Word: ritalin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When most people hear the word Ritalin, they think of little boys: waist-high hellions throwing spitballs and punches, requiring pills to control themselves. Almost nobody thinks of the boys' mothers. But these days, millions of grownups are getting treated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder too. And 50% to 60% of them are women, according to recent studies. Since boys outnumber girls roughly seven to one among kids on medication for ADHD, that leaves researchers and physicians wondering where all these women have come from...
Bloch and her son started Ritalin on the same day. They both reported benefits. She felt newly focused on her job, and he pulled his grades way up. But as the working mother of two, she still has a frantic life: "Somebody else's needs always come first." Says Sari Solden, author of Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: "Men are encouraged to focus narrowly on their area of interest and are much more likely to have secretaries or wives who do things for them. Women have much more diffuse roles to fill...
...RITALIN For millions of children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), drugs like Ritalin have been a godsend. Yet at the same time there is real concern that the use of Ritalin to curb all manner of fidgety behavior has become too casual and that the drug is actually being abused as a performance booster. A Duke University study suggested that the drug is, in fact, both over- and underprescribed. The Duke team found that 25% of kids with confirmable ADHD are not getting the drug, while more than half the kids who take the drug should...
Still, the message out of the bottle was clear: Forget the couch; there is no psychiatric ill that cannot be chemically controlled. Even hyperactive youngsters were caught up in the pharmacological whirlwind, given daily doses of Ritalin to tame their excess energies. Critics such as Dr. Thomas Szacz worried loudly about an overly medicated, drug-dependent society. But with more than 50 million Americans suffering from mental illnesses of varying degrees of severity, doctors in the clinical trenches felt they had no choice but to employ the best weapons at their disposal. Says Dr. Sophia Vinogradov, Barondes' UCSF colleague...
...fashion drugs that release their essential ingredients more slowly, over a period of weeks rather than hours or days, eliminating the need for daily pills or injections. That would make life easier for deinstitutionalized street people and embarrassed kids who must leave the classroom each day to get their Ritalin from the school nurse...