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Comment by panglott | Hacker News Reader

We simply don't know what the impact is of administering powerful amphetamines to children upon their development. Is there a population of children that would "age out" of the ADHD spectrum and develop coping mechanisms, if they were not given pills that prevent that? In such a case, the medication is actually hampering their development.

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We have 80 years of data from giving children low doses of stimulants.

>In such a case, the medication is actually hampering their development.

Again, the actual data say otherwise. Medication tends to help children develop proper coping mechanisms. Not medicating is more likely to result in social rejection, drug abuse, depression, dropping out of school, and so on.

Most of this anti-medication sentiment is unscientific unfounded FUD.

You're conflating "not medicating" with "not treating", which is exactly the sort of thing that feeds the criticism that U.S. overdiagnosis rates are being driven by the pharmaceutical industry. Behavioral therapy is also effective, and avoids some of the negative impacts of medication. There are studies that compare medicated ADHD patients to untreated ADHD patients over the course of adolescence; but people who are skeptical over the over-prescription of ADHD drugs aren't actually advocating for non-treatment and non-intervention. Almost no one doubts that ADHD is a real problem for some children that requires medication. The question really is about the extent of overdiagnosis in the US, and the long-term use of medication for children, especially very young children. Stimulant drugs are not recommended for children under 6, and yet still something like 1% of US children under 6 are taking them. Both ADHD diagnoses and pharmaceutical treatment is far, far more prevalent in the US than other developed countries, and it is certainly a good question as to why. Parents naturally have a lot of anxiety about their children's schooling, and the marketing of ADHD plays upon and exacerbates that anxiety (to the extent that if you mention any hiccups in your child's adjustment to school, people immediately begin talking about ADHD). It is also true that kindergarten is the new first grade in terms of literacy expectations, which means more long, boring desk work for young children who are frequently seeing their exercise time reduced or eliminated. Those are problems also.

To which I'd add, the fact 'ADHD' symptoms are stereotypically behaviors of male children. I don't think it might be a total coincidence that we have a trend of drugged-up little boys for behavior deemed unacceptable, at the same time childrens' education is dominated by women.

Boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD (by a factor of 2 to 3) but that probably because boys simply have a higher base aggression level which is "added" to the ADHD symptoms which makes ADHD in boys easier noticeable than in girls. So girls are probably underdiagnosed because nobody notices their attention deficit symptoms and their hyperactivity is still not annoying enough to send them to a counselor.

Children's education has always been dominated by women. I think the problem is more that young children are suddenly being held to a standardized curriculum in which they are expected to learn to read in kindergarten (instead of 1st grade) while their recess time is curtailed or cut entirely. Then when the boys or the youngest quartile of 5-year-olds have trouble sitting still or focusing on desk work, it becomes pathologized.

Ugh. I hate this. My son has ADHD, and the public school just couldn't cope with him. He was bored so often, and had no release for his energy because they rarely gave them recess (it got taken away if the class was too noisy, because teachers are idiots). When he was diagnosed, we made the difficult decision to give him medication. It made a big difference to his behaviour in school, to the extent that if he ever forgot to take it, the teacher would call me and have me take it in for him.

Now we're coming to the end of the summer, more than two months where he hasn't taken his medication, and he's been completely within the limits of what we can cope with. But I guess we're not trying to control 30 of them. He's starting at a private (Waldorf) school in a couple of weeks.

Ironically, we can now barely afford it after I just got fired from my job as a software engineer, because my own problems with ADHD were hindering my ability to work quickly.

Now I have to decide whether to start him at his new school with or without his medication. I mean, did it really help him, or was it just helping his teacher? Should I let him be himself, or am I doing him a disservice by not giving it to him? He needs to do well in this school, and students there start with a month-long probationary period.

It's a really tough call.

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