With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications.You can bet that the drugs for this will be abused.
Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children.
Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder — and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment. Some of the condition’s researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it.
“This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels,” Keith Conners, a psychologist and early advocate for recognition of A.D.H.D., said of the rising rates of diagnosis of the disorder.
The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology devoted 136 pages of its January issue to papers describing the illness, with the lead paper claiming that the question of its existence “seems to be laid to rest as of this issue.” The psychologist Russell Barkley of the Medical University of South Carolina, for 30 years one of A.D.H.D.’s most influential and visible proponents, has claimed in research papers and lectures that sluggish cognitive tempo “has become the new attention disorder.”
Major League Baseball bans a lot of performance enhancing drugs, but if the player has a documented attention deficit, then he gets to take pills to increase his alertness.
4 comments:
I'm betting there's a racial angle to this. We ate talking about the USA, after all.
You mean maybe big pharma invents the pills for dumb black kids, but then they end up being used by asian kids wanting an extra edge in school? I guess I shouldn't speculate until we have some facts.
There is a new type of drugs called nootropics which are basically mind enhancing drugs and they are not dangerous like Ritalin or other psychiatric drugs.
Google "Modafinil", it is a very powerful smart drug, and is a much better alternative to Ritalin.
Also "Piracetam", which is said to help increase memory and learning power.
Nootropics are good to use, whereas I avoid psychiatric drugs like the plague because they are very harmful to your mind and body.
Sounds like the start of making being an introvert a mental illness.
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