ADHD and schools

“This is my son’s first year in a new, private school. Already, his third-grade teacher has suggested that we have him tested for attention deficit disorder. I discovered that 65 (sixty-five) percent of the kids in the fifth grade at his school have been diagnosed with ADD and are taking medication.”

From a parent’s letter to psychologist/columnist John Rosemond
San Diego Union-Tribune, November 10, 2001

Here’s some more information from Dr. Breggin:

“Since the early 1990s, North America has turned to psychoactive drugs in unprecedented numbers for the control of children. In November 1999, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warned about a record six-fold increase in Ritalin production between 1990 and 1995.

In 1995, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an agency of the World Health Organization, deplored that “10 to 12 percent of all boys between the ages 6 and 14 in the United States have been diagnosed as having ADD and are being treated with methylphenidate [Ritalin].” In March 1997, the board declared, "The therapeutic use of methylphenidate is now under scrutiny by the American medical community; the INCB welcomes this." The United States uses approximately 90% of the world's Ritalin.”

Peter R. Breggin M.D.
Testimony September 29, 2000
Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Education and the Workforce
U.S. House of Representatives

America’s lead in the use not only of the diagnosis ‘ADHD’ but also of the drug treatments that go with it was evident in the CNS News item that opened this report.

It’s something that is, or has been in the recent past at least, a matter of deep concern ‘across the pond’ in the United Kingdom.

Next, ADHD in the UK

ADHD-Report.com: The concerned parents' guide to childrens' attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD/ADD)

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