preview

ritalin Essay

Good Essays

Parents throughout the country are being pressured and compelled by schools to give psychiatric drugs to their children. Teachers, school psychologists, and administrators commonly make dire threats about their inability to teach children without medicating them. They sometimes suggest that only medication can stave off a bleak future of delinquency and occupational failure. They even call child protective services to investigate parents for child neglect and they sometimes testify against parents in court.
Often the schools recommend particular physicians who favor the use of stimulant drugs to control behavior. These stimulant drugs include methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, and Metadate) or forms of amphetamine (Dexedrine and …show more content…

The rates for boys were not disclosed but probably exceeded 15%. With 53 million children enrolled in school, probably more than 5 million are taking stimulant drugs.
A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Zito and her colleagues has demonstrated a three-fold increase in the prescription of stimulants to 2-4 year old toddlers.
II. The Dangers of Stimulant Medication
Until recently, no studies have systematically examined the rate of psychotic symptoms caused by routine treatment with stimulant drugs such as methylphenidate
(Ritalin) and amphetamine (Dexedrine, Adderall). Doctors who prescribe stimulant drugs often seem forgetful to the fact that they can cause psychoses, including manic-like and schizophrenic-like disorders. Without providing a scientific basis, the literature often cities rates of 1% or less for stimulant-induced psychoses.
The rate of psychotic symptoms that appear during stimulant treatment has recently been investigated in a 5-year retrospectives study of children diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADH). Among 192 children diagnosed with ADHD at the Canadian clinic, 98 had been placed on stimulant drugs, mostly methylphenidate.
Psychotic symptoms developed in more than 9% of the children treated with methylphenidate. The psychotic symptoms caused by methylphenidate included

Get Access