Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD

This man is an expert on the affects of this drug on the brains of children, at a time when the drig companies are moving to sell more drugs at any cost to the humans receiving them. Most of the test results are not made public, bad results are hidden, and law suits for harm done are settled out of court and paid off. There is a movement afoot to test very small children to see if there is an excuse to give them ritalin or adderal.

Must read for parents, therapists, doctors, teachers, !

Dr. Breggin has become a leading critic of the standard psychiatric approach to labeling and treating children with challenging behavioral symptoms. This book is a thorough examination of the scientific debate as well as political, economic, and psychosocial factors involved in the issue. Breggin makes many excellent points in this book about the interactions between body, mind, and environment that are largely ignored by most medical and mental health professionals. Drugs are routinely used as a form of chemical restraint, even though the withdrawal phase of the drugs actually triggers the "imbalances" and likelihood of misbehaviors that they are supposed to treat. Those who believe the medications are a wonderful way of controlling behavior believe this out of ignorance of alternative approaches to really helping the child become physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. It is easy to just continually drug someone into submission, but in other contexts this is usually considered an abuse of human rights. The lack of responsibility and commitment by adults toward finding ways of helping children develop positive motivation and social skills is certainly one factor in the epidemic of psychiatric labeling and psychotropic drug prescriptions. The incompetence of physicians to identify real physical issues that impact children's ability to concentrate, such as poor nutrition, neurological impairment, allergies, exposure to drugs and toxins, and hormonal disturbances, is another factor. The propaganda and social programming that falsely claim mental illness is biologically determined is another factor. Having worked in the mental health field in Florida as a licensed counselor for several years, I have observed much of what Breggin talks about. Children who are labeled "ADD" in one school or home environment suddenly appear normal when their family environment becomes less stressful or when they are placed with a more compassionate teacher or in a less stressful educational setting, such as a Montessori school. When children form more positive relationships they are often suddenly able to concentrate adequately and remain more calm when necessary. Meanwhile, I have seen many children who became depressed or bipolar as an apparent effect of their medications, and have seen no lasting progress associated with drug treatments. That adults treat highly active and inattentive children poorly and treat subdued children better is true, but that is a problem of the adults that is being displaced onto the children who are given drugs that are addictive and perpetuate the child's lack of self-motivated control. There are multiple parenting and educational programs that have successfully reversed "ADD/ADHD" behavior patterns, even in supposedly severe cases, by merely helping adults minimize their emotional reactions to the targeted negative behaviors and increasing positive social attention given to the children. The physical correlates of ADD/ADHD symptom patterns are typically modulated by the psychological factors present in the individual, and cannot usually be considered to be the root causal source of the symptoms. Various alternative medicine approaches, from naturopathy, oriental medicine, energy medicine, mind-body stress management, nutritional therapy, and more have shown usefulness in reversing the ADD/ADHD symptoms, as these target various levels of the pattern, ranging from emotions, stress, and subtle energy disturbances to nutritional imbalances and metabolic disturbances, with the physical disturbances usually being triggered or facilitated in some way by non-physical (psychological & psychosocial) issues. Mental health clinics and physicians have become increasingly controlled and programmed by the pharmaceutical industry. They are showered with gifts, including boxloads of office supplies (featuring drug ads) and brochures with misleading information about "disorders" and pharmaceutical company ads for patients as well as trips and meals, typically delivered by attractive young women and less often by young men pharmaceutical reps [all of whom become speechless or irritated when you try to discuss the actual safety and efficacy of the drugs with them beyond letting them repeat their script]. I have seen all this myself, and see the pharmaceutical paraphernalia all over the office of the agency I've worked at, as well as seeing psychiatrists routinely prescribe drugs with no medical exam or any other basis than the intent to briefly manipulate mood and behavior - things anyone could do using street drugs, which happen to manipulate neurotransmitter systems the same way that prescribed drugs do. I commend Dr. Breggin for his efforts to wake people from the massive deceptions and denials governing mental health care and the topic of ADD/ADHD.

A great and scientifically documented boom.

Dr. Breggin is wonderful as are all of his books.

I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.