AJPhilips, thank you very much for sharing your story.

Unlike the 'opinion' of the contributor after you, it is important for people with personal experience to tell their story.

After all, the opinions of socalled experts are quite wide ranging, not unequivocal at all.

There is probably truth in both sides. I agree with AJ in that ADHD is probably overdiagnosed. I went through a situation with my stepson when he was little. ADHD was easier to diagnose with the comfort of easy medication than the proposition that there were other factors requiring a lot more effort and committment from the adults in his life-parents and teachers.

Medicating a child should always be seen as the very last resort when all other avenues are exhausted.

Children develop at very different rates and humans beings do not all learn the same way, through auditory delivery with some visual queues. Some of us learn mainly kinestetically. It is tragic to see children fidget away while a teacher is babbling away with perfectly meaningless noise when doing or seeing makes more sense.

What concerns me is this need to come up with a 'disorder'. We know so much and are learning more about how brains develop throughout life and the different ways humans learn, yet we are becoming increasingly less tolerant when all six year olds are not behaving and learning the same way.

There is no doubt that there are disorders, but aren't we becoming very quick at comparing and judging all children to a very narrow yardstick and then looking for a pharmaceutical quick fix?

philips:"
I shall now return permanently to my retirement from this ridiculous "opinion" site"

Oh look, the signal to noise ratio has just improved.

Do take the rest of your sock puppets with you, won't you? I'm sure you need all the imaginary friends you can invent.

Yvonne:"Medicating a child should always be seen as the very last resort when all other avenues are exhausted."

Spot on. The process of assessment and diagnosis seemed to work OK for my boy, I must say, but I do wonder how much of that was because his mother and I are able to understand and offer (admittedly inexpert) opinions on the options being offered? For a parent with poor educational attainment the process must be truly daunting. It's not easy to stand up to a strongly-opinionated teacher, let alone the various experts that are rolled out through the assessment process. Mind you, I don't think it's intentionally that way, just that busy people may not choose to take the time to explain adequately to someone lacking the basic tools to understand the explanation. I suspect that some kids end up medicated largely because of the ignorance of the parents.

Yvonne:"aren't we becoming very quick at comparing and judging all children to a very narrow yardstick and then looking for a pharmaceutical quick fix"

Also spot on. There is a growing trend in out society, raised in many other threads, to treat the possibility of aberrant behaviour rather than its actual expression. "We can't take the chance" is a phrase I have grown to hate, as it nearly always means some individuals are going to suffer because some other person has done something wrong. In this context, medication is seen as a way of avoiding "taking the chance" that rambunctious kids may be disruptive for a teacher or parent. It's quite pernicious.

I'm deeply offended by some of the comments I've read here. One person even implied that depression wasn't real, like it was just medicalising something that wasn't medical at all. I've had close association with depressed people, through my nursing career. Also, I've been involved with both children and adults with seriously chronic, debilitating ADHD. Depression has had a very long, hard battle to overcome it's stigma, and only a fool these days would deny it's medical verification. Unfortunately, stigmatised conditions like ADHD are just beginning to fight the stigma battle against an uninformed general public. It's just so terribly sad that people believe it's the sufferer's fault, the parent's fault, the education system's fault, and I even had someone come up to me a few years ago blaming the Labour party and it's social policies for ADHD. Treatment for ADHD is most certainly not merely popping Ritalin down someone's throat, as has been falsely suggested. Proper treatment is a far reaching, multi faceted approach that often requires no medication, and sometimes requires medication. No one thing alone works for any one adult or one child. A specific treatment regimen may be perfect for one person, yet completely unsuitable for another, just like most medical conditions. Both my father and my grandfather have the same heart condition, yet their treatment is radically different.

A "pharmaceutical quick fix" for ADHD is precisely what the profession is NOT seeking, despite the awfully skewered, incorrect public opinion about this.

This horrible lack of understanding by some people of the devastating effects of depression and ADHD, and the causes, makes me very sad. I only pray that they themselves never suffer chronically from these debilitating disorders.

It doesn't further the debate when contributors like philips and SallyG sweepingly disparage the efforts of earlier posters, and yet make no effort to quote and refute particular statements so that those who made them can defend their positions.

It's all too easy to weigh in and make scathing comments from the lofty heights of professional superiority. It's much harder it seems to cogently argue a convincing case. No one here is about to be cowered by having qualifications waved in their faces.

We do all welcome any thoughtful and considered opinion though, whether lay or professional, and will happily debate any perceived weaknesses in our arguments with any detractors, no matter how arrogant their approach.

Hear, hear Bronwyn.

Sally, you are not the only one who has had contact with mental illness.

Antiseptic has related his personal experience with his son and ADHD and I have touched on this as well.

As for depression, and how the medical profession treats this that's a whole other can of worms.

Incidentally, I've had some 30 years experience in nursing. There is nothing more limiting to gaining a bigger and more complete picture of any medical issue as professional arrogance towards socalled 'non professionals' opinions and experiences. It never ceases to amaze me how easily 'professionals' can dismiss contrary experiences of patients and their associates. If it doesn't fit, dismiss it.

Hear, hear SallyG and AJPhilips.

You have both shown there's more than one side to the topic of ADHD, and I welcome your intelligent and well thought out contributions, based on your personal experiences and knowledge. Thank you.