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Questionable psychiatry



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The number of drugs prescribed to badly behaved children in Scotland has risen (your report, 19 December), with drugs commonly prescribed for the psychiatric label "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD) increasing by 20 per cent last year.
This trend of labelling children with ADHD has a fundamental flaw that psychiatrists work desperately to conceal. The flaw lies in the inability to produce any test to confirm the presence of such a "disorder". That doesn't mean children don't experi
ence problems, and it doesn't mean parents don't have days when they pull their hair out.

The profit-driven psychiatric profession has manufactured ADHD as an excuse for bad behaviour in the boisterous, argumentative, defiant, inattentive, disruptive, forgetful child or adolescent. But ADHD is nothing more than a psychiatric ASBO. While we don't always question diagnoses, and while we place our trust in medical doctors who can and do provide empirical evidence, such standards are non-existent when it comes to psychiatry.

The common denominators in this charade are opinions and vested interests. Manufacture a psychiatric label, shroud it in medical legitimacy, and concoct an expensive chemical. Then give it to children and adolescents, produce nullifying effects and hail this as "demonstrably effective". In fact, all that has happened is the child or adolescent has been drugged, and is exhibiting the effects of a dangerous mind-altering foreign substance in his or her body. There is no therapeutic value.

BRIAN DANIELS
Citizens Commission on Human Rights
East Grinstead, West Sussex



The full article contains 249 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 27 December 2007 7:18 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

Peter Freer,

USA 28/12/2007 10:36:34
It is imperative that one does not succumb to the pharmaceutical marketing machine as we've done in the US. Children in the US are commonly prescribed psychostimulant medication instead of a cognitive and behavioral accommodations.

ADHD is a highly subjective diagnosis that has no pathology, no place in the brain where it can be located. Many studies purport to have found a localization or pathology which is the Holy Grail of the pharmaceutical industry. However, none have withstood scrutiny.

I’ll quote the respected psychologist, Dr. Abraham Maslow –

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Here’s how this quote relates to our current dilemma: Many parents rely on their Doctor’s opinion alone believing the physician is almost all knowing. Doctors, pediatricians included, are sparsely trained to instruct parents or educators on how to facilitate a multi-modal management plan. Instead, as they are instructed from medical school and because medical schools rely heavily on pharmaceutical money, they are given the only answer: drugs. It is only natural that parents believe this.

The Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD has been one of the longest studies performed on a select group of ADHD children. Recently published in the journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the data are somewhat alarming.

Data from the study were used to evaluate whether stimulant medication effects physical growth in children. The data collected over three years indicates that both height and weight are decreased in children using stimulant medication.

Co-author, Professor William Pelham, of the University at Buffalo, says: "The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren't growing as much as other kids both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight. And the second was that there were no beneficial effects – none."

Pelham adds, "In the short run [me
2

Peter Freer,

USA 28/12/2007 10:42:03
Co-author, Professor William Pelham, of the University at Buffalo, says: "The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren't growing as much as other kids both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight. And the second was that there were no beneficial effects – none."

Pelham adds, "In the short run [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long run it won't. And that information should be made very clear to parents."

This is far different than the information the psychiatric community currently espouses.

Please consider this carefully before jumping on the medication bandwagon.
3

Jeffrey DeLisle MD,

USA 28/12/2007 11:33:41
Mr. Daniels is incorrect in his assertion "there is no pathology, no place in the brain where it (ADHD) can be located." To the contrary, ADHD is most frequently attributable to a disorder of dopamine transporter protein which is highly genetically transmissable. The disorder results in a relative deficiency of dopamine in areas of the brain which govern attention and impulse control. In fact, a convincing "test" for ADHD could be found in positron emission (PET) scanning which shows that kids with ADHD's brains have to work much harder, metabolically, to perform simple tasks of concentration that normal brains can do easily. Unfortunately, PET scans are extremely expensive and in short supply, and fortunately not necessary since history and symptoms alone can render a reliable diagnosis.
Also contrary to Mr. Daniels' assertions, stimulant medications have been demonstrated over and over again to be not only safe but effective in reducing the symptoms of ADHD. No, stimulants do not cure ADHD any more than insulin cures diabetes. However, by adulthood some children outgrow their symptoms, and for others the symptoms are ameliorated. The idea that non pharmacologic treatments such as cognitive the alone might be of benefit is a laudable one, but not new, and regrettably, many attempts have yielded uniformly negative results. Rather, multimodal treatments such as Mr. Peter Freer espouses are appropriate, but to be effective medications should be included.
Children and adolescents with untreated ADHD are indeed "argumentative, defiant, inattentive, disruptive, forgetful." Mr. Brian Daniels does not propose what we should do with such children. In my practice, parents present for the first time after years of failure at school and socially, major disruptions in home life, and not uncommonly after brushes with the legal system. They present to the physician as a last recourse, after years of failure with other types of intervention. Not once have I seen a
4

Jeffrey DeLisle MD,

USA 28/12/2007 11:47:01
(continued) Not once have I seen a parent eager to have his or her child to be placed on medication, and more often that not they are skeptical, but more often than not, they do see good results. It is disparaging to such desperate parents to imply as Mr. Freer does that physicians somehow gull parents into accepting and continuing for years ineffective treatments for their children, guided by blind obedience rather than their own observations and good sense.
No, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Freer, parents are smarter than in your condescension you give them credit for. You can advance your claims only by disregarding the stories of the by now millions of parents and children whose symptoms of ADHD are successfully ameliorated by these life changing and sometimes life saving medications.
5

Stewart Cambridge,

London 02/01/2008 15:46:15
Jeffrey DeLisle claims that ADHD is a physical disease with a specific pathology, namely "a disorder of dopamine transporter protein".
If you take any real physical disease where treatment involves consumption of drugs involving possible severe side-efects, it is normal and expected that bodily tests are run first: blood-tests, x-rays, biopsy, scans, whatever is appropriate for actually proving the disease is indeed there.
You wouldn't embark on chemotherapy for cancer without proof the cancer was really there. You wouldn't prescribe insulin to a suspected diabetic without similar proof.
Given that Ritalin is an addictive amphetamine which is trading on the street as "kiddy cocaine", why would you give this drug to a child (perhaps as young as 5) without a similar level proof?
But this is exactly what psychiatrists are doing.

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