Adult A.D.H.D. is open to faking and more so by medical students. In children, it was my experience that often parents would report symptoms in order to secure disability benefits. In the case of young adults, it was more an attempt to secure medication that they believe will help them with their studies.
New York Times
Richard,
visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based
medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. His mother insisted to
Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a
24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to
the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored
Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning:
“You’re
going to kill him.”
After
becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in
2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days
of Adderall.
He hanged
himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.
The story
of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring
medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which
five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts
said.
Medications
like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the
disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing
numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady
prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological
dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who
skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and
spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.
Richard
Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members
and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate
young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and
psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages —
despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.
“There’s a sense that greater powers, profit-driven and amoral, are pulling the strings in our children’s lives. There’s a sense that those who should best protect us — our government and our doctors — are so corrupted that they can no longer do the job. There’s a sense that childhood has, in many ways, been denatured, that youth has been stolen, that the range of human acceptability has been narrowed for our kids to a point that it has become soul-crushingly inhuman.”
Judith Warner New York Times
In my book The Cockroach Catcher, I told the story about this boy with hydrocephalous who was referred to me. He had just started school and his teacher considered him hyperactive and wondered if he had this new disease called ADD/ADHD and should he be on Ritalin. This is what I wrote about the ADHD phenomenon in that chapter:
The drug concerned is still hardly prescribed in France China China China
Most research showed that Ritalin would eventually lead to addiction; but there are some who prefer to insist there is no truth in that. The U.S.
Why then is there such a renewed demand and interest in diagnosis and drug treatment of ADHD.
It is a sad reflection of our times that we demand fast responses. Being patient is no longer seen as a virtue. Have you not noticed that with faster and faster computers we still consider them slow and therefore manufacturers can continue to sell us “faster” ones? TV and computer games have conditioned kids so that they can rarely hold their concentration for more than three seconds. Even the term “three minute culture” is now out of date – no modern day television or film scene must last longer than ten seconds. How many children nowadays can withstand five hours of waiting at the fishing rod without catching anything? How many mothers have to cope with lines like: I am thirsty, mummy, I want my juice now, please. Are they really going to die of dehydration if mother makes them wait a bit?
Concentration like most other things in our modern society is no longer something that is packaged by our Maker. People need to acquire it and one way is by taking a stimulant such as Ritalin.
Ritalin has also become popular because it takes the blame away from those responsible for the child – the parents and often the teachers as well. Some parents who do not wish for their child to go on Ritalin are often put under tremendous pressure by the teachers. Very few have even bothered to find out if there is any non drug related method at all.”
“According to data obtained exclusively by Education Guardian under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65% increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years. Such treatments now cost the taxpayer over £31m a year.” More>>>>
Related:
ADHD, Heart Risks, Kinko and Jetblue
The Cockroach Catcher on Lulu.com;Amazon Kindle UK, Amazon Kindle US
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