by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: October 19, 2009

Over diagnosis and misdiagnosis of ADHD is a shameful, horrific, and massive mistake that has gone on for far too long. It is even difficult to find a substantial medical or scientific support for the legitimacy of the disorder, let alone statistics that agree on how many students actually have ADHD. The massive discrepancy in the number of children who are diagnosed, versus the "estimates" of the number of children who actually have the disorder should have sent up red flags ten years ago.

To compound the problem, a hazardous and powerful drug has been forced on children who may be gifted, going through normal stages of behavioral response to their environments, or who are just being children in all of their normal variations.

In all of the frenzy by individuals who are either far from qualified, far from correct, or far from properly motivated in the rush to make convenient, but false or erroneous diagnoses, not only had ADHD been wrongly diagnosed, but a host of other psychological disorders have been improperly diagnosed, in many cases merely because children do not conform to poorly defined standards for classroom conduct.

There have been conditions of children who were reacting to problems that stemmed from maladaptive, dysfunctional or problematic teachers, school environments, and school management, and who were simply falsely labeled with psychiatric disorders. There are conditions of children who are exhibiting behavioral responses to conditions in the home or school that could readily be aided by counseling, therapy, or intervention by Child Protective Services agencies, but who are, instead, falsely diagnosed with behavioral and psychiatric disorders and given drugs.

Where are the comprehensive studies of the teacher, the school, or the classroom to see if there are racial or cultural biases, problematic physical conditions, or general inabilities to manage an overloaded classroom with a variety of students who range in symptomatic behavior from normal, to developmentally challenged, to gifted? Problems that range from teacher abuse, to schoolyard bullying, to overloaded classrooms are rarely cited as a potential cause for children to act out or to behave in problematic ways.

Misdiagnosis has been evident even when psychiatrists, pediatricians, and psychologists are responsible. There is no way that the rigorous, intensive, comprehensive investigation of the child's environment, overall health, and issues is being conducted because it would take

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>