re: Is there a bigger scam in the med field than ADD/ADHD?

Say what you will about ADHD/ADD but the meds they have created to "treat" it were pretty great for pulling all nighters during finals.

While I do believe it is over diagnosed, I also but blame on the school system. They have no adapted to the new world fast enough to maintain the attention of children. School has been virtually unchanged in its methods since its inception in the 1800s. Teachers are either old and boring or young and lazy. Great, engaging teachers are few and far between. Kids are busier today than they have ever been. Kids today have easier access to information than any generation prior to them, so why would they want to sit around gathering information that is useless to them to memorize. Education today should teach learning and analytical skills more than the fact based education today. Kind of a rant and kind of spacey, idk maybe I have ADD?

Of course it's over-diagnosed. Every few years the standards for diagnosing ADD/ADHD go down. Now I can walk in to the right doctor's office, say I can't focus on tests even if I try, and walk out with a year prescription for adderol or vivance. If you're over 16 and you have one of those medications, you only take it to study anyway. Parents get their children on it so it chills them out so the parents have to focus less on parenting

An easy way to prove that it's over-diagnosed is to compare our rates of diagnosed ADD/ADHD to that of other similar countries (UK, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, etc). Our rate is far greater than any of theirs.

There are some kids with legitimate ADD/ADHD. I have a friend that I've gone to school with since elementary school. He got straight A's for the most part, but if he missed his medicine on a test day, you could watch him lose his focus and start staring out the window. He'd end up finishing half the test. Then the next day he'd be back on his medicine and usually the teachers would feel bad and give him the test to finish and he'd be done with it as quickly as any other normal kid. That's the kind of kid that needs vivance

I think ADHD and ADD are very real because just look at those who are diagnosed at an early age I had donuts for breakfast this morning. The traffic is bad because rain and that roof is red.

I think SFP posted this a few months ago.
Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD.

LIMU

Food preservatives and to much visual stimulation before the young brain is ready for it.

The French have fewer because they're diagnostic criteria and treatments are completely different. It's not to say that the kids are not getting ADHD in how American doctors prescribe it.

Yes, the entire fields of psychology and psychiatry