving the science. Fighting the drug war, researchers like Volkow have demonstrated that continued use of cocaine and other stimulants causes brain changes. Yet never have these researchers investigated whether chronic stimulant use might produce the same effects in kids. Meanwhile, other researchers have pointed to subtle differences in certain areas of the brain to suggest that ADD is a biological disease ? a claim repeated in the recent Frontline episode. The truth is that all these studies have looked only at hyperactive individuals who have been taking stimulants for years. At least one study, published in Psychiatry Research in 1986, was honest in its findings: "since all of the [ADD] patient had been treated with stimulants, cortical atrophy [i.e., brain deterioration] may be a long-term adverse effect of this treatment."

Fact four: The US Drug Enforcement Administration has long known that massive amounts of Ritalin are being diverted by adolescents and adults into recreational use, where it?s often crushed up and snorted, or even injected. The DEA reported that Ritalin misuse in high schools increased from three to 16 percent from 1992 to 1995. Similarly, it found that while children between the ages of ten and 14 were involved in about 25 emergency-room visits connected with Ritalin misuse in 1991, this number had jumped to 1,725 by 1998.

Fact five: Stimulants are no cure. Perhaps all this hypocrisy could be excused if stimulant "treatment" somehow worked, but it doesn?t ?- at least not for the children themselves. Parents have been encouraged to believe that pharmacological control will boost their child?s learning and social skills, but this rarely happens. Dozens of objective studies have assessed the long-term effectiveness of stimulants on children?s academic performance, social development and self control. None has shown them to be effective for anything but controlling kids? behavior ? an effect that vanishes once the drug wears off. Such studies rarely make the headlines, however. Instead, we hear about recent research from the US ? "the MTA study" ? that relied heavily on subjective reports from teachers and parents while ignoring its own objective findings, which showed little promise for drug treatment. Reporting on this research, the media, too, has found a cure where there isn?t one.

So where does the cure lie? It lies in prevention. This means getting back to basics as a culture, with parents who have and take the time to truly matter in the lives of children.

 

[EXman]

I'm so glad nobody read my post why do I bother with OT!

and to the guy who ground it up and snorted it you're Lame

 

[Mo0o]

at columbine they both wore trench coats. but you don;t see burlington doing a massive recall on coats. correlation does not justify causation.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: EXman
I'm so glad nobody read my post why do I bother with OT!

and to the guy who ground it up and snorted it you're Lame

I read your post, and I think you're right about doctors too-readily prescribing Ritalin. Part of the pressure to do so, I believe, comes from a sort of "critical mass" where there's so many kids out there on the stuff that any parent who's heard of it will ask their doctor to prescribe it if they believe their kid is misbehaving.

EngineNr9, thanks for posting that. It's kind of scary to think that the long-term effects haven't been studied enough. I do not want my kids (when I have them) suffering from "cortical atrophy"!

I think that over the long-term, this might become a significant problem.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: EngineNr9
How much does poor parenting and overexposure to medias like television play a part in this so-called "disorder"? Behave On any given day in North America, almost five million kids will take a powerful psychostimulant drug. The geographical caveat is important: more kids in North America are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and given drugs like Ritalin to "help" them behave than in the rest of the world combined. In fact, the US and Canada account for a startling 95 percent of worldwide Ritalin consumption. In the midst of this drug epidemic, April 2001 appeared to signal a backlash. Two television magazines, PBS?s Frontline and A&E?s Investigative Reports, pondered the massive increase in use, as did a five-part series in Canada?s National Post newspaper. Still, of all the critical reports in recent months, none has come any closer to facing the hard facts about Ritalin than have the hundreds that came before. Fact one: While medical "experts" and the media persistently deny it, developmental studies have now established that certain differences in caregiving and fam-ily structure cause some children to be-come impulsive and hyperactive. In a recent example, a ten-year, federally funded study in the US, reported at the April meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, found that the more time children spent in daycare the more unmanageable they became. Kids who spent more than 30 hours a week in daycare scored significantly higher on such things as "explosive behavior," "talking too much," "argues a lot," and "demands a lot of attention" ? the very behaviors that so often lead to stimulant treatment. Fact two: Ritalin is little more than coke for kids. "Cocaine, which is one of the most reinforcing and addictive of the abused drugs, has pharmacological actions that are very similar to those of methylphenidate [Ritalin], which is the most commonly prescribed psycho-tropic medication for children in the United States." This conclusion, reported by Nora Volkow and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory, appeared in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1995. A follow-up study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1998, found that the pharmacological actions produced by oral, therapeutic doses of Ritalin were comparable to those produced by recreational doses of intranasal cocaine. Researchers are quick to point out that children prescribed Ritalin do not (usually) snort or inject it, which alters the drug-taking experience. But do we really believe parents would give their kids cocaine, even if it was only in pill form? Fact three: Ideology is driving the science. Fighting the drug war, researchers like Volkow have demonstrated that continued use of cocaine and other stimulants causes brain changes. Yet never have these researchers investigated whether chronic stimulant use might produce the same effects in kids. Meanwhile, other researchers have pointed to subtle differences in certain areas of the brain to suggest that ADD is a biological disease ? a claim repeated in the recent Frontline episode. The truth is that all these studies have looked only at hyperactive individuals who have been taking stimulants for years. At least one study, published in Psychiatry Research in 1986, was honest in its findings: "since all of the [ADD] patient had been treated with stimulants, cortical atrophy [i.e., brain deterioration] may be a long-term adverse effect of this treatment." Fact four: The US Drug Enforcement Administration has long known that massive amounts of Ritalin are being diverted by adolescents and adults into recreational use, where it?s often crushed up and snorted, or even injected. The DEA reported that Ritalin misuse in high schools increased from three to 16 percent from 1992 to 1995. Similarly, it found that while children between the ages of ten and 14 were involved in about 25 emergency-room visits connected with Ritalin misuse in 1991, this number had jumped to 1,725 by 1998. Fact five: Stimulants are no cure. Perhaps all this hypocrisy could be excused if stimulant "treatment" somehow worked, but it doesn?t ?- at least not for the children themselves. Parents have been encouraged to believe that pharmacological control will boost their child?s learning and social skills, but this rarely happens. Dozens of objective studies have assessed the long-term effectiveness of stimulants on children?s academic performance, social development and self control. None has shown them to be effective for anything but controlling kids? behavior ? an effect that vanishes once the drug wears off. Such studies rarely make the headlines, however. Instead, we hear about recent research from the US ? "the MTA study" ? that relied heavily on subjective reports from teachers and parents while ignoring its own objective findings, which showed little promise for drug treatment. Reporting on this research, the media, too, has found a cure where there isn?t one. So where does the cure lie? It lies in prevention. This means getting back to basics as a culture, with parents who have and take the time to truly matter in the lives of children.

Fact 1) very valuable issue, it shouldn't substitute for a parents proper parenting role.
Fact 2) not true. its has some of the same brain affects as coke but its not addictive and takes longer to react to. It doesn't overdo it like coke does, if prescribed to the appropriate people (in slackers article, "pay attention"
Fact 3) There's no evidence of cordial atrophy, and its been around for 4(?) decades.
Fact 4) Ritalin is abused but that doesn't make the drug bad, only the people who abuse it. Lets ban alcohol under the same principal, which btw is abused much more.
Fact 5) There's nothing informative here - "Stimulents aren't a cure" and "Parents have been encouraged to believe that pharmacological control will boost their child?s learning and social skills, but this rarely happens." First, Ritalin is a aid, no one said it was a cure for a chemical imbalance or whatever. Second, no studies are cited, while its common sense that if a student can concentrate better and be less of a behavior disruption, he will be more successful in his applications.