San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 12, 2004 – A new study conducted in rats by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School suggests that the misdiagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) combined with prescription drug use in children may lead to a higher risk of developing depressive symptoms in adulthood.
(snip)
Because most children show some of these behaviors of inattention and hyperactivity at times, the diagnosis of ADHD is a complex process that should involve specialists. It is critical to determine whether a child's behavior is simply immature or exuberant, related to another issue such as a vision problem or learning disability, or is characteristic of a disorder such as ADHD.
In the work funded by the NIH, Dr. Carlezon and his chief collaborator, Dr. Susan Andersen, examined the effects of exposing rats to Ritalin during early development on behaviors later in life. They exposed normal rats to twice-daily doses of Ritalin during a period that is equivalent to approximately 4-12 years of age in humans. Examining the behavior during adulthood, Carlezon and Andersen conducted several types of tests that all showed that the animals had a reduced ability to experience pleasure and reward, particularly when it was measured by sensitivity to cocaine. In addition, they found that the animals exposed to Ritalin during pre-adolescence were more prone to express despair-like behaviors in stressful situations (such as swim tests) as adults. Overall, the animals showed more evidence of dysfunctional brain reward systems and depressive-like behaviors in adulthood.
These findings are critical because they suggest that Ritalin can have long-term consequences on normal-functioning brains. The study is particularly relevant when considering the difficulty in correctly diagnosing children with ADHD. In 1999, approximately 90 percent of children diagnosed with the disorder were taking Ritalin, with children beginning drug therapy at younger ages today, even during preschool in some instances. There is increasing evidence to suggest that correct diagnosis of ADHD is of the highest importance – children who are misidentified as having ADHD and subsequently placed on prescription drug therapy could face possible impaired brain performance as adults.
(snip) read in entirety at link above
Mata Musing
So kids on drugs at an early age leads to adults with high tolerance to medications and demonstrate dispair or depression?
And they needed to do a "study" to determine something so very obvious? Unbelievable. What has happened to plain, ol' common sense?
And how many children, in school during the late 80s and 90s, have we lost as adults because the public school system has persisted in forcing parents to drug their kids under threat of putting them in foster care?
This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I still mourn the loss of a loved one. A loss I link to State administered drugs from the time he was a young boy in school, and to his parents that were too afraid to fight against the child welfare system for his life when it mattered the most.
This drugging of children has never ceased to amaze me. Who's idea was this? How did something so obviously wrong become the norm in our schools?
If our children have magically started demonstrating mass symptoms of inattentiveness in the past couple of decades, I'm quite sure that drugging children is NOT the answer. Nutrition changes, yes. Discipline, yes. But drugs at such a young age when the body and brain are still developing? Absolutely not.
But much can be revealed by our cultural attitude towards drugs in general. Take, for example, the Congressional bemoaning about the "drug war". Yet it remains a fact that the largest drug pushers today are gov't and pharmaceutical companies themselves. One only needs to monitor commercials advertising drugs for everything that ails you. But more often than not, the side effects sound as bad, if not worse, as the original ailment.
As a result of such widespread remedies for everything under the sun, we have become a culture of legitimate drug users with a low tolerance to anything involving discomfort. We demand quick relief for everthing - even the common cold, for which there is no cure. In America, when the tough feel queasy and stuffed up, the tough down a bottle of Pepto Bismal and pop some antihistamines.
As witnessed by the latest of steroid scandals by Olympians and pro athletes, even the sports world has a new "norm" for drug use.... and we accept it as casually as if we popped an aspirin. Andrew Sullivan's takes American athletes' obsession with steroid use further in his Sunday Times column today.
Then we have the "mental illness" crowd... the latest of which is, of course, Palm Beach's rampid PEST. Post Election Stress Trauma. The affliction was created for Kerry supporters so that those seeking professional help could claim the costs on their health insurance.
And we wonder why health insurance costs are way up... add this to the long list of reasons. One can only laugh at the irony - the Kerry campaign railing against health insurance costs, yet his supporters contributing further to the problem with their depression over his loss.
There is little doubt that we become a nation of self-indulgent whiners who feel done in by the pain of a simple hang nail. And for that attitude, our children are paying dearly.
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