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The very worst problem with ADHD drugs is that they are overwhelmingly used to "treat" normal behavior with children - especially boys.

mhh__ 6y ago
This also leads to people not taking it seriously when they grown up, double whammy.
wait_a_minute 6y ago
That’s by intention.
- okamiueru 6y ago
  Boys are intentionally misdiagnosed with ADHD to give medication to alter their behaviour?
  - eric4smith 6y ago
    No. It's more about people not wanting to bother to deal with the nature of most boys. Rowdy, inquisitive, can't sit still. These are all traits that for the most part -- make one a good person later in life. Now most teachers just can't deal with them and label them as "toxic" that requires medication.
    - okamiueru 6y ago
      I suppose. I was mostly interested in what the parent post meant, as it was hard to read it as suggesting something other than malice.
    - shaftway 6y ago
      There's dealing with the nature of boys, and then there's dealing with ADHD. Our son was diagnosed and our final trigger before looking for a diagnosis was a day where he was sent to the principal's office twice. Once for pretending he was a motorcycle and running into other kids, and once for biting another kid. His teachers were aware that he was likely ADHD and were extremely tolerant of his behavior. His teacher said that he ran into people while he was a motorcycle, because that's just a thing that motorcycles do. The biting was a little more convoluted, but his logic was that it was ok because he told the other kid that he could bite him back. The way our therapist put it was that as people age they can self-regulate better. We're using the medication to keep him alive (without it he's impulsive to the point that he'd run out into busy traffic to chase something shiny) until he develops better self-regulation.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
The very worst problem with these drugs is that they’re misunderstood, for two primary reasons: - The treatment of “behavior” precedes the treatment itself, diagnosis is external to patients, and the benefits are consequently poorly understood - they’re abused by people who don’t benefit from them, so their impact is distorted That said, I wish my parents had wanted to treat my “normal” behavior when I was young. It would have saved me decades of turmoil, almost certainly would have helped me avoid self medicating with alcohol, and probably would have helped me avoid several emergent mental health situations. My parents thought this way too. And as a consequence I had to go without care for my entire childhood, and was unaware care could help for two decades after.
decasteve 6y ago
School, the institution is not for everyone, and is definitely not normal, even though society has normalized it. My son went through periods of anxiety and stress through school and there was a push by a teacher and an administrator to have him diagnosed with something, anything really. If my daughter hadn't been at the same school and witnessed a couple of incidents of him being publicly shamed and bullied by the teacher, I wouldn't have known what to do. He's now in a private school which takes place predominantly outdoors, nature based, and the transformation in him is phenomenal. The anxiety is gone and he's such an open mind and engages in conversations in ways he'd shy away from before. I wonder and worry about kids who've experienced the same but suffer it for their entire grade-school experience with no reprieve.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
Where is your evidence of this overstated claim? "The very worst problem...overwhelmingly used to 'treat' normal behavior"...I studied ADHD pharmacology in graduate school and I saw no evidence of this in the dozens of articles I read. I think you lack a scientific understanding of ADHD. Do you know WHY boys are more likely to be diagnosed as "combined type" ADHD and treated than girls? It is primarily because their motor-dominant brains develop differentially: the dopaminergic systems in their motor cortex make them move more and disrupt more than girls. Girls, whose motor-cortex and executive function develop differently, are much more likely to be the primarily-inattentive subtype, which leads to day dreaming and aloofness, but not to the disruptive behaviors that boys with ADHD exhibit. Therefore, girls fly under the radar and are missed because boys simply move more and have less control over their movement. Nevertheless, your post is a bit reckless in my opinion. Add some real scientific evidence to your generalization. These are children who have less friends, abuse drugs more, are more likely to have depression or anxiety, and are far more likely to kill themselves. This neurodevelopmental disorder really matters, it's not a flippant case of drugging boys whose parents didn't raise them right.
- eric4smith 6y ago
  I suppose the question is what is “raising them right” mean to you? As a boy I was raised to be inquisitive, open, masculine, physical and explorative. I was also raised to be gentle and tolerant of those around me. Those are not traits that are welcome in most schools for maybe the past 20 years. So more and more boys are indeed given medications to “calm down” what are really natural traits of masculinity.

mhh__ 6y ago

This also leads to people not taking it seriously when they grown up, double whammy.

wait_a_minute 6y ago

That’s by intention.

okamiueru 6y ago
Boys are intentionally misdiagnosed with ADHD to give medication to alter their behaviour?
- eric4smith 6y ago
  No. It's more about people not wanting to bother to deal with the nature of most boys. Rowdy, inquisitive, can't sit still. These are all traits that for the most part -- make one a good person later in life. Now most teachers just can't deal with them and label them as "toxic" that requires medication.
  - okamiueru 6y ago
    I suppose. I was mostly interested in what the parent post meant, as it was hard to read it as suggesting something other than malice.
  - shaftway 6y ago
    There's dealing with the nature of boys, and then there's dealing with ADHD. Our son was diagnosed and our final trigger before looking for a diagnosis was a day where he was sent to the principal's office twice. Once for pretending he was a motorcycle and running into other kids, and once for biting another kid. His teachers were aware that he was likely ADHD and were extremely tolerant of his behavior. His teacher said that he ran into people while he was a motorcycle, because that's just a thing that motorcycles do. The biting was a little more convoluted, but his logic was that it was ok because he told the other kid that he could bite him back. The way our therapist put it was that as people age they can self-regulate better. We're using the medication to keep him alive (without it he's impulsive to the point that he'd run out into busy traffic to chase something shiny) until he develops better self-regulation.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

The very worst problem with these drugs is that they’re misunderstood, for two primary reasons: - The treatment of “behavior” precedes the treatment itself, diagnosis is external to patients, and the benefits are consequently poorly understood - they’re abused by people who don’t benefit from them, so their impact is distorted That said, I wish my parents had wanted to treat my “normal” behavior when I was young. It would have saved me decades of turmoil, almost certainly would have helped me avoid self medicating with alcohol, and probably would have helped me avoid several emergent mental health situations. My parents thought this way too. And as a consequence I had to go without care for my entire childhood, and was unaware care could help for two decades after.

decasteve 6y ago

School, the institution is not for everyone, and is definitely not normal, even though society has normalized it. My son went through periods of anxiety and stress through school and there was a push by a teacher and an administrator to have him diagnosed with something, anything really. If my daughter hadn't been at the same school and witnessed a couple of incidents of him being publicly shamed and bullied by the teacher, I wouldn't have known what to do. He's now in a private school which takes place predominantly outdoors, nature based, and the transformation in him is phenomenal. The anxiety is gone and he's such an open mind and engages in conversations in ways he'd shy away from before. I wonder and worry about kids who've experienced the same but suffer it for their entire grade-school experience with no reprieve.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

Where is your evidence of this overstated claim? "The very worst problem...overwhelmingly used to 'treat' normal behavior"...I studied ADHD pharmacology in graduate school and I saw no evidence of this in the dozens of articles I read. I think you lack a scientific understanding of ADHD. Do you know WHY boys are more likely to be diagnosed as "combined type" ADHD and treated than girls? It is primarily because their motor-dominant brains develop differentially: the dopaminergic systems in their motor cortex make them move more and disrupt more than girls. Girls, whose motor-cortex and executive function develop differently, are much more likely to be the primarily-inattentive subtype, which leads to day dreaming and aloofness, but not to the disruptive behaviors that boys with ADHD exhibit. Therefore, girls fly under the radar and are missed because boys simply move more and have less control over their movement. Nevertheless, your post is a bit reckless in my opinion. Add some real scientific evidence to your generalization. These are children who have less friends, abuse drugs more, are more likely to have depression or anxiety, and are far more likely to kill themselves. This neurodevelopmental disorder really matters, it's not a flippant case of drugging boys whose parents didn't raise them right.

eric4smith 6y ago
I suppose the question is what is “raising them right” mean to you? As a boy I was raised to be inquisitive, open, masculine, physical and explorative. I was also raised to be gentle and tolerant of those around me. Those are not traits that are welcome in most schools for maybe the past 20 years. So more and more boys are indeed given medications to “calm down” what are really natural traits of masculinity.