coyote's corner

This is incredible!!


Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 2:18 AM
Subject: Re: [AITL] The ADD Hoax: Protect Your Child from the False
Diagnosis That Is Threatening a Generation



> Subject: [psychiatry-research] The ADD Hoax: Protect
> Your Child from the False Diagnosis That Is
> Threatening a Generation
>
>
> The ADD Hoax: Protect Your Child from the False
> Diagnosis That Is Threatening a
> Generation
> by Craig Hovey
> Hardcover: 256 pages
> Publisher: Prima Publishing; (January 28, 2003)
> ISBN: 0761535896
> AMAZON - US
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761535896/darwinanddarwini
> AMAZON - Uk
>
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761535896/humannaturecom
>
> Book Description
> More than five million children are currently taking
> Ritalin as a result of
> being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder
> (ADD). In some school
> districts, 20 percent of the students are medicated,
> lining up each day at the
> nurse's office to receive their midday dose. With
> such staggering numbers, one
> would think there is indisputable evidence that ADD
> exists and that Ritalin is
> the ideal way to treat it. But the exact opposite is
> true. The ADD Hoax is an
> in-depth look at the crime being committed against
> our children--children who
> are "diagnosed" with ADD and then exposed to the
> effects of Ritalin, a drug
> with massive distribution that is matched in volume
> only by the number of
> uncertainties surrounding it. This up-to-date book
> chronicles the ADD hoax and
> gives parents and other concerned people the
> necessary ammunition to fight this
> epidemic of mistreatment.
>
>
>
>
> News in Brain and Behavioural Sciences - Issue 84 -
> 25th January, 2003
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/issue84.html
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!
> Terms of Service.
>


=====
There are many things which will, if neglected, be wasted, and come to
nothing.

Baha'u'llah

We will send our sons no more - Watters & Daughters

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 2/2/03 8:35:47 AM, janis@... writes:

<< This is incredible!! >>

Meaning you believe he might be right, or you believe he's nuts?

I'm sure he's right.

<<In some school
> districts, 20 percent of the students are medicated,
> lining up each day at the
> nurse's office to receive their midday dose.>>

THAT is sad.

My doctor told me the only real deciding factor in whether someone is ADD or
not is whether Ritalin calms them down. If they have all the identical
symptoms but the Ritalin doesn't help, they say "Well then, it wasn't ADD
after all."

Sandra

[email protected]

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003 12:53:13 EST SandraDodd@... writes:
>
> My doctor told me the only real deciding factor in whether someone
> is ADD or
> not is whether Ritalin calms them down. If they have all the
> identical
> symptoms but the Ritalin doesn't help, they say "Well then, it
> wasn't ADD
> after all."
>

When I was a special education teacher, I taught a ten year old boy who
had been in special day classes and unmedicated for at least three years.
When we finally got his mom and grandma to agree to a trial of medication
(ritalin), the change was night and day. He went from crawling on the
floor and hooting, lunging at kids in the lunch line because they gave
him "funny looks", threatening to jump out windows, and just being
generally miserable... to being able to sit and talk, have real
conversations, focus. It wasn't perfect, there was this... somber-ness, I
guess, that came over him, he went from off the wall to serious and
solemn, but it was better. He was living with a very ill grandma and a
mom who was addicted to crack, and there was talk about him going into
foster care or being institutionalized because grandma just couldn't do
it any more... but on ritalin, they could manage.

Interestingly, before he went on ritalin he always wanted coffee, which
can have the same paradoxical calming effect on people with ADHD (people
with just ADD have difficulty with focus but aren't hyperactive). Since
at least the seventies, caffiene has been used as sort of an
non-prescription ritalin...

I do think ADD and ADHD are overdiagnosed, but I also think that there is
a real illness there. I think it's a continuum, like most things. I know
people who all into a mild depression, or show some of the symptoms of
depression - actually, I think everyone does sometimes - but they don't
need medication. OTOH, I wouldn't claim that depression is a false
diagnosis.

Dar

nyneca <[email protected]>

--- In [email protected], SandraDodd@a...
wrote:
>
> My doctor told me the only real deciding factor in whether
someone is ADD or > not is whether Ritalin calms them down. If
they have all the identical > symptoms but the Ritalin doesn't
help, they say "Well then, it wasn't ADD > after all."

Sandra-

I'd question that conclusion. Your doctor is suggesting that
someone with a short attention span who is not ADD wouldn't be
helped by Ritalin. If that were the case, then only 5% of the
population that is estimated to truly have this problem would be
helped by taking the drug, and the other 15% would not. While I
can see that teachers may put pressure on parents to put their
kids on Ritalin in the hopes that it will drug the kids into more
acceptable behavior, if the Ritalin were not making the situation
better for the teachers, or if it were exacerbating the situation, I'd
think the teachers would mention this to the parents, and the
drug would be stopped. It's difficult for me to believe that 20% of
the kids in this country have ADD while in other countries the
incidence is a fraction of that.

Admittedly, I don't know much about ADD, but I recall reading
recently that some neurologists found a way to positively identify
individuals with ADD using a brain scan of some sort. Prior to
this, kids were (and still are) given the diagnosis based on the
results of the Connor's Scale, which rates the anectodal
evidence from parents and teachers.

DH and I were once discussing the ADD phenomenon. I
commented that I didn't understand how an amphetamine would
help someone who was having problems sitting still. It seemed
that a sedative would be better for helping someone calm down.
He then asked me, in an incredulous voice, if I'd never heard of
people taking speed during finals in college to help them focus.
DUH!

My understanding is that Ritalin was not formulated to help with
ADD specifically, and has been a pharmaceutical since long
before ADD became a household term.

Ellen

[email protected]

In a message dated 2/2/03 1:23:59 PM, freeform@... writes:

<< I do think ADD and ADHD are overdiagnosed, but I also think that there is
a real illness there. I think it's a continuum, like most things. I know
people who all into a mild depression, or show some of the symptoms of
depression - actually, I think everyone does sometimes - but they don't
need medication. OTOH, I wouldn't claim that depression is a false
diagnosis. >>

I don't think it's a disease, though.

Maybe this is just more terminology than differences.

I hate "learning disabled" as a concept.
And "different abled" is closer but still irritating teacher-talk.

If we backed away from all that stuff and talked about the range of normal
difference, we'd all be within the range of understood and acceptable
differences, instead of some of us "right" and "normal" and the others
diseased or disabled.

Sandra

[email protected]

In a message dated 2/2/03 1:33:10 PM, evkod@... writes:

<< I'd question that conclusion. Your doctor is suggesting that
someone with a short attention span who is not ADD wouldn't be
helped by Ritalin. >>

No. She says that when they identify a kid and put him on that drug, if the
drug doesn't help. they change their diagnosis.

So instead of having any stats on who Ritalin doesn't help, they say Ritalin
ALWAYS helps ADD, and if it didn't help, you obviously didn't have ADD.

Instead of drugging kids so school can work its same dull boring way, why not
admit that LOTS of kids can't learn that way, and stop trying?

First we have school as a given. As an element people aren't questioning.
As though it were always there and we have NO alternative but to breathe air
and go to school.

And if SCHOOL is more solid than an individual human is, then yes, a lot of
humans are problematical to keeping school happy and peaceful. So they will
be labelled and drugged.


That scenario is wrong.

IF lots of people have short attention spans and like to move, then they need
to be given the room and time and freedom to do that. We can do that with
unschooling.

So we remove the cage and the animal "fits" and functions, while the cage
itself was the problem.

Drugging the animal to make the cage seem bigger is cage worship.

Sandra

[email protected]

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003 15:40:33 EST SandraDodd@... writes:

> I hate "learning disabled" as a concept.
> And "different abled" is closer but still irritating teacher-talk.

I actually find that one even more irritating...

> If we backed away from all that stuff and talked about the range of
normal
> difference, we'd all be within the range of understood and acceptable
> differences, instead of some of us "right" and "normal" and the
> others diseased or disabled.

I think I agree to a point... but then how do you differentiate between
the range of normal and a problem? Depression is the example I use
because I've lived it - I needed to have a line between bummed-out,
talk-to-a-friend blues and can't-stop-crying, wish-I-was-dead depression.
I don't think that's within the range of normal, and when I'm asking
myself why I can't just get it together like everyone else, it helps to
have a label. I suppose I could say that my serotonin reuptake is lower
than most people (I think that's what it is) but to me it's 6 of one, a
half dozen of the other...

I worked with people in the mental health field who told me that Elvis
was a close relative and his army was coming on Monady to vanquish the
unholy. I had a boss once with bipolar disorder who told me my assignment
for the day was to make sure she didn't ge too close to the new temp,
because she wanted to jump his nones and didn't think she could control
herself.

OTOH, my brother was in special ed classes throughout most of his school
life because he had "minimal brain dysfunction" (later the terminology
changed, now it's a learning disability) and I think that was pointless
and stupid and hurt him.

Maybe the difference is labeling a condition, and not a person.

Dar

[email protected]

In a message dated 2/2/03 2:22:17 PM, freeform@... writes:

<< I had a boss once with bipolar disorder who told me my assignment
for the day was to make sure she didn't ge too close to the new temp,
because she wanted to jump his nones and didn't think she could control
herself. >>

That's not being bi-polar, that's just being tacky! <g>

"Bi-polar" is a state of some people's being. For them it's normal. The
need tools and maybe drugs for coping, they don't need to be labelled insane.

<<Maybe the difference is labeling a condition, and not a person.>>

There's not much difference if you're the person with the labelled condition,
though.

About "clinical depression," I've been there too. It's the lowest range of
my personal normal ranges. It's dangerous, but I don't know if it's
"abnormal" for me.

Some say however happy you are when you're at your most elated happiest is
the same distance from your baseline as you will be when you are at your
lowest.

Some people are very near baseline all the time. Never too exciteable, never
very sad.

Sandra

Betsy

**Instead of drugging kids so school can work its same dull boring way,
why not admit that LOTS of kids can't learn that way, and stop trying?**

I don't know if I have a "normal attention span" because I flit and
float rather than staying "on task".

What I'd like to know is ARE there people in the world who will and can
sit and listen to a 1 hour speech or lecture on a topic that bores them?
And not daydream or doodle or fidget?

Just curious,
Betsy

[email protected]

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003 16:33:16 EST SandraDodd@... writes:
> <<Maybe the difference is labeling a condition, and not a person.>>
>
> There's not much difference if you're the person with the labelled
> condition, though.

It feels really different to me.

I've spent a lot of years in the mental health system, I guess from age 6
to now, although 15 to about 22 were the years I spent almost constantly
institutionalized. During those seven years I felt defined by being
"mentally ill", like that was the whole of my existence, and I felt
pretty helpless to change any of it. On the other side, it felt like
whatever I did didn't matter, since I was mentally ill.

Things started to change when I found the mental health consumer
movement, and started hanging out with those folks. I went to a
conference at UC Berkeley and met peope like Howie the Harp and found
some sense of power. Now I think I consider my episodic depression and
dissociative symptoms as not "normal", but just as part of me, like my
asthma and my myopia. I'd be happy to have all of them fixed, but since
that doesn't seem to be possible now I go ahead and treat the symptoms so
that I can function better. I also tell people I'm close to that I have
these issues, Rain knows what to do if I have an asthma attack and can't
talk, my two best friends came up this fall and gently reminded my that
'twas the season that my seasonal depression usually hit...

And now I can pretty much pass <g>, although the first few years I spent
out of institutios I felt like there was a huge scarlet C for crazy on my
forehead. I'm thinking that most of the folks on this list who know me in
"real life" didn't know all that....
>
> About "clinical depression," I've been there too. It's the lowest
range of
> my personal normal ranges. It's dangerous, but I don't know if
> it's "abnormal" for me.

I guess I'm not bothered about not being normal. It's okay with me. When
I was younger it was a bigger deal, but now it's okay.

Rain and both fight over our "Why Be Normal?" coffee mug, and she
instantly glommed on lines from the Fantasticks about "Please, God, don't
let me be *normal*". Somehow normal has a different connotation for us...
maybe what you define as normal is what I'd call being okay.
>
> Some say however happy you are when you're at your most elated
happiest is
> the same distance from your baseline as you will be when you are at
> your lowest.
>
> Some people are very near baseline all the time. Never too
> exciteable, never very sad.

I think that's probably true - although I think people have widely
varying baselines.

But being manic or clinically depressed are very different from being
happy or sad.

Dar

Fetteroll

on 2/2/03 4:33 PM, SandraDodd@... at SandraDodd@... wrote:

> Some people are very near baseline all the time. Never too exciteable, never
> very sad.

Yup. Has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Joyce