ADD: A Designer Disease

Revised 2019

– Dr Tim O’Shea

Designer jeans, designer shirts, designer handbags, designer watches, jewelry, perfumes, neckties, shoes – what are they? Take an ordinary item, put a name on it, a few million in marketing and promo, and voilà, its price is raised tenfold. How? By creating an illusion of worth in the malleable, fickle, public “consciousness.”

Same with ADD. Everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Kids get rowdy sometimes. Teenagers are confused. Alert the media. Our attention wanders, we get distracted, we have difficulty finishing a task. So what? Welcome to life. But to turn these everyday experiences into diseases to be compared with cancer or diabetes – actual clinical entities, researched and defined – well, that takes real marketing and dog-wagging mastery.

So what do we need? A new disease, but we don’t have time to discover one? No problema. We do have the most advanced information machine in human history already in place. We can create a disease out of nothing. But it won’t be a real disease. It will be A Designer Disease.

Even before starting to research the topic, I had instinctively doubted the existence of ADD from the very first.
Sounded suspicious. I wondered, why does ADD only exist in the U.S. and not in Scandinavia, not in The Netherlands, not in France, not in Vietnam, and not in Japan? A disease that respects geographic borders? Where had it come from all of a sudden in the 80s, to go from nothing to being a household word in just a few short years?

Like Nicholson says, following the money usually brings you closer to the truth. Even a superficial glance at the billion-dollar Ritalin industry raises that red flag.

What I was not prepared for was the invidious, systematic assault on American children and the shared benefit for so many players: parents, teachers, American psychiatrists, school personnel, lobbyists, the drug empire – a convoluted dynamic that has taken on a life of its own, spawned a new industry, and blanketed the public consciousness with a superficial line of junk science and corporate doubletalk.

In order to place this chapter in proper perspective, the reader might stop at this point and only continue after a complete re-reading of 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

One needs to be reminded from time to time of man’s capacity for calculated treachery and for keeping the truth that lies just beneath the surface well hidden, when great fortunes are at stake.

Doing a search for ADD is a revelation: thousands of articles and sites spring up onto the screen, 99% of them parroting the same tired, recycled spin on the safety, efficacy, and necessity of drug intervention to “control” this “epidemic.” Most of them are one or two pages, unreferenced, unsubstantiated, going around in circles, written at the compulsory 9th grade level, almost convincing you that ADD must truly exist, because this is how its sufferers write.

Only with persistence can one come up with the body of work reflected by the attached reference list. Another point of view is tenable. It is consistent and self-evident, once one resolves to answer the questions which follow, wherever they may lead.

WHAT EXACTLY IS ADD?

Attention Deficit Disorder, was invented in a 1980 meeting of the American Psychiatry Association, adding it to their manual. [3] p. 8 Originally, it supposedly afflicted 5% of Americans children, mostly young boys. In the past 20 years other opinions have guessed as high at 40% [7] p.285. But as we will see, these numbers don’t really matter since political organizations are just taking wild guesses about something that is scientifically undefined.

No consistent genetic basis or organic neurological lesions, or any verifiable physical changes have ever been clearly identified as causative of ADD, even in the arbitrary world of biotechnology. There are no lab tests for it. In short, there is no objective scientific proof that the disease exists.

ADD was invented by the APA in order to bolster the position of a failing profession. Politics and economics took over almost immediately, seeing a way to allocate billions of dollars in drugs and professional fees to “combat” the new “epidemic.” It was a brilliant move, successful beyond their wildest dreams.

When reading anything about ADD, it seems essential to keep one central notion clearly in mind: ADD is not a medical entity; it is economic and political. I soon discovered I was not alone in this sentiment:

“ADD does not exist. These children are not disordered.” Thomas Armstrong, PhD The Myth of the ADD Child [3]

“Both the FDA and the DEA have acknowledged that ADD is not a disease, or anything organic or biologic.”- Fred Baughman, MD The Future of Mental Health [6]

“We have invented a new disease, given it medical sanction, and now we must disown it.” – Diane McGuiness The Limits of Biologic Treatment for Psychiatric Distress [9]

“Research does not confirm the existence of an ADD syndrome There is no medical, neurological, or psychiatric justification for the ADD diagnosis.” – Peter Breggin, M,D. Toxic Psychiatry p 281 [2]
.

“Be forewarned that ADD is not a real disease, but rather a contrived illusion of a disease, a marketplace tool.” – Fred Baughman, MD [6]

Whoa! I wasn’t ready for all that!

WHY DID ADD APPEAR?

To address this question, it is necessary to take a brief look at the American Psychiatry Association in the past century.
In Chapter I of his remarkable work, A Dose of Sanity, psychiatrist Sidney Walker [1] gives an illuminating historical summary of his profession during the past 150 years.

Psychiatrists are MDs who specialize in mental disorders. Classically, they studied organic, physical causes of mental illnesses such as brain tumors, infections, and other diseases that might have a psychological component.

The father of American psychiatry was Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His book Diseases of the Mind (1812) dealt with biological causes of mental illness. In other words, mental illness was seen generally as the result of a physical disease, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, or a tumor.

In the 1800s, psychiatrists like Griesinger, Alzheimer, and Kraeplin concentrated on brain anatomy and nerve cell irregularities as the cause of mental disorders. For over a century psychiatrists sought the underlying physical causes of mental illness. Microscope study of brain slices was employed by world class psychiatrists like Adolph Meyer in the late 30s, looking for brain lesions that could be linked with mental problems.

This scientific approach began to change with the emergence and prevalence of the notions of Sigmund Freud around 1930. Although Freud’s ideas about sexuality and the unconscious have made a lasting impact on the study of the human mind, Sidney Walker points out that for the first time, the brain was left out of the picture. Physical disease processes were no longer considered as the first place to look for the cause of mental illness.

Freudian psychology concentrated on “the mind” itself, as if the mind were separate from the brain. For the first time in its history, the direction of psychiatry was no longer guided by medical physicians. Instead, psychologists took over the field, with their focus on “the psyche,” imagined as a completely separate entity from the body. [1]

Most mental illness, they said, resulted from “adverse events,” such as childhood trauma, parent relationships, and early experiences. Never before has a medical specialty been co-opted by non-medical participants. This was a mistake from which we have never recovered.

THE TALKING CURE

In the 1950s and 1960s we saw the rise of psychoanalysis: the talking doctors. Their promise was to cure mental illness by psychotherapy. Walker attributes the decline of psychiatry before 1980 to the failure of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to deliver. [1]

Why didn’t it work? Their fundamental error was ignoring the biological and organic causes of mental disease, according to Dr. Walker. The profession had abandoned its roots, which held that mental illness was generally “in reaction to” some underlying physical disorder. They had traded a scientific approach for a non-scientific one.

The 1970s saw the emergence of the fore-runner of ADD: minimal brain disorder. [3]

Same pseudo-scientific underpinnings as ADD – vague rationales for targeting a vulnerable new market for “treatment,” supported by the drug companies. Same opportunities for liberal, socialistic expansion and job creation to “diagnose” and monitor a newly discovered “epidemic.”

THE MEMO

Nixon’s own psychologist, Dr. Hutschnecker, penned a now-famous memo in 1970 in which he recommended mass testing of very young children in order to ascertain possible “pre-delinquent” behavior patterns. All children. Even though the memo was discredited by the APA itself, political support snowballed and became the focus for policy for the coming decade, and beyond. [11] p 17.

The new magic words now were “disability” and “intervention.” It was the dawn of the age of the Professional Victim. The story is told with detail and clarity in Schrag’s The Myth of the Hyperactive Child. [11]
Having failed to reform the malfunctioning institutions, the new game was to reform the individual. With no scientific basis, other words came into use: “pre-delinquent” “dyslexia” and “learning disabled.”

By 1995, over 50% of American children were identified as either “learning disabled” or ADD! Armstrong outlines how an entire empire of social, educational, political, medical and economic power willed itself into existence in a few short years. [3]
The shoddiest of scientific studies were thrown together, funded by the drug companies, in support of the new politics: the state’s new presumption to determine “normal” emotions and behavior.

Though the studies were eventually discredited, they served as a foundation for similar “scientific documentation” during the 1980s, in which nonconformity suddenly became a medical condition requiring treatment.

During the 70s, people were going to family doctors, psychologists, social workers, priests, and marriage counselors for their problems, none of whom were prescribing drugs for minor complaints of depression. Year by year, psychiatrists were failing to attract voluntary patients, simply because the need was not perceived by most people.

So with the stock of the APA at an all-time low, we come to 1980 and the now famous APA Committee meeting. [3] p 8
It was at this meeting that the APA decided to “re-medicalize.” That meant giving up on this talking-cure psychoanalysis stuff which was marginalizing the profession into obscurity, and re- asserting themselves as real medical professionals with the right to be successful and sell a ton of drugs.

As you might imagine, no one was happier to hear this news than the pharmaceutical industry. Maybe they couldn’t get voluntary patients, but what about involuntary ones?

The only problem was, if psychiatrists were to successfully re-establish themselves as medical doctors, they needed a new disease within their specialty which would be cured by drugs.

Enter ADD stage left, first named as a disorder by the APA in that 1980 meeting. [3] Forget the fact that ADD had been around for almost a century under 25 different names, listed on p 8 of Armstrong’s book. [3] That didn’t matter. What was of major significance was that now ADD had reality: it was finally named and inscribed forever in the APA’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, known hereinafter as the DSM.

THE COOKBOOK

Breggin, Armstrong, Wiseman, and Baughman go on for pages about the lack of science in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. [2, 3, 7, 8] The reader is directed to them for a fuller understanding of the role this manual has played in catapulting a declining profession into a position of wealth and respectability, at the expense of the well-being of millions of defenseless children.

If that sounds harsh or strident, it’s an understatement. Evident in the appended references, it’s incontrovertible.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was first published by the APA in 1952. The DSM purports to be a catalogue of mental disorders. Each disorder has a list of symptoms under it. A patient may be “diagnosed” as having a particular mental disorder if enough of the listed symptoms are present.

Although the instructions in the DSM specifically caution psychiatrists against using the DSM as a “cookbook” because there is so much overlap and so many other factors to consider before a supportable diagnosis can be made, in actual practice the cookbook method is precisely the way DSM is most commonly used.

Each new edition of the DSM got bigger:

Title…………………………Year……………………..# of Mental Disorders
DSM………………………… 1952…………………….. 112
DSM-II ………………………1968…………………….. 163
DSM-III .. ……………………1980….. …………………224
DSM-III-R . ………………….1987….. …………………253
DSM-IV .. ……………………1994….. …………………374
DSM-5 .. ……………………. 2013……………………. 727

Lest the reader assume that each of these “illnesses” was researched and studied in the same scientific manner as traditional physical illnesses before they appear in pathology textbooks, here are what a few experts have to say:

Renee Garfinkel, a psychologist and representative of the APA who attended DSM meetings, told Time magazine:

“the low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian. I feel like Chinese. So let’s go to a cafeteria. Then it’s typed into a computer. It may reflect on our naiveté, but it was our belief that there would be an attempt to look at things scientifically.” [1] (Walker p22)

Al Parides, MD, a psychiatrist, states that

“the DSM is not scientific at all, but a masterpiece of political maneuvering, in which the normal problems of life are turned into psychiatric conditions.” [7] (Wiseman, p 357)

How a mental disorder winds up in the DSM in the first place is a long and enlightening story, for which the reader is directed to the research of Walker, and also of Louise Armstrong. [1] [16]

“To read about the evolution of the DSM is to know this: it is an entirely political document. What it includes, what it does not include, are the result of intensive campaigning, lengthy negotiating, infighting, and power plays.” – Louise Armstrong [16]

An innocent neophyte might expect that for a mental disorder to appear in the primary handbook of the profession licensed to treat mental disorders, years of research, experimentation, and double blind studies would have had to come first, right? Guess again.

Armstrong cites the story of the origin of a disorder called “self-defeating personality disorder.” The chairman of the DSM committee, Robert Spitzer, thought up the disorder on a weekend fishing trip, and when he returned, persuaded enough of the committee to include it in the Manual. (And They Call It Help) [16]

This is typical.

The DSM is the only way that ADD is diagnosed. Here’s how it’s done. In the DSM-IV, ADD has nine symptoms listed under it. If a child has any six of them, in the opinion of the doctor (or the teacher!) that child may be diagnosed as having ADD. That’s it! Funny thing is, it seems like most of these entries on the list are not symptoms of a mental disorder, but just symptoms of being a kid:

1. Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
2. Often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
3. Often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it its inappropriate
4. Often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
5. Is often on the go or often acts as if driven by a motor
6. Often talks excessively
7. Often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
8. Often has difficulty awaiting turn
9. Often interrupts or intrudes on others

Sound like anyone you’ve ever known? Some may ask if there are any kids who would not fit six of these criteria. Again, this is the only “diagnostic” “testing” that exists for determining ADD. Six out of nine. No lab tests, no X-rays, no blood tests, no physical examination whatsoever, no standardized batteries of written or verbal psychological testing. Just these nine subjective symptoms.

In the newer DSM-5, ADD has been arbitrarily renamed ADHD, but the criteria remain essentially the same. [42] p 59
Unlike any other disease in history, the diagnosis may be made by anyone in authority, with no medical credentials or special training whatsoever: the school nurse, school counselor, a teacher, the principal, even a coach.

DSM cookbook diagnosis of any disease is the primary reason so many modern psychiatrists are embarrassed by their own profession. [7] Differential diagnosis of any disease, especially a true mental disorder, requires time-consuming, thorough testing, analysis and thoughtful consideration, ruling out several possibilities one by one, before arriving at the final diagnosis. Which itself is still subject to change.

As Dr. Walker says, DSM is usually a “substitute for diagnosis” not part of any scientific process. [1] He states that the DSM has led to the

“unnecessary drugging of millions of Americans who could be …cured… without the use of lethal medications.” [1] p 51

Many patients are labeled ADD after a 15-minute interview. Worse if it’s with a pediatrician, who has no training in mental disorders at all.

Psychiatry has lost its identity as a profession, according to psychiatrists like Peter Breggin, MD. Today psychiatry has sold most of its traditional values in exchange for being

“dominated by the interests of the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry as the profession becomes wholly dependent on the drug companies for its survival.” [2]

In the meantime, several million Americans “will suffer permanent brain damage from psychiatric drugs and electroshock while the profession denies it is happening.” (Toxic Psychiatry, p17). [2] Labeling is the new game, the new psychiatry, the new bait and switch. Labeling is what psychiatrists now offer in place of diagnosis.

Take a moment to understand the difference. When a patient with a mental disorder presents to a doctor for the first time, there are literally dozens of possible physical, organic disease processes which could be the cause. If the doctor misses the underlying disease, because it is subclinical (only beginning) or because standard physical examination is glossed over in favor of the 15-minute cookbook approach, it is doubtful whether another doctor will take the trouble to look for another cause. Why bother?

DSM labels, like “depression” or “delusional dominating personality disorder” remain on a patient’s chart for life. These labels are too frequently the end of the line, as far as trying to identify the cause of the mental problem. Most doctors will hesitate to challenge the diagnosis of a colleague, especially if it requires a lot of new work-up.

The result is that a patient may be labeled “depressed” but in actuality simply be dispirited because of one of the following:

rickettsial infection
hypoglycemia
brain tumor
brain infection
hypothyroid
toxic poisoning
anemia
malnutrition
parasites
vitamin deficiency

to name just a few.

Once labeled, powerful psychoactive drugs are prescribed, which only cover up the condition. Meanwhile the underlying disease may progress unchecked, and years of illness may result.

Always remember: drugs do not even claim to cure mental diseases. They just cover up symptoms, leaving the underlying disorder to fester.

If there actually was one.

Rare? Think again. Standard physical exams are not routinely done by today’s psychiatrists. A comprehensive study in the American Review of Medicine by Dr. Erwin Koranyi estimates misdiagnosis of easily detectable physical illness and labeling them as mental illness occurs half the time! [10]

Koryani’s famous study of 2090 psychiatric patients showed that 43% of them had an undiagnosed underlying major illness. Dr. Koryani [10] explains that once a patient is labeled a psychiatric case, physical complaints are assumed to be “psychosomatic” and are routinely ignored. Neurologist Sir Francis Walshe describes mental hospitals as “living museums of undiscovered bodily disease . . . undiagnosed.” [15]

For someone who has ever been diagnosed as depressed or having ADD, health insurance may be denied for life. If the person is ever injured, and litigation becomes necessary to document the injury, these labels are powerful tools that are often used against the person’s case, to undermine credibility and the reality of the injury.

The reader again is directed to further explore the tip of this iceberg in the appended references. The bottom line is that labeling doesn’t cure anything.

WHO BENEFITS FROM ADD?

Simple answer: almost everyone involved.

First the psychiatrists. To really understand the role of psychiatry in the modern world, one must come to terms with the information contained in works such as Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal. [7] Wiseman thoroughly documents the contributions of psychiatrists to the world over the past 150 years:

– Extermination of 375,000 mental patients in Germany, prior to the Holocaust
– Providing Hitler with the rationale and method for the Holocaust itself
– Over 100,000 lobotomies between 1936 and 1970
– Millions of barbaric electroshock treatments of the brain
– Replacing the idea that the citizen is personally responsible for his actions with the
notion that other factors are always to blame
– Addicting large segments of the population to dangerous drugs like Ritalin, Elavil,
Valium, and Prozac
– Infecting the courtrooms of the nation with absurdities like “recovered memory,”
“irresistible impulse,” “urban stress syndrome,” and “temporary insanity”

As cited above, in 1980 the APA was at low ebb. The rest of the medical profession no longer respected psychiatrists because by allowing their direction to be determined by non-medical personnel, the failures of psychotherapy became pre-eminent.
But after 18 years of aggressive public relations ramjetting ADD into the public consciousness, psychiatrists found themselves back in the driver’s seat.

Each of the original 5 million ADD children required some $1200 in diagnostics. [3] p.9 Perhaps only 1 million were being treated by 2002. That’s only about $12 billion, although with a potential of $60 billion. And that’s not including medications.

Today it’s far upwards of $70-80 B, and climbing. [45] Total sales figures are deliberately obscured in online research, but with most sources agreeing that 55 million Americans are users, a best guess for the US psychotropic drug annual sales might approach $100 billion annually in 2019.

So the immediate financial future of cookbook-toting psychiatrists looks fairly bright. The majority of them will ride ADD into the sunset.

But not all doctors are that impressed by the scientific validity of the psychiatric profession when it comes to the ethics of their intent toward children.

Thomas Szasz, MD, in his book Cruel Compassion, tells us:

“This elementary fact makes the child psychiatrist one of the most dangerous enemies not only of children, but also of adults who care for the two precious and valuable things in life: children and liberty. Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.” [13]

Bruce Wiseman, author of Psychiatry: the Ultimate Betrayal, concurs:

“All vestiges of psychiatry and psychology should be removed from our schools. Schools are for learning. They are not for psychiatric experiments on young minds.” p385 [10]

Second, the pharmaceutical industry. Ciba-Geigy, the producer of Ritalin has found itself at the center of a boom market. In 1974, a prescription for 100 Ritalin tablets was $12. By 2000 it was $150. For this one drug alone, 6 million prescriptions were written annually at a cost of about $150 each. That was $900 million annually, and that’s only the domestic market.

Today the discount price is $77 for 100 Ritalin tabs. [43] But look at today’s market: more than 7.2 million kids on psych drugs by 2018. [44]

There are also several other drugs for ADD, bringing in other millions, including Cylert, Dexedrine, Disipramine, Concerta. Early estimates by “studies” funded by Ciba-Geigy and backed by the APA said that as much as 30% of the child population may be in “need” of drug treatment for this new disease which has just been miraculously discovered.

To keep the ball rolling, Ciba began donating millions of dollars every year to a “community” organization known as CHADD: Children and Adults with ADD. In 2000, CHADD had over 35,000 members in 600 chapters nationwide. It became the de facto PR branch of Ciba for disseminating promotional information about Ritalin, describing it as “safe and effective” for treatment of ADD. But as people gradually learned CHADD was all about sales, its
numbers steadily dwindled to around 12,000 by 2018.

Third, teachers. It doesn’t take much study to discover the deplorable condition of the American education system during Ritalin’s early years, especially grade schools and high schools. Most studies assessed overall literacy for the 12th grade at about 50%. (Wiseman) [7]

In 1900, illiteracy was only about 1.9%!

Here’s a graph of SAT scores from 1966-1994:

YEAR VERBAL SKILLS …. MATH

1966 ……………. 466 …. …. …. 492
1976 ………..….. 429 …. …. …. 470
1986 ……………. 435 …. …. …. 476
1992 ……………. 424 …. …. …. 476
Source: US Dept of Education Digest of Education Statistics, 1997 p 133 [34]

Another chart tracking SAT scores from 1972 – 2016 shows virtually the same findings. [46] The figures are obviously manipulated, showing very little difference, while every other index indicates math, reading and writing skills sharply plummeting during the same period.

It’s a cover-up. SAT scores have become virtually meaningless, because of the practice of “re-centering.” Translation: artificially jacking up the high school exit exam scores so it doesn’t look as though kids area as dumb as they actually ere.
In a nation where half of high school graduates cannot competently read or write, consider what a blessing ADD has been to beleaguered school teachers. We’re off the hook! It’s not our fault! It’s not our bad teaching skills and methods. These kids are disordered – there’s something wrong with them. Blame the victims.

Besides removing blame, an overstressed teacher may now get to remove the student as well: a diagnosis of ADD frequently gets a disorderly student out of the class and into a special Learning Disabilities class. This is another contrived social invention, along with dyslexia, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter.

At the very least, the child will be prescribed Ritalin or its analogs, and will now be manageable. The best news for teachers is that they don’t even have to wait for a psychiatrist to pronounce a kid ADD. In our modern Orwellian setting, the teachers can do it! All they have to do is check off six of the nine DSM “symptoms” and the student is gone.

“The vast majority of teachers have become true believers. Between 88 and 96 per cent of teachers believe they can diagnose a hyperactive child. And three-fourths feel that they have an obligation to recommend that a doctor be informed ” – The Myth of the Hyperactive Child p 84 [11]

“Teachers who no longer know how to teach claim the children are defective.” – Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal p 283

A teacher’s job is to teach, not to mold the personality.

Larry Brown, MD is not letting anyone off the hook. He describes the widespread use of Ritalin as a “low point in professional ethics.” [12]

“Where drugs are used as a cheap alternative to reform of the schools, then the practice of drugging children must be seen as a political act.” ” drugging children…represents an ominous step along the Orwellian continuum of social control through psychotechnology.” – Toxic Psychiatry pp. 313, 293. [2]

Orwell and Huxley are cited over and over by doctors who criticize the new psychiatry.

Fourth, the school counselors, some of whom may only have undergrad degrees in social work or psychology, but none of whom has medical or science credentials. For them ADD may be a dream come true. School psychologists have suddenly been raised to the level of a psychiatrist. Everyone can diagnose!

In 1950, there were only about 1000 psychologists in American schools. When ADD was invented in 1980, there were about 10,000. By 1990 there were over 22,000 psychologists in American schools! (Thomas Fagan, PhD Memphis State University)

By 2008, there were 35,400. [36]

Today there are over 43,000 with projected growth of 19% by 2024! [50] [51]

Fifth, the schools. A school evaluation to determine eligibility for Special Ed costs $1270. If an estimated 5 million cases are supposedly out there, that’s $6 billion for the schools. Hundreds of “learning programs,” tests, and materials have been designed for ADD. It is a growth industry. It must be real!

Special Education programs ballooned from $1 billion in 1977 to $30 billion in 1994! (U.S. News and World Report, 13 Dec 93) Ever wonder where all these “handicapped” kids appeared from, suddenly in the 80s?

Today, Special Ed taps 40% of federal money promised to schools! [21]

Sixth, the parents. Parents benefit in several ways from the creation of ADD. The underlying causes of unruly children today are not difficult to discover.

Many parents are exhausted just trying to stay afloat. If children can be neutralized by TV and electronics, maybe the adult can capture just a few precious moments of recovery time each day.

See the set-up? Just watch any kids’ TV show or computer game for a few minutes. Most images do not remain on the screen longer than 1 second. Multiply that by the number of hours per week staring at flashing images. Year after year. We are programming the capacity for concentration and focus out of the child. Is unrestricted electronic intake a substitute for raising a child?

That may not be the question the parent is asking. Theirs might be – how do I survive for a few more months?
Children’s diets are extremely sensitizing and allergenic, with the emphasis on sugar and dairy. [47] Who does the shopping? Single parents, absent parents, drugged parents, fatigued parents abound in our society. Too often no one’s driving the bus at home. Unruly, disturbed kids are a natural consequence.

Certainly parents have problems of their own. So here comes this brand new “disease” which again will take the blame off the parents, because “my child has a disorder.” for the parents, the payoff comes in the alleviation of guilt ” – The Myth of the Hyperactive Child p 65 [11]

And the best news is, he can be drugged into submission! Next problem. But the dilemma wasn’t really resolved; it was just shelved, put on hold, incubated.

Finally, the “patient.”

Once a child has been diagnosed ADD, the pressure’s off. He’s told he has a disability, and is put into a category of students who are no longer expected to perform. Adapting to expectation, he slacks off, having found the excuse he needed to glide along without working to capacity.

Many children have calmed down with just the label ADD. And a sugar pill they thought was Ritalin. Academic standards are lowered; glib and trendy pop psychology excuses are made. At the snap of the fingers suddenly everything’s all set. Problem solved. I’m ADD.

Few things are as permanent as a temporary solution.

Other benefits for the ADD child are more time allotted to take SATs, as well as entry tests for med school and law school. Eligibility for many state and federal disability programs is on the rise. For an already confused adolescent, ADD certainly has its compensations.

HOW DOES RITALIN FIT IN?

Ritalin (methylphenidate) is an amphetamine made by Ciba-Geigy. Together with its analogs (Cylert, Concerta, Adderall, etc) it accounts for over 90% of medication provided to ADD “patients.”

Ritalin is an addictive drug, classed by the DEA as a Schedule II controlled substance, the same as narcotics like heroin, morphine and cocaine.

The U.S. uses nearly 90% of the world’s Ritalin, [48]

THE PARADOXICAL EFFECT

The theory is that kids are so hyperactive, give them speed and they’ll be normal. The reality is, that theory has never been proven, or even tested, in any clinical trial. No long-term effects of Ritalin given to children had ever been studied. No known biochemical imbalance in these children has ever been demonstrated. In many kids who are not treated, the problem simply goes away by itself.

As far as learning disability is concerned, Ritalin has never been shown to improve it even slightly. (Armstrong p.47) [3] Moreover there is absolutely no evidence to show that the emotional stability of adult life can be promoted or even influenced by childhood experience with Ritalin. (A Dose of Sanity, p141) [1]

Childhood use of Ritalin does show a high correlation with adolescent abuse of street drugs – an easy transition. Ritalin brings with it the psychotic tendencies which can be brought on by advanced drugs, like heroin, cocaine, and speed. Ritalin is also itself an illegal street drug where a profit can be made from an average prescription. It can be crushed up and snorted, or else mixed with heroin to enhance a junkie’s high.

In light of the immense social and economic forces promoting explosive market growth of this wonder drug, it wouldn’t be so bad if it were harmless. Unfortunately most parents don’t know about the PDR.

The Physician’s Desk Reference is an annual publication by the drug companies which is a general catalogue of all drugs sold in the U.S. – pharmacology, their effects, recommended dosages, and adverse effects. Available in any library. More than anything else, the PDR is legal protection for the pharmaceutical industry. It is fair warning about side effects of drugs: 3000 pages of CYA. But parents are rarely told what it says.

Here are some of the side effects of Ritalin listed in the PDR, 57th edition:

nervousness
skin rash
seizures
decreased growth
nausea
Tourette’s syndrome
insomnia
nausea
glaucoma
gastric pain
weight loss
emotional swings
headache
visual problems
suicidal tendency
dizziness
irregular heart
tardive dyskinesia
fatigue
visual problems
decreased appetite
moodiness
high blood pressure

Outside of that, it should be fine.

Tourette’s syndrome is a condition characterized by inappropriate, sometimes obscene vocal outbursts, and unpredictable and strange physical movements. It may be long term. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by involuntary facial tics, jerky movements of the head and arms; in short, a movement disorder that can involve any of the voluntary muscles of the body.

The emotional problems listed from Ritalin use may include: drug-induced neurosis, psychosis, addiction, clinical depression.
Perhaps the most preposterous finding of all may be that long term Ritalin use can actually cause the very conditions it is supposed to cure: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity! [5]

The PDR specifically states that Ritalin should not be used for children under 6. Nevertheless American psychiatrists ignore Ciba’s own warning and prescribe Ritalin for some 200,000 pre-school children! What are we doing?

Many doctors, like Carl Kline, MD, see no need for Ritalin at all:

“It is my belief that if these drugs were outlawed, children would not be at all deprived of essential medication, but that doctors would be forced to make more accurate diagnoses and seek better means of handling the hyperactive behavior of a certain small percentage of their little patients.”

Probably the most disastrous of all Ritalin’s side effects are decreased growth and suicidal tendencies. During childhood, all the systems of the body are under the control of growth hormone for their normal development. The organs of the body have not reached their full size and strength. Ritalin interferes with growth hormone. Permanent organic and skeletal deficits are likely to result, even after Ritalin is discontinued.

Remember, no long-term studies of this drug’s lasting side effects have ever been done. Are parents routinely informed about all these possible side effects before filling the prescription?

The chance for suicidal tendencies – is that something for which to put your child at risk just because he has a lot of energy? Virtually all doctors and Ciba will admit that for the 20 million Americans on these two drugs, suicide is a possible result. Individual stories number in the thousands, but who is keeping track? No one wants to rock the boat. Too many political interests are in place, too much money changing hands.

Kurt Cobain was a Ritalin patient. Essentially all of the shooters in recent years have histories of Ritalin or other psych drugs, a detail usually left out of corporate news. [CCHR International, John Spagnola]

THIEF OF YOUTH

The darkest aspect of the whole ADD scam, in our opinion, is the totalitarian, leveling effect that is being perpetrated on American children and docilely accepted by American adults. Children may still be able to function and to attend classes when on Ritalin. But any teacher or parent will attest that creativity is gone, for the most part. The light in their eyes goes out.

Children develop at different rates, with varying degrees of stress and the ability to cope with it. As Dr. Walker says, stress and confusion are a necessary part of adolescence, essential to the learning process. Character formation.

To mute these normal emotions of frustration and elation with drugs is to steal their childhood and adolescence from them. What are kids like coming off Ritalin at age 14, after several medicated years? Suddenly they’re big, strong people who’ve never had to spend any time building controls for learning how to contend with their own daily stress.

Then the parents who have forgotten what the child’s real personality was like without the mask of the drug, they panic and say Help me, I don’t know what to do with him. They can only deal with the medicated child. [11] Schrag, p 94

Of course childhood and adolescence are confusing periods of growth – there’s no dress rehearsal. First time through’s a take. But what we’re doing with psychotropic drugs is erasing footage that can never be replaced. Each lost stressful experience was an opportunity for growth and learning that was drugged out of existence, stolen from the child forever. Highs and lows are clipped. Elation and depression are merged together as one, as the victim floats through his formative years an insensate, robotic zombie.

Huxley’s prevision accuracy is equally disconcerting: in Brave New World the Ritalin of the future is a drug called soma. Soma sees to it that “no one is ever sad or angry.” An entire branch of the government is reserved for “Emotional Conditioning” and another for “Malthusian Engineering.” Extraordinary that 80 years ago this author predicted the our reality of government assuming the regulation of its citizens’ emotions.

In many school districts where the parents or the child have resisted the administration of Ritalin, the authorities have actually taken custody of the student and forced this dangerous experimental drug to be administered. Just like the World Controllers in Brave New World, had a convincingly paternal explanation about taking away people’s freedom to experience life “for their own good.”

Reminiscent of Josef Goebbels’ Final Solution Nuremberg defense – for the greater good.

Today this pretense is not even bothered with. Our mass victimization of unsuspecting children is pure politics and economics. The science is so thin as to be ludicrous, behind both ADD and Ritalin. There is nothing particularly scientific about modern bio-psychiatry; and there is certainly nothing scientific about Ritalin. Laws are being passed making “psychiatric care” (read “drugs”) to be required whenever possible: public schools, the Medicare system, prisons, welfare, mental institutions – anywhere the state can legally intrude into the life and mind of the individual.

This is not Orwellian paranoia; it’s our every day.

Now of course there are children (and adults) who have true mental disorders which require treatment. It’s obvious that children today can be under extreme duress, from dietary influences, from dysfunctional home life, from drugs, from violent school life, from video devices, TV, and from several dozen underlying physical conditions. These may manifest as mental disorders.

Don’t miss the point here. Of course there are some troubled kids out there who need professional help. But that help is not a 15-minute interview and diagnosis whose purpose is to feed another passenger onto the self-serving political freight train, rolling down the tracks out of control, trying to legislate more power, more money to the furtherance of its own economic momentum.

What do you think the child’s problem stems from? What do we gain from a shotgun diagnosis? Peace of mind? Exemption from responsibility? Group acceptance? Sympathy? What about the kid and his future? Have you informed yourself about psych drugs?
Does the child get enough exercise? Does he ever get any exercise? Sugar and dairy? Do you know that such foods are sensitizing allergens which may provide the entire biochemical explanation for chronic misbehavior? [47] What about discipline? Wild horses run wild.

Labeling someone ADD doesn’t really solve anything, unless you belong to one of the above benefiting groups. But long-term, everyone loses, except the drug companies. Alternative (non-drug) cures for the student with “too much energy” abound. They work because they don’t approach the problem from a political point of view. Alternative methods focus on resolution of the problem; rather than finding excuses to prolong it, for ulterior agendas.

THE LAST RESORT

For hyperactivity, the most commonly effective holistic approach would be dietary: eliminate the sensitizing allergens: milk, cheese, ice cream, white sugar, white flour, soft drinks, hydrogenated oils. These are non-foods; virtually devoid of nutritive value, empty, devitalizing “foods of commerce.” In the body they have druglike, antigenic effects especially with years of daily intake. We must detox the neurotoxic residuals. See the 60-day Program. [49].

Next, exercise. According to the National Institutes of Health, only 4% of Americans exercise. Physical education programs are the first to be trimmed by budget cutbacks. Many excuses, but children need an hour of vigorous exercise every day, especially if they are being criticized for something as ill-defined as hyperactivity. Their musculoskeletal systems are developing rapidly. Such growth is inhibited by inactivity, i.e., “normal” behavior, like sitting immobile at a desk for seven hours.

Then there is gross nerve blockage. Upper neck trauma from falls and accidents, or even from childbirth, may go uncorrected for years. Thousands of documented cases of “ADD,” as well as learning disorders, have resolved employing this simple biomechanical corrective approach: spinal adjustment. [29][35]

Simply getting the kid away from TV and electronics for a few months may have profound results. It’s not enough that television is a medium which caters to the lowest possible common denominator of intelligence, and that its primary purpose is not entertainment or information, but control. All that is a given.

What is much more subtle is the assiduous effect of having no image remain on the screen for more than a second. This type of hypnotic bombardment of the watcher’s psyche imprints an unassailably superficial view of the world. The illusion is: I saw it on video, now I understand it. Complex issues are reduced to flashes of data – wrapped in that homogenized, controlled little format.

If all the above have been tried and have met with no success, the child might be evaluated by a traditional, slow-to-drug psychiatrist who would go through the painstaking process of ruling out underlying physical causes. The doctor might then actually run standardized psychiatric test batteries, as taught in the psychiatric curriculum, even including psychoanalysis. Happy dinosaur hunting.

In the long run, delaying normal adolescent development with Ritalin and the ADD diagnosis do not serve the child. Nobel prize winner Dr. Alexis Carrel in 1939 saw the approaching trend of the unchallenged child:

“Irresponsible also is the youth brought up in modern schools by teachers ignorant of the necessity for effort, for intellectual concentration, for moral discipline. Later on in life, when these young men and women encounter the indifference of the world, the material and mental difficulties of existence, they are incapable of adaptation, save by asking for relief for protection, for doles, and if relief cannot thus be obtained, by crime.” – Man, The Unknown p146 [19]

The ideas presented in this chapter only scratch the surface of what is really going on in the field of psychiatry,
pharmacology, and the politics of ADD. The reality of the situation is probably much worse than we have hinted at here. The reader is urged to use this chapter as a starting point for further investigation, beginning with the attached references on ADD. Remember, virtually all legitimate scientific data indicates there is no such thing. But there’s no equivocation about the side effects of the psychotropics.

The point of view put forth in this chapter is all but censored today from corporate media, the view of perhaps 1% of what is being written and published on the topic of ADD. But in the words of George Orwell, “sanity is not statistical.”

Our children are the future. To allow them to be victimized for economic and political gain, supported only by shaky, pseudo-science drug-funded studies, doesn’t that erode the fabric of society by subtly and gradually surrendering the constitutional rights of the individual? The state should not tell you what degree of “hyperactivity” or energy is acceptable in your child. That is personal. That is individual. That’s your business. It’s over the line. We never granted them that right.

There’s no medical, scientific, or legal basis for it. But they’re doing it because we’re letting them. If the doctors and the drug empires and the social servants need another disease to make a few more billion dollars from, let them figure out how to cure the diseases we’ve already got, instead of trying to pretend that nonconformity is a medical condition.

Living things mature at different rates, growing stronger with some adversity. That’s a law of nature, not something that needs to be “treated.” Plant a dozen trees in the same soil. After 5 years are you going to ask yourself what’s wrong with the shorter ones? Or the thinner ones? Or the taller ones? What would you know about the way this tree should grow to maturity? How about trusting in its own inner wisdom?

Living things are not like PC boards in an assembly line. There’s a lot of room for normal variation. Eccentricity does not require medical treatment. Most creative people are eccentric in some way: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Einstein, Ricky Jay, John Lennon, Mozart, Freddy Mercury, Michelangelo, Robin Williams, Picasso, Nikola Tesla, Benjamin Franklin, Edward Van Halen, BJ Palmer, Sam Kinison, A.P. Hill, Gandhi, Tony Robbins, Galileo, Versace, etc. What if some teacher had diagnosed these people ADD and put them on Ritalin? What would have been lost?

This chapter has been the sketchiest of overviews whose purpose has been to point the reader in the direction of further study, and to plant a seed of doubt, that the overwhelming majority of the conventional wisdom about ADD may be false, unsubstantiated, unscientific, darkly malevolent, and motivated primarily by political and economic agenda. “Experts” will tell you this chapter is wrong, but aren’t they the ones making their livelihood by drugging your child? You don’t need them; appended below is a list of expert references that you can use to make up your own mind.

That is, if you’re still the one who does that.

Tim O’Shea
MMXIX
thedoctorwithin

References

1. Walker, Sidney, MD — A Dose of Sanity Wiley 1996.
2. Breggin, Peter, MD — Toxic Psychiatry St. Martins Press 1994.
3. Armstrong, Thomas PhD— The Myth of the ADD Child Penguin 1997.
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content/uploads/newsletters/2002/bsc_spring_2002.pdf
5. Physicians Desk Reference— Medical Economics 57th edition 2003
6. Baughman, Fred, MD— “The Future of Mental Health” USA Today 3/1/97
7. Wiseman, Bruce— Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal — Freedom 1995.
8. Baughman, Fred, MD — “What Every Parent Needs to Know About ADD”
9. McGuiness, Diane PhD “The Limits of Biologic Treatment for Psychiatric Distress”
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Am Rev Med, vol 33, 1982
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27. Barnes,T — “Chiropractic management of the specific needs child” Topics in Clinical Chiropractic Dec 1997.
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41. American Psychiatry Assn. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th Edition, (DSM-IV-TR) 2000.
42 American Psychiatry Assn. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM 5 2013.
43. Ritalin Prices, Coupons and Patient Assistance Programs 2019. https://www.drugs.com/price-guide/ritalin
44. Number of Children & Adolescents Taking Psychiatric Drugs in the U.S.
CCHR International Apr 2018 www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
45. Psychiatric Drugs Are False Prophets With Big Profits Psychology Today 5 July 2015.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-theater-the-brain/201507/psychiatric-drugs-are-false-prophets-big-profits
46. College Board – Total Group SAT Report 1972-2016 https://reports.collegeboard.org/pdf/total-group-2016.pdf
47. O’Shea, T thedoctorwithin.com Chapters https://thedoctorwithin.com/chapters/
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www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.26.2.450
49. The last resort 2019. https://thedoctorwithin.com/2009/10/21/last-resort/
50. Bureau of Labor Statistics – Occupational Employment Stats www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes193031.htm#nat
51. Bureau of Labor Statistics quoted by www.learnhowtobecome.org/psychologist/school-psychologist/

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