The ADHD epidemic and the treatment of it by bombing kids out on prescription drugs is just another symptom of our sick society.
Many children are raised,in the main,by TV,computers and video games.Their parents have opted out of parenting with the encouragement of society.
How many kids are read to by their parents?How many kids read books?How many kids are compelled to get outside and play?How many kids are compelled to go to bed at a sensible hour?How many kids are fed on chemical laced junk instead of wholesome food?How many kids would rather drink carbonated,sugar laced lolly water rather than just water?

This is the lost generation and we are already seeing the effects in antisocial behaviour.Solution,for our fearless and stupid leaders - build more prisons.

You said that boys lose more in divorce and that feminism is partly at fault. My sister was deserted by her husband and was left with 3 children to support and parent. Two are boys, one with Aspergers.

Unfortunately her ex has not provided a good role model for them at all. For a lot of the time he has not wanted access visits, doesn't financially support them at all - even to the extent of not buying them birthday or Christmas presents.

I agree that kids need to run around more and not be medicated. I also think we live in a very odd society that damages us all and that this shows up most obviously in the problems kids show.

I do not think blaming feminism helps. Women looking after kids are the poorest group in our society. Usually they did not intend to end up as sole parents.

Feminism is all about women having the ability to work, be independent,use their talents, be treated with respect as well as to be able to look after themselves and their family financially as well as emotionally.

We need to look at the whole of society as to what is going on with our kids.

It's a dam shame all round.
Woman would rather spend 80% of their earnings on child care than to be for them.
I say it has got a lot to do with feminism.
They want to be 'free' and have kids at the same time.
It should be one or the other.
I am glad i did it the old fashioned way.
The system is overcrowded with kids born with disability.
There that many poisons available, like mcdonalds.
Not to mention a cocktail of illegal drugs.
The kids need a mother, full time.
I read somewhere the other day, about kids with low vitamin D levels.
It's free all you have to do is go outside.

The ADHD medication issue is a symptom of a society that seeks to absolve parents of responsibility partially by 'medicalising' children's behaviour. It does not help that the entire schooling system with precious few exceptions is still the workhouse / factory fodder model from the industrial revolution. Largely feminised, its organisation makes the "outcomes" for students easy to “measure”. Parents love it because they went through that system and (to paraphrase) "it didn't do me any harm" - so they are experts in promulgating an anachronistic system. Educators who challenge this are branded new fangled lefties.

The education system (read 'government') in general loves it because children's failure to learn can be splendidly lost in an an avalanche of bollocks sold to us as being just wonderful. Listen to the entire spin-doctored 'education revolution' blather. Go to your local school's website. (Don Watson is my hero!).

The ADHD issue is an indicator of an entire education system that increasingly fails young people. The indicators are the bureaucratic devices that seek to categorise and exclude rather than include. In categorising “problems” you can then categorise what governments and schools are doing to fix them - without actually doing it. Ask any teacher - nothing much ever changes at the classroom level. Symptoms include the astronomical increase in autism and Asperger's syndrome diagnoses, burgeoning special education enrolments (and yep, it's about 5:1 boys to girls), the failure of boys in general, the abysmal funding for education across the board, the building of new schools that are identical in political purpose and function to those of the 1890s. The threat of litigation and complaint means teachers find it easier to be stuck in the didactic workhouse rut. I once had to write a risk assessment for youngsters using play dough.

The killer is now schools and teachers have just that one little thing extra to do - take over the role of the parents.

This Post by Dr West is one of the most fatuous, self serving, ill researched articles I have ever seen. The material seems to have been scraped from articles in women's magazines from "natural" health nuts.

Other than being a senior lecturer in education at UWS, I cannot find his actual qualifications anywhere. Based on the intellectual poverty of the article, I am led to believe that none of them relate in any way to the field of ADHD.

Only certified child psychiatrists and not GPs are allowed to prescribe the medications.

There are specific tests that identify the various under lying causes of ADHD that are used for diagnostics, and very few practitioners prescribe based on behavioural issues alone.

The medications are generally stimulants that re inforce the higher level thinking skills that manage impulse control. The child is calmer because he/she has better control and not because of sedation.

The more insidious consequences of untreated ADHD is poor social skills, as the impulsive behaviour is considered inapropriate, leading to the social exclusion of the child. As a result the child learns coping mechanisms rather than social skills, leading to permanent social impediment as well as the education.

While the numbers might be increasing, and some of it might be due to lax diagnosis, much of it is to do with the increased awareness of the condition.

I personally know a child who after a low dosage treatment went from a disruptive under performer to a popular house captain at junior school, and went on to a top private school on a full acedemic scholarship.

So while Peter West is on his naturalist feel good campaign against the evils of ritalin, he might very well be condemning otherwise bright children to acedemic mediocrity and social obscurity.

This article and the first few comments are typical of the sanctimonious bullsh!t that ADD/ADHD (I prefer that term, as not all are hyperactive - some quite the opposite) kids and their parents have to put up with all the time.

Yes, *some* children are unnecessarily diagnosed as ADD/ADHD, that doesn't mean that ALL of them are. Their is good evidence that many men are diagnosed and treated unnecessarily for prostate cancer - does that mean that ALL prostate cancer is imaginary?

"Oh, but all boys are like that! It's bad parenting/schooling/society ..." Rubbish. There's inattentive, and there's the child who is observed staring out the window and fiddling with a pencil for two hours. Our son went spent the first few years of his schooling on a continuous downward spiral. His fantastic teacher worked with us on countless strategies to help him, all to no avail.

Then he saw a respected paediatrician (on an unrelated matter), and was finally diagnosed as ADD (*not* ADHD). After much wrestling of our consciences, we agreed with the paediatrician to try medication. We did not tell his teacher. The very first day he went to school, after starting the medication, his teacher knew straight away.

His school work and behaviour improved beyond recognition. Many years later, we all came to an agreement that he could slowly go off the medication if he wanted to.

I am absolutely positive that if our son had not been placed on ADHD medication, his quality of life today would be far, far worse.

So don't give me your sanctimonious claptrap.

Our son has been dignosed with High-functioning autism and ADHD.
He is not taking any medication at all. However, because he is homeschooled, he is not required to sit for most of the day being compliant to someone else's agenda.
When we do bookwork he has someone beside him so that when his attention wanders he has assistance in bringing him back to the matter at hand.. And although he has trouble concentrating on things he is not particularly interested in, he has masterful concentration when he is doing something that excites his passions.
He is not required to sit too long in one place. We have a vegetable patch, chickens and pets. He gets involved with the care and maintenance of these. He is able to walk around, run about - he pursues his own interests much of the time. Even though he is very active, he is allowed the space and time to create and learn from practical experience.
In short, he gets to "do" and in the doing, his urges to disrupt and misbehave are greatly diminished.

Parenting is one of the hardest jobs in the world. One case in particular ( family of five ), only one showed the signs of the problem. This child was one of the least disciplined and with high disrespectful tendency,s and out of controlled behavior, than all the rest.

From the ages of 2 to 3 was where the child was not given the correct foods, was not payed the right amount of attention through work and child-care placements and has more tendency's of being spoiled brat than anything else. Childcare seems to be a factory for this, and the super nanny series also points to this direction.

What are we teaching our children in this day and age? Greed, selfishness, Confusion, Hate, Jealousy, Bad morals and Ethics, Lying, Cheating, Stealing, Uncaring, Bitterness, Wastefulness, Destructiveness, Bullying, Violence, Sexual Perversion, Eating disorders, and Blindness to reality. Obesity, Drug taking, Alcoholism, False and Ridiculous role models (sporting, Movie stars, Politicians, and the list goes on due to pressures of a world that is to busy makeing money other than focusing on the razing of children.

Now the same child today still shows the glitch from the 2 to 3 of that most important bonding time, and now 12, no drugs was needed at all.
The other four had full parental time, and all is well. I think the factors of all discuss on this thread are the many parts of the jigsaw.

I don't think you can point the finger at any singularity and giving them pills, for some, its just an easy fix to a complex problem.

The US is finally opposing big pharma, but it will be a long project.

Great cognitive and behavioral programs have been developed.

I'm a former principal and we used Play Attention (www.playattention.com)with our ADHD kids. Works great. High tech with coaching ad behavioral management. No drugs needed.

If the author read the release from the NHMRC he would have seen that there is no real effort to restrict medication but simply to clarify diagnostic procedures. Speaking from experience in the field I can say that behavioural interventions cannot treat ADHD anywhere near as effectively as medication. This is an established and well known fact in the field. Parents should not be embarrassed about having a child with the disorder. Delaying treatment often leads to more problems.

"ADD" = Absent Dad disorder!

Peter wrote "The vast majority of children treated for ADHD seem to be boys... Behaviour issues in the home are much more difficult when there is no father living in the home. Having a father present, physically and emotionally, helps give boys especially a sense of purpose and belonging. Boys suffer more than girls after divorce for this reason, according to many sources, such as Sebastian Kraemer. But in our post-feminist world, nobody wants to hear that males have difficulties."

Over 80% of ADHD diagnoses are boys!
Ask any a parents group "whose daughters are doing great at school?" and you see all the hands come up. then ask "Whose sons are struggling?" another sea of hands.

Forever until 1985, boys and girls received the same average marticulation ... the mark that determines if they get to uinversity....

Between 1985-97, boys results plummeted... until boys marks were 7% below girls! This sould have raised alarm bells... after all, aren't girls a smart as boys (and visa versa?)

Something had changed... boy and girls don't have sudden evolutionaty genetic changes like this...

The alarm bells did go off in the female-dominated education department... loudly! They didn;t change things to help boys! Oh no.. they re-structured the department so that the average marks ar4e no longer available - even under FOI!

But what is clear is that only a third of uni students are now boys. The most prestigious courses - Law and Medicine are basically 'girls clubs' now.

And 80% of children with ADHD are boys... join the dots!

ADHD is not a disease, it is a resut of 20 years of feminist retribution against all males. TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT!

Innocent boys are suffereing beacuse the education pedagogies and teacher training and curriculum has been written specifically to make school boring and difficult for boys, and dumbed-down to help girls and motivating for girls.

Innocent children, boys, are being crucified at the alter of feminist retribution. And nobody has the funding to find out and fight against it!

Citations available
PartTimeParent@poBox.com

partTimeParent - my wife and I have been married for 20 years. During my boys' early years I was able to scale back my working hours, and I spent a great deal of time with them. I still spend a lot of time with them, particularly at one of our favourite pursuits, bushwalking and camping in Tasmania's wilderness.

Yet my eldest has ADD/ADHD.

Sounds like your cosy little conspiracy theory has some problems.

Clownfish,
I'm sorry for your son's difficulties. I certainly am not blaming dads!

Absent Dad Disorder, is a single factor, only a small part of the picture for some ADHD sufferers.

The main culprit is the removal of everything that boys enjoy and find motivation from school and teaching techniques. Changes in 'pedagogies' have taken direct competition out of school - and boys thrive on direct competition and marks. Instead they concentrate only on 'expression' and 'collaboration'.

Put in simple terms, instead of 'doing stuff' and 'getting a result' which motivate boys. School now is about 'talking about stuff' - which motivates girls.

Something must explaine how boys used to get the same average mark as girls, and now they get an average year 12 result that is 20% below the average mark for girls.

Boys haven't changed, school has.