Talking Back to Ritalin

I read this book after my son started having trouble in first grade and was sent to the principal so many times he had earned his way up to 3 days of in-school suspension. His infractions, although inappropriate, didn't seem incredibly bad to me (humming in the bathroom, putting a spider on his private area during show and tell, batting a girl with the long sleeves of his teacher's shirt, saying "middle finger", spitting out water over another child's desk and backpack), and in-school suspension didn't seem to be changing his behavior either. However, my son has always been active and moving, and definitely does not respond well to pure authority. I suspected ADHD and took him to a doctor. I grew up with a chiropractor as a father and didn't want to put him on drugs, but thought maybe it would be necessary. I also have a Ph.D. and checked out armfuls of books about ADHD and began reading. I picked up whatever was newest and available in the library, with no regard to ideology. I read lots of the books and identified with many things my son was doing. I took my son to a psychologist who said he probably had a bit of ADHD and maybe some sensory integration issues. But she pointed out that the trouble was at school. "You wouldn't be here except for school, right?" she asked. That's right. Our son is challenging but we manage him just fine at home and have a very happy home life. The psychologist gave me pause about just where the problem lay. Then I read Talking Back to Ritalin. And I got mad. You mean, there is absolutely no evidence for these claims in all these other books I read that there is anything wrong with the brains of kids diagnosed ADHD? You mean that these stimulant drugs don't really 'attach' to the deficient receptors and 'correct' the imbalance, like all the other books were claiming? They claimed this, but where was their proof? They had no citations, no hard evidence behind these claims, nothing! Dr. Breggin, on the other hand, was reporting the available scientific evidence. The real stuff, that the doctors publish in journals, not what they say in books for the public. Now I haven't read those articles, but when he quotes Barkley who admitted that there is no way technologically to tell the difference between brains of 'normal' kids and 'ADHD' kids, it's pretty convincing that nothing has really been found. And he makes sense. My latent unease over drugs became horror that I might have possibly done this to my son. Breggin quotes one study (p. 29) where 122 kids were put on stimulants for 1-23 weeks, and 9% of the children developed tics, including one who developed an irreversible Tourette's syndrome! Is this the kind of probability of a drug CAUSING a problem that I want to subject my kid to? I saw school administrators and doctors talking about medication, for my son with his problems, as if it were harmless. Doesn't sound harmless to me. Stunts growth? Causes loss of appetite? Is as addictive as cocaine? C

I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact. It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery. Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable. Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on

Very informative book and a must read for any parent with a struggling child. The facts are clearly sourced in this book. What I see from most negative reviews is emotion based. Quackwatch has been shown as biased opinion and not scienctific by a California court. As far as 14 years in the Ritalin field, hey Ritalin makes your kid a zombie ( read the book), OF COURSE IT WORKS YOUR CHILD IS NOW ZOMBIE! SEARCH YAHOO NEWS AND SEE THE LASTEST DANGERS ABOUT THIS DRUG!!! Also Ritalin is classified in the same category for addiction as Cocaine by the DEA. Think about it! I've had one step child on Ritalin, now he's off of it and I don't see any behavior that isn't "normal". What he really needed was enforced rules. No matter how hard it hurts you as a parent, keep up the good work.

For the reviewer who is talking back to Peter Breggin, I'm sorry to say that I have to agree with him. It used to be that Ritalin was practically unheard of, but now the number of children taking it has increased fivefold over the last five years, and if ADHD were a "disease", just like cancer or diabetes, as psychiatrists like to claim, then we wouldn't be seeing an increase in children being labeled with this disorder.Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with trying alternatives to Ritalin. Many parents with children labeled ADHD have looked for allergies and other physical conditions, such as thyroid problems, and have found them. Many other parents have changed their child's diet to one that is low in sugar, and that has also worked wonders. Still other children may be having trouble at home, such as parents going through a divorce, or a new baby in the family. Stress impacts greatly on the lives of children. I'm not blaming the parents for anything, I'm just stating the facts. Granted, there are children who are troubled despite the fact that everything seems to be okay in their lives, but I really believe that this is the exception, not the rule, and that children often begin acting out when they have stressors at home and/or at school. Parents need to be informed and keep an open mind, and identify possible physical conditions or stressors in their child's life before giving their children stimulants. To so hastily prescribe Ritalin before looking for other causes of hyperactivity and telling the parents what THEY want to hear to make money is a grave disservice to our children, and most definitely a cause for concern in our society, as children are our future. If you like facts, I'll state one: children who were prescribed Ritalin in childhood are three times more likely to use cocaine later in life. Don't try to tell me that this is because their "biochemically defective brains" cause them to make bad choices and use drugs. I don't buy it. And I also don't buy that you don't seem to think that ADHD children are our "best and our brightest", as Peter Breggin believes. I have actually found data that says that ADHD tends to disappear once the child is past school age, and that many of these children tend to do well as artisans or at other jobs where they work "on their feet" when they grow up. Albert Einstein is thought to have had ADHD, and a teacher once wrote on his report card, "You'll never amount to anything." What if Einstein had taken Ritalin? Would he have reached his full potential with his brilliant mind altered by speed? I doubt it. When I was about ten, my mother took me to a psychotherapist because I was fidgety and nervous in school, and I would come home in tears nearly every day. Some of my classmates were picking on me, and school had become a hellhole for me as a result of their torments. I was also often fidgety and emotional at home as well. The therapist told m

Challenging children exist, yes, but we as parents, teachers and others that work with children must step up to the challenge to give them what they need and move away from labeling and drugging--it is not necessary or effective and is in fact extremely detrimental--as this book so convincingly shows. After reading the full gamut of books (20+) on ADD/ADHD including those with conventional and unconventional views and remedies for the associated behaviors, I had doubts about the validity of ADD/ADHD as a distinct disorder. Dr. Breggin's book validates my doubts with pages of scientific documentation and explains how virtually a whole nation--parents, doctors, mental health professionals and teachers--promote and believe in this concept. It's a must read for anyone involved in ADD/ADHD evaluations/treatments. The book focuses on four areas: the fallacy of ADD/ADHD-including the unscientific method of diagnosis and the misuse of studies used by the advocates of the "disorder"; the documented dangers of Ritalin-- what it does to the brain, why it does not help behavioral problems and the damage it can cause; the politics behind the ADHD/Ritalin lobby; and what parents can do to help their children without labels and drugs. This is such an important book. If you've read the others, you must read this!! Another good book is The Myth of the ADD Child by Thomas Armstrong PhD.