How Diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is Big Business

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a serious neurodevelopment disorder that has affected an innumerable number of children and adults in the United States (Centers for disease Control and Prevention, 2013). It is one of the most common disorders that can cause difficulty at school and home and can also remain into adulthood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)publishes a web page on ADHD to inform and persuade the public that ADHD is a condition that they should be concerned about. The web page provides facts on symptoms, diagnosis, causes, treatment plans, concerns, statistics and research to help expand the audience’s knowledge on the disorder. The CDC employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos, logos ethos and logos effectively by successfully employing emotional appeals, providing convincing fact and statistics, and building credibility by providing resources and evidence.

In 2015, the pharmaceutical industry spent over 27 billion dollars on advertising. The two greatest components of this effort were promotional advertising and free medication sampling, which the pharmaceuticals invested 15.5 and 5.7 billion dollars respectively (“Persuading the Prescribers”). Promotional advertising involves direct contact with health professionals, the most common being extravagant lunch conferences held for physicians and their staff. On the other hand, sampling involves distributing free sample of medications to physicians, who then have a choice of providing these samples to patients. As a result of these methods, the industry has seen revenue around $400 billion with 90% of physicians having a relationship with a drug company (Campbell 2007). Moreover, the prices of prescriptions continue to rise; a copay of a generic drug is $11.72, preferred brand drug is $36.37 and a specialty drug is $58.37 (Coleman and Geneson 2014). Although the profits are immense in the numbers demonstrated above, it is no surprise when pharmaceutical drug companies elevate their prices even more. For instance, recently Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of their medication Daraprim from $13.50 to $750. Keep in mind, this medication is used for threatening parasitic infections, aids, and cancer with alternative options currently found to be inefficient (Pollack 2015). Another example of this practice involves cycloserine, a drug used to

In today's fast-paced society, it seems that prescription drugs are a more reasonable and reliable solution for children and adults than diet and exercise for the "disease" known as ADHD. Rather than take the time to play with their children, or institute a proper diet, it seems that increasing numbers of parents would rather treat their children's unexplained zest for life with pills and doctors. While there are some explanations and reasons for the diagnosis of this popular disease, most children are improperly diagnosed, and are therefore taking unneeded medication. This medication is costly and it can be argued those who benefit from the sale of these drugs most are the

The trend of over medicating children with ADHD is labeled well with the phrase anesthetization of our youth. “Anesthetize- deprive if feeling or awareness.” (Oxford Dictionary, 2014) Many children often express to their parents that they feel as if they are a walking zombie. A child may find that they are having memory issues, are not quite themselves, and feel overly drowsy. “ADHD medications often change a child’s personality creating what many kids with ADHD (and their parents) refer to as a zombie state or making them more aggressive.” (Barnett H., P. 1, 2013) Children with ADHD have other options for treatment but unfortunately medications are pushed on them at an alarming rate. The government paved the road for the pharmaceutical industry for ADHD medications in the 1990’s.

Bell continued to interview a journalist named Greg Critser, who authored the book “Generation RX,” which is about the relationship between America and pharmaceuticals. He exclaims that drug companies advertise their product so much that it internalizes inside individuals that the drugs they’re selling are good and not poison, then he continued where the drug is somewhat of a poison where it kills another thing off to benefit another. Pharmaceutical companies also lobby the political side of their ambitions to cover up the negative side of their

The increase of ADHD is a trend because it has been occurring for several years. ADHD is one of the most well – known neurodevelopmental disorders Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), (2016). The possible consequences of the increase of ADHD is that the ADHD diagnosis will continue to rise, patients will not receive proper care, and ADHD diagnosis and medication will be overused. According to Gordon, J (2013) a study from the state of California showed the diagnosis of ADHD increased by twenty-four percent between the years 2001 and 2011. The awareness of ADHD may have contributed to increasing of ADHD diagnosis in the United States. Many doctors and physicians have noticed the rise in ADHD diagnosis occurring over the past several years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered in their data that parent-reported cases of ADHD led to the increase by 22 percent between the years 2003 and 2007 Gordon, J

Over the past couple of decades there has been a huge increase in the diagnosis and prescriptions given out for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. According to a news report done by USA Today over the past five years use of ADHD medications have risen 40% totaling 39.5 million individual prescriptions ("New findings," 2009). When statistics like this are seen it is only normal for someone to ask questions. People are becoming curious about the legitimacy of the disorder, and whether or not the treatments being given to individuals are appropriate. The argument seems to be strong on both sides of the fence, but the extensive research done on ADHD leaves it hard for one to believe that it is a made up disorder.

Annually, the US spends $300 billion dollars on pharmaceutical drugs. This is due to the over-diagnosing of certain conditions. Everyday, Americans are exposed to an enormous amount of advertisements for medications of all kinds. For example, 1 in 10 Americans are taking

We in America tend to take medications for almost any problem we have, from headaches to gastrointestinal pain, to more serious chronic disorders such as depression and attention deficit disorder. While many of the uses of such medications may be necessary and legitimate, many are not, and due to this fact, many people become dependent on medications, mentally, and or physically. This problem is not simply the fault of the individual; in fact, the blame can also be placed upon the medical community, and the pharmaceutical companies who produce the drugs. How often can one turn on the television to see advertisements for Claritin, Aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, or even Zoloft or Ritalin? The pharmaceutical industry is motivated by monetary

Well-known investigative journalist and analyst commonly known as the “myth buster,” Michael Fumento discusses the controversy surrounding ADHD and its treatment in his article Trick Question: A Liberal Hoax Turns Out to Be True. His work primarily consists of the debunking of common misconceptions about topics such as abortion, vaccines, and ADHD, which is exactly what this article is composed of. Multiple misconceptions about ADHD are disproven in the article by the inclusion of facts that prove the authenticity of the disorder and the resultant need for medicinal treatment like Ritalin. In doing this, Fumento supports and presents the main claim of the article, which is that ADHD is a true disorder. Fumento’s purpose is to disprove false conservative ideologies surrounding ADHD and to convince readers that treatment is needed. He adopts a sarcastic and almost aggressive tone in order to convince

When asked most people will say they are on at least one medication whether it be something over the counter or prescription. John Tirman in his book “100 Ways America Is Screwing up the World” writes about Big Pharma and how it has become both a domestic and global problem. Tirman discusses how American drug companies have a greater profit margin then most fortune 500 companies writing, “in 2004, the top nine American drug companies- this listed on Fortune 500- made median profit margin of 16 percent of revenues compared with 5.23 percent for other Fortune 500 industries” (Tirman 90). He goes on to talk more about how Big Pharma is dominating the industry, telling the reader that they are spending more on advertising than research. Tirman

The documentary Selling Sickness, directed by Catherine Scott, takes a fascinating look at the pharmaceutical industry, and the corruption that exists there. It explores the over-prescription of anti-depressants, the marketing of drugs by drug companies, and how easily corruptible the entire medical industry is. The documentary is largely focused on Paxil, a drug used to treat anxiety disorders, and Zoloft, an anti-depressant. Paxil in particular uses extreme marketing strategies to spread the word about their medication to get name recognition (Scott, 2004). In the documentary, a woman even says that she self-diagnosed with social anxiety based off a Paxil commercial, and was prescribed the medication by her doctor with no questions asked

he drastic increases in prescription drug abuse rates reflect a major pub- lic health crisis in this country. As Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated: “The spikes in prescrip- tion drug abuse rates . . . are dramatic, pervasive, and deeply disturbing.”46 The widespread problem raises a number of questions about the ease of obtaining prescription drugs and the lack of effective oversight by both the medical community and the government. As Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist who worked on the Anna Nicole Smith case, stated in an interview with ABC News: “How are these people getting four or five drugs each with a psychotropic component? . . . Where is the federal government? Where

Prescription drug advertisements have a negative impact on Americans by causing them to become hypochondriacs in a certain way. A hypochondriac is someone who believes and becomes obsessed with the idea that they have a serious condition that was and is undiagnosed. This problem continues to have a negative affect because it can lead to unnecessarily prescribing. Patients are going into their doctors and they are requesting to be put on these drugs because of the great affects that they have heard that they do for them. In the article, Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising, the author states that in a study done over this and the results were that, when these request were made at about 40 percent of doctor visits and during this time more

Out of all the doctors I saw, there’s only one I will never forget. For three years he continued to feed my amphetamine addiction, Adderall. I hate him for that. As an addict, I played the “I don’t notice any difference in my attention span” card and it actually worked. He was being paid three-hundred dollars an hour to support my addiction. It was all about money to him. “Will you be paying cash or credit card?” If he had cared about me as a patient, he would have realized that prescribing me excessive amounts of Adderall was only going to set me up for failure. After three years of being prescribed four times the average amount, I got smart, and it ruined my life. It all started in my senior year of high school. Everybody I hung out with was either smoking pot or cigarettes. Not me, I was snorting Adderall daily, and smoking cigarettes like a chimney. People started to figure out why I was so skinny, ninety-six pounds and five-foot-five-inches tall. My secret was out, and here was the perfect chance to see who liked to do what I did in the bathroom every day. By the end of week one, I had three people to sell whatever was left of my Adderall prescription. Within a month, I was making over one-thousand dollars a month. I was a naïve seventeen-year-old girl, who got money hungry. The psychiatrist I was seeing was making so much money just by supplying my bad habit, and I figured why not make the money he took from my family back by selling what he was prescribing me. It