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According to the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) Information Center, 3% to 10% of the U.S. population is affected with ADD and its many forms (ADHD/LD). As a result, an estimated 20 million children may be placed on activity-modifying drugs like Methlyphenidate before the year 2000.
ADD-specific pharmaceuticals have been suspected of retarding growth of ADD individuals, which ironically is the last thing you would want to do with individuals who have been neurally limited! Amphetamines, antidepressants or anticonvulsants normally prescribed for ADD have been shown to detrimentally diminish cognitive activity and exhibit harmful side effects, such as nervousness, insomnia and anorexia.
Are ADD Drugs Being Overprescribed?
Attention Deficit is big business in the U.S. where therapies for ADD/ADHD have reached $2 billion. In Europe, Attention Deficit diagnosis is only one-tenth as common as it is in the U.S., and in Japan, the disorder has barely been noted. Consumption of the mood-altering drug Methlyphenidate in the U.S. versus the rest of the world has become so disparate that the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board has asked American authorities to monitor it to be certain it is being properly prescribed.
Is it ADD or Normal Kid Behavior?
Is your child fidgety? Does he interrupt? Is he loud and unruly? Then, according to some groups, your child suffers from attention deficit disorder. Yet other groups contend that this describes normal, albeit undisciplined, child behavior, especially for little boys who historically are more loud and rambunctious than little girls. Some physicians are concerned that little boys are being put on Methlyphenidate for acting like little boys: among children under the age of 16, boys account for 80% of Methlyphenidate consumption.
Is Methlyphenidate being prescribed for children who truly need it or more often as a quick fix for frazzled parents? As the parent of a child exhibiting ADD symptoms, you need to understand what is happening within your child to possibly be causing such behavior, and also explore all available alternatives for getting your child the help he or she needs.
What is Attention Deficit?
Attention Deficit (and its many forms: ADD/ADHD/LD) is a dysfunction of the Central Nervous System (CNS), most specifically the Reticular Activating System, which results in difficulty maintaining attention, concentrating, learning and remembering, as well as processing and sorting out incoming information or stimulus from both an individual's inner (subjective) and outer (objective) worlds. It may manifest itself in undue passivity or inattentiveness, or unruly, uncontrollable, aggressive hyperactivity. Attention Deficit is often overly frustrating, overwhelming and stressful to affected individuals, resulting in significant emotional and psychological problems. Thus, Attention Deficit globally interferes with all forms of learning, both academic and experiential, including the processes of socialization.
The Causes Of Attention Deficit
Attention Deficit is a limiting metabolic dysfunction of the Reticular Activating System, the center of consciousness that coordinates learning and memory, and which normally supplies the appropriate neural connections necessary for smooth information processing and clear, non-stressful attention. This metabolic dysfunction first restricts the development of neural connections (the "wiring hardware") an
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