Word: adhd
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Moreover, there is precedent for normal behaviors such as sleep being transmogrified into disease. A good example is Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which according to some psychiatrists, may affect 15 million Americans. This disease, which was originally called ADD, entered the American Psychiatric Association’s list of disorders only in 1980. Within in a decade, Ritalin became the favored drug to treat this disorder, and both the disease and the drug became wildly popular. But the enormous numbers of children taking the drug suggest that the normal exuberance of childhood has been declared treatable. Studies...
...custody of a trained foster family where the child receives intensive care somewhere in the community. Child advocates estimate that 1 in 5 families with mentally ill children in the U.S. has surrendered custody in exchange for treatment of a child with bipolar or some other disorder, including ADHD, schizophrenia or depression...
Until quite recently, a child who behaved like this would have been presumed to have either attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or oppositional defiant disorder. Bipolar would not even have been considered. And with good reason: the classic bipolar profile, at least as it appears in adults, is almost never seen in kids...
...that, when the disorder does appear in a child, the diagnosis is often wrong. ADHD is the likeliest first call, if only because some of the manic symptoms fit. The treatment of choice for ADHD is Ritalin, a stimulant that has the paradoxical ability to calm overactive kids. But giving Ritalin to a bipolar child can deepen an existing cycle or trigger one anew. Brandon Kent, a 9-year-old from La Vernia, Texas, in whom ADHD was diagnosed in kindergarten (they did not yet know he was bipolar), took Ritalin and paid the price. "It sent him into depression...
...sure, if a child is predisposed to a clinical condition such as ADHD, even the most deft parenting won't avert the problem altogether--but it can improve things. "If children and parents work together," says developmental specialist Nancy Close of the Yale Child Study Center, "kids can be better equipped to handle whatever challenges their particular sensitivities lead them to." As with so many prevention strategies, the goal is to take control of the problem early, before the problem is the one in charge...