karalianne:
glowyourownway:
So I was perusing through Tumblr, as I do normally, and then I decided to search for something that I have always had a weird view on. ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Kids are diagnosed as early as the age of five with this so called…
I am not entirely sure why I feel like putting my hat into this ring, but here I go. My mother did a paper on this during Grad school so while I am not an expert on this I have read a lot of literature on the subject. First of all, amphetemines do work amazingly well for people with ADHD. As the previous poster mentioned, it’s because of their dopamine levels. However, ADHD has a fairly large misdiagnosis rate.
This is for a lot of reasons. One is that the diagnosis is a little vague (a checklist between a child with ADHD and a gifted child is eerily similar). Another is that it’s one of the simpler things to diagnose a child with. I was originally considered ADHD before being officially diagnosed with the much more accurate Asperger’s syndrome, and while I can’t speak for everyone my experience leads me to believe that this is a pretty common thing.
There is also the case of funding, which the first person mentions. On top of the pharmeceutical companies, schools can actually get financial support if they have a certain amount of children with disabilities in their school. So an area with low funding may see a child who can’t pay attention and label them ADHD without really digging that deeply into the issue.
My problem isn’t so much the medication to children with ADHD, because some of them need it quite badly. However, there are a lot of people questionably diagnosed with this and are prescribed medication. And while amphetemines work great for someone who actually has ADHD, it will make someone who doesn’t even worse. As such, I really think we should be more careful about the diagnosis before we start giving drugs to five year olds.