A new study reveals a surprising truth about ADHD.
A new study is coming to some conclusions about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that is likely to surprise a lot of parents out there.
Namely, there’s a good chance that your child who has been diagnosed with it doesn’t actually have it at all.
The study found that ADHD has been vastly over-diagnosed, and children who are slightly younger than their peers and are thus disproportionately targeted for ADHD assessment when their maturity levels are actually fairly normal for their age, according to a Elsevier Health Services statement.
Behavioral problems like poor attention span, low concentration, restlessness, and other issues that become a problem in the schoolroom are the hallmarks of ADHD, often leading to prescriptions of Ritalin, which can have bad side effects like weight loss, liver problems, or even suicidal thoughts.
About 400,000 children in Britain alone have been prescribed drugs, and prescriptions are only going up. The study involved about that money children between four and 17 years of age in Taiwan, and it found that the ADHD diagnoses change depending on what month they were born, with the number of diagnoses increasing as the school year goes on — indicating that teachers may be comparing their behavior to older, more mature children and concluding that ADHD is the culprit.
“Our findings emphasize the importance of considering the age of a child within a grade when diagnosing ADHD and prescribing medication to treat ADHD,” Dr. Mu-Hong Chen said in the statement.
The statement noted: “When looking at the database as a whole, children born in August were more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and/or receive ADHD medication than those born in September. When broken down and analyzed according to age, only preschool or elementary school-aged children born in August had an increased risk of being diagnosed with ADHD and receiving ADHD medication. However, adolescents born in August did not have an increased risk of ADHD diagnosis. This may imply that increasing age and maturity lessens the impact of birth month on ADHD diagnoses.”
What we have is Big Pharma Disorder
My sister began kindergarten early and was the youngest in her class throughout elementary and high school. Yet, she was always well-behaved and at the top of her class academically. I’ve also known a few other people who started school early and yet showed a higher level of maturity and academic ability than their older classmates. While a few case studies don’t imply or disprove a trend, neither does a correlation between age and risk of being diagnosed with ADHD prove cause and effect. Social maturity may be influenced more by parental expectations than developmental age. Nothing makes this clearer to me than my experience grocery shopping this morning. A little girl in the grocery store kept running down the aisle toward me at full speed. I am a petite woman with a disability, who can be seriously injured if I am knocked down or even collided with. The little girl was only 5 or 6 years old, but seemed to delight in tormenting me. She clearly had no adult supervision the whole time I was shopping. I have seen other children, usually older, do the same thing and never see a parent nearby. One time, a couple of boys around 9 and 11 were playing tag in the store and I finally told them to stop running because I was afraid they would collide with someone or knock over a display. No adults were in sight until they were through the checkout lane. But, I often see other children, sometimes much younger, who are very well-behaved. They are usually engaged by their parents, who attempt to make the shopping experience interesting and even educational. If the attitude of parents is that their children need to be entertained rather than taught proper social skills while in public, I imagine those same expectations carry over into the classroom. In many cases, perhaps the younger the child in relation to classmates the lower the parental expectations of the child.