The Ritailn Crusade

by Courtney Heard

When I was in elementary school, I had endless trouble with schoolwork. I remember asking my mother for help with my math homework. With amazing patience she always tried, but I would never pay attention, and thus, never understood. I would get frustrated and yell and cry. I didn’t enjoy reading the books my teacher required me to. I was beyond the reading level of most kids my age and their books bored me. Worrying about punctuation just killed the thrill of writing for me. I could already spell as well as a high school student, so spelling lessons were agonizing. All this has followed me through until today. I can’t concentrate on conjugating Spanish verbs or the multiple uses of commas when there is an entire planet out there full of extraordinarily fulfilling things to do. Though it may sound like I’m complaining about myself, I wouldn’t give up this part of who I am for anything. I love that I would rather be asking my classmates about their heritage than listening to my professor explain how to write an essay, though according to the DSM-IV, I have a mental disorder because of this. I should, therefore, drug myself extensively to suppress my passionate love of life and people in order to be able to receive abstract rewards such as letter grades. In order to grasp algebra, I need drugs. Pardon my lack of academic grace, but what a crock! It’s not that I could never understand, but because algebra bored me to no end.

The bottom line is that I rub against the grain. I understand that some
things are unnecessary. I disrupt and irritate the curriculum. I think critically and question everything I am told regardless of the teller’s position of expertise. Some professionals would therefore, rejoice, the minute I ceased my criticism and incessant questioning. When an individual similar to myself is muted with ritalin, it makes a large sum of people extremely happy. Teachers, Administration, the doctor who makes the diagnosis, and of course the pharmaceutical Industry. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are creations of the education and mental health industries that reap endless benefits upon their professionals.

“ADD and ADHD are fraudulent labels that are too frequently applied to normal children with behavioral problems.” (Wittmier). In order to create a single, solid set of symptoms indicative of such a disorder, one must be able to define the term normal. This is virtually impossible as it differs across cultures, provinces, states, schools and even between classrooms. Normal is a subjective abstraction, which makes abnormal subjective as well. I cannot say that, because you are nothing like me, you are abnormal. There is no global definition of these terms, though the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) claims to have one.

According to the DSM-IV, Attention-Defecit and disruptive behavior disorders are characterized by failure “to give close attention to details or may make careless mistakes in schoolwork or other tasks ... Hyperactivity may be manifested by fidgetiness or squirming in one’s seat, by not remaining seated when expected to do so.” (American, 78-79). Also mentioned in the first edition of the DSM is dysathesia aethiopica, a disorder found in slaves. “The symptoms of this included destroying property on the plantation, being disobedient, talking back, refusing to work, and fighting back when beaten.” (Wade & Tavris, 578). According to the DSM-IV, sometimes referred to as the “Bible of Psychology” (Wade & Tavris, 578), this behavior is abnormal. Normal would therefore, be marked in children as a fondness of school and an actual desire to be in class, and in slaves as total submission (Wade & Tavris, 578).

When some people see a child who has unlimited energy, curiosity, and fickle, sometimes unrealistic ambition, they become envious. “Ahh, to be young again” is a commonly used phrase that reflects this. Others see a
problem. Imagine a busy, working mother whose son or daughter is easily excited and difficult to keep track of. Imagine that child’s teacher, who has thirty other children to keep in line every day, not to mention his or her own personal life to keep. The level of difficulty rises for this teacher when a
student expels his or her energy in class. A teacher in such a situation might find him or herself overwhelmed with responsibility and tasks. Along comes the DSM-IV and the wonder drug, ritalin. It can be supposed a teacher in this situation would view it as a godsend. “Prescribed merely for normal rambunctiousness or used to avoid having to correct deficiencies in schools.” (Harvard, 6), ritalin can become a tool for the teacher, with as important a function as chalk and blackboards. A teacher with thirty students doesn’t have time to give one-on-one attention to each student. Considering that in 1999, 4 million American children were on ritalin (Johnson), chances are high that in each class of thirty students there is more than one child who has been diagnosed or will be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and thus, more than one “problem” for the teacher.

In fact, very few children who have been diagnosed with either disorder were actually diagnosed properly. A lot of the time, children are diagnosed by teachers or parents. It’s no coincidence these are the people who will benefit most from having a hyperactive child calmed with drugs. “Experts say
frustrated parents, agitated day-care workers and ten-minute pediatric visits all contribute to quick fixes for emotional and behavioral problems” (Kalb, 53).

There are a number of possible causes for symptoms of these two disorders, including high lead levels in the blood, allergies (NIS), and problems at home. A child suffering ongoing abuse cannot be expected to properly pay attention to multiplication tables. However, most diagnoses of ADD and ADHD occur after an extremely short period of time, such as brief visits to the doctor, that allow no room for extensive physical and emotional examination.

Along with possible physical causes, the child’s development level, is often looked over. Children as young as two have been prescribed ritalin. “The use of certain psychotropic drugs ... in 2- to 4-year-olds doubled or even tripled between 1991 and 1995.” (Kalb, 53) The famous psychologist, Erik Erikson, outlined some main stages of healthy personality development. Each stage is characterized by a dominating crisis. In the second of these stages, a young child takes on characteristics that coincide with symptoms of ADD or ADHD. Basically put, what the DSM-IV deems “abnormal”, Erikson deems “normal”, even healthy. (Erikson, 63)

A child as young as two, therefore, showing normal, healthy signs of development has a good chance of being prescribed harmful drugs. The drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD, as with any drug, have dangerous side-effects. These include depression, nervousness, insomnia, impaired thinking ability, memory loss, suppression of growth in the body and brain, permanent neurological tics, including Tourette’s Syndrome, addiction, decreased learning ability (Breggin) and even death. In the cases of Stephanie Hall, 12, Cameron Pettus, 14, and Jonathan Bain, 14, the latter occurred. Stephanie was on ritalin, Cameron was on desipramine, a drug used as an alternative to ritalin, and Jonathan was on Cylert which is used to treat ADD and ADHD (Wittmeier, 29).

Ritalin itself is almost exactly the same as cocaine in the sense that, when abused, it produces the same effects as cocaine, and also produces the same side-effects. When used non-medically, ritalin is crushed and snorted like cocaine or dissolved, cooked and injected like heroin (Indiana). Cocaine is an illegal drug almost everywhere, and related horror stories are inescapable. Adults go to jail for merely having the tiniest amount of cocaine on their person, but for some reason, it’s perfectly acceptable for a two-year-old to be given ritalin on a regular basis.

Due to the fact that so many children are on ritalin, the drug’s makers have something to lose if this treatment were suddenly regarded as unethical. “Sales of Ritalin are not made public by its maker, Ciba-Geigy, but are believed to be greater than $100 million a year, according to David
Molowa, an analyst with Bear Stearns & Co. in New York.” (Sevrens & Shippen). This statement was made in 1996. Taking into account the annual rise of ADHD diagnoses is approximately 21% (Johnson, 61), four years later Ciba-Geigy would be making more than $184 million per year on ritalin sales alone, and that figure does not take into account inflation.

The industries we trust with our children’s lives are abusing this trust. Medical, mental health, education and pharmaceutical professionals are believed to possess the wisdom of well-being. When they tell us to do
something, often times we do it without question because they’ve been through years of training. They, of all people, should know what’s best. So
why are the most fragile of our species being treated with drugs likened to cocaine? “Clinicians are most likely to diagnose a disorder once they have a
treatment for it ... Give them the instruments to diagnose disorders, and everything they run into will need treatment.” (Wade & Tavris, 580). This is in reference to the DSM-IV. Before the DSM included criteria for diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder, less than 200 cases existed. As soon as the DSM included this information, diagnoses for this disorder skyrocketed (Wade & Tavris, 580). In the United States of America in 1991, the Federal Department of Education passed legislation that allowed for hundreds of dollars in grant money for schools with each case of ADHD. Since that legislation has passed, ADHD diagnoses of school children shot up drastically by an estimated 21 percent a year (Johnson, 61).

Clearly there are people who benefit each time a child is diagnosed with Attention Deficit disorder or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder and subsequently treated with drugs. The teachers no longer have class clowns, visitors to the principal’s office are few, schools get additional funding, psychologists become specialists and the pharmaceutical industry makes billions and billions of dollars. With the trust we, as humans, have in these
professionals, they could make anything into a disorder, from the unwillingness to submit to slavery to “caffeine-induced sleep disorder” (Wade & Tavris, 580). They can make parents lose sleep at night because they think there is something drastically wrong with their child. They can get
parents into such a frenzy that giving their child a cocaine-like drug seems rational. The fact that they are capable of this is not a surprise. A lot of humanity is as vicious as a rabid dog, greedy by nature, willing to do anything no matter who it hurts to get ahead. The one thing that cannot be overlooked any longer, is that the professionals in charge of these children’s lives are human, too. They aren’t perfection. Parents cannot posses blind faith in a diagnosis simply because the man who came to that diagnosis is a certified doctor, especially if it comes only after a half hour consultation. Faced with a chance to get ahead, the probability that doctors, pharmacists, and teachers will take this opportunity is no different from any other human being.

Works Cited

1. Wittmeier, Carmen. “More Reasons Not To Drug Kids”. Alberta Report / Newsmagazine. 10/11/99: p29.

2. American Psychiatric Association. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.). 1994: Washington, DC.

3. Wade, Carole & Tavris, Carol. Psychology (5th ed.). 1998: New York, NY.

4. Harvard Mental Health Letter. “Is Ritalin Underused?”. 04/00: p6.

5. Johnson. “Time To Stop Drugging Children”. Denver Business Journal. 10/29/99: p61A.

6. Kalb, Claudia. “Drugged-out Toddlers”. Newsweek. 03/06/00: p53.

7. NIS information sheet : Attention Deficit Disorders (ADDs). 1995: p1.

8. Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the Life Cycle (Reissue). 1980: Toronto, ON.


9. Indiana Prevention Resource Center. Factline on Non-Medical Use of Ritalin (methylphenidate) Factline Number 9. November, 1995

10. Breggin, Peter R., M.D. Talking Back to Ritalin. 1998: Monroe, Maine.

11. Sevrens, Julie & Shippen, Julie. “Ritalin can work wonders - but is the remedy too routine?”. Knight-Ridder News Service. 09/06/00.

posted by Robert Heard at 10:22 AM