Big Pharma and ADHD

If a doctor diagnosed your child as having a particular ‘illness’ and handed you a prescription for powerful medication to treat it, you wouldn’t be happy, of course. Then, you start to do a bit of research amongst other parents of your child’s school and find that nearly one in ten of the children in his/ her class have received the same diagnosis – now you’re resigned to your fate. Also, its tempting to go along as once you start to give the medication your child’s so much easier to deal with, so much ‘nicer’, less demanding of your time and energy.

Then, you see an article like this. Whilst that ‘one in ten’ may be normal where you live, in another country less than one in two hundred children is receiving the same diagnosis (and that same powerful medication).

The Spirit Science – ADHD Does Not Exist: Why French Children Don’t Have ADHD

This is controversial and understandably, if you read this article and scroll down to the comments you’ll see it’s got massive reaction with all sides of the arguments expressed.

My reading of the article, getting past the provocative headline is that ADHD might or might not exist as a diagnosable psychological condition. However, it is sure that something is going very wrong when the system is drawing simplistic conclusions based on a child’s behaviour to justify use of such powerful drugs on children. What the article describes in France is a much more delayed inclination to put the label on the child. Instead, there, before a diagnosis there is real effort to get to the roots of what’s going on in the child’s life to disturb them, to cause them to act out.

Have doctors become so squeamish about asking parents questions they might not like? Questions about sleep, home routines, the home atmosphere, diet, food and disciplines. No doubt some parents would find such questioning intrusive, especially if they’re not as effective in their personal and home disciplines as they wish. However, a child’s needs overrides a bit of parental awkwardness in my book.

In the US, the schools have pushed the agenda of ADHD because the factory model, focused on targets, data and results (common core curriculum etc) finds an energetic kid an inconvenience. My understanding of the French schools and education is that it’s much more accepting of children as children.

For those who read this post I wrote on the blog in January this year, you know I have a sceptical view of Big Pharma and their motives. It would be hard not to believe that they have played a part in this fiasco.

Cheated By Psychiatry – Blog Post

In India and UAE the frequency of diagnosis and medication of children is also rising. This shouldn’t matter just to the parents affected, but to all who care about children. For those of us in education, our motivation should always be to see medication as the very last resort. These are very powerful medications and I, for one, believe children are more important than peace, quiet and “discipline” in our school corridors!

Cheated by Psychiatry

Of all the books I read during 2014, probably none had a bigger impact on me than “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good” by James Davies.

Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good, James Davies – Amazon with Reviews

I came across the book by accident. It was during our summer visit to England. My son and I were in London and took a day to visit the Science Museum. At the end of the day, shortly before the museum closed we drifted in to the souvenir shop. As is my inclination, I drifted towards the book shelves and found this tucked away on the top shelf. The front aroused my attention enough that I bought it (even though I had promised I wouldn’t load my luggage with any more books!!)

It reached the top of thew pile to be read back home only about 6 weeks later. Once i started to read it I was hooked right to the end. For anyone of a nervous disposition when it comes to the issue of ‘faith in the world we live in’, this is a very disturbing book. It follows the trail of evidence that points to one of the world’s biggest cons.

Few people today really believe that the pharmaceutical industry is full of saints. One doesn’t need to look any further than the poisoning of ground water in Gujarat, India from pharmaceutical manufacturers (Yes, Mr Modi welcomed them with open arms and treated this as ‘the price of progress’.) or the exploitative ways the medical reps bestow gifts, holidays and stays in 5 star hotels on those doctors willing to be bought!

So, should we really be so surprised that the evidence presented by Davies amounts to the completely unscientific creation of a multi-billion dollar industry for medicines for spurious ‘created’ mental illnesses designed by committees of self-interested practitioners?

As I read the book, my thoughts turned to the millions of children around the world living a drugged existence after they have been labeled with the diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. As Dr ken Robinson pointed out – they’re all paying attention to something, just not necessarily what their teachers or other carers want them to be paying attention to! The rush to medicate and to then claim success on the basis of the muted docility of the child worries me. Far too often there has been little attempt to address issues that may be happening at the level of the family that have shaped what’s happening with the child, creation of simple daily disciplines, sleep, diet, aggression and even physical abuse issues. Then we see what goes on in many of our schools – I’m not sure i could sit still through the hours and hours of interminable lecturing and time-waste these young children are subjected to. I think there’s a strong chance that if I was a child today, someone would at least try to put the ADHD tag on me!

Davies talks to many senior professionals in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. One of his skills is clearly the ability to build the sorts of levels of rapport with these people that lead them to be very open and candid. One would have loved to be a fly on the wall when some of them realised just how much they had revealed about the dirty secrets of their profession.

The writer does a particularly good job of making accessible for non-experts the evidence that blows apart many myths surrounding mental illness that have shaped the views of the public to the point where the vast majority of people are willing to accept the lies based on those myths fed to them by the industry. maybe the biggest of these is the ‘chemical imbalance’ nature of mental illness, that they have long claimed can be cured or at least controlled by the administration of powerful drugs.

Understandably, Davies has had his share of detractors and those who have tried to tear down his arguments or to accuse him of faults. One of the most invidious of these I came across online was the article by Andrew Solomon. He accuses Davies of many things, not least being smug and insensitive about human suffering. At first this surprised me as it wasn’t a sentiment i took away from the book. In fact, Davies appeared very sensitive to the harm being caused to people by drugs with awful side effects that may not even be achieving anything positive beyond placebo effects.

Here is Solomon’s piece: Andrew Solomon – Smug About Suffering

If you read this, piece don’t stop where Solomon ends, but scroll down to Davies’ rebuttal in which …. voila ….. he reveals Solomon’s undisclosed potential conflict of interest. Well, well – seemingly just more of what he highlighted in the book.

Here’s a more balanced review of the book: Salty Current – Review of Cracked

This book shocked me, but told me much that I’m glad I know and i wish a lot more people knew. It may have left me a tad more cynical about the world we live in, a bit more cautious about trying to identify who are the good guys and who are the bad. However, I have no regrets on that score. Ignorance is, on occasions like this, certainly not bliss.

(Finally, my thanks for the Science Museum shop for being enlightened enough to stock this book!)