“’When people don’t fit in, we react by giving their behavior a label, either medicalizing it, criminalizing it, or moralizing it,’ Nigg says,” (Koerth-Baker n.p.). Professor Joel Nigg, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University, made this statement in reference to the growing amount of people diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medicine for it. The amount of people with prescriptions has increased immensely over the past several years, and will continue to grow over the next several years. In this statement, Nigg is saying that society simply names something seen as a problem, rather than trying to find a solution or a reason for whatever the issue may be.
ADHD was a little known disorder until the 1990’s, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1991 included ADHD as a disability. It started to become more and more known to parents that there could be an explanation to why their child was hyperactive. The Food and Drug Administration also played a part by making the drugs used to treat ADHD more known to the public. What was once seen as a simple fact of childhood was now being seen more as a hyperactive disorder. Companies that made the medications, such as Adderall and Ritalin, would advertise to parents that the medicines would make the child smarter or more inclined to do choirs around the house. The companies would hype up the product to make parents feel like their child needed the medication in order to succeed in schooling at all or just to be a normal child. An Irish company once printed 50,000 copies of a comic book showing superheroes promoting the medication to children, saying it helped them to do their job as superheroes. As interest in ADHD as an answer to childhoo...
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... Researcher. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Cooper, Charlie. “Hyperactivity or Just Hype?.” The Independent. 20 Aug. 2013: 34. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Fured, Frank. ”Kids Don’t Need Pills, They Need Parenting.” The Independent. 14 Aug. 2013: 16 SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Koerth-Baker, Maggie. “No Diagnosis Left Behind.” New York Times Magazine. 20 Oct. 2013: 24-26. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Perry, Susan. “ADHD Is Overdiagnosed, Leading To Needless and Harmful Treatment…” MinnPost.com. 07 Nov. 2013: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.
Schwarz, Alan. “Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill.” New York Times. 10 Jun. 2012: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Schwarz, Alan. “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder.” New York Times. 15 Dec. 2013: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.
Wedge, Marilyn. Ph.D. “Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD.” Psychology Today. N.p. 8 March. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2013
Again, the children suffer the most. ADHD has dramatically risen in diagnoses, whether it is a
Zeitz, Joshua M. "The Big Lie about the Little Pill," NEED NAME OF PAPER OR JOURNAL27 Dec. 2004: A17.
At least one in four families in the U.S. is affected by mental illnesses. Unfortunately there is no cure for this range of illnesses, which have been around for thousands of years. Of the American adult population, 5.4 percent have a serious mental illness. These health conditions are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, behavior, or some combination of these. They are also associated with distress and sometimes impaired functioning. In 1990 the total cost of mental health services in the U.S. was $148 billion. According to a new report by the Mental Health Foundation, one in five children suffer from a mental health problem. Attention deficit hyperactive disorder is a mental illness that is diagnosed mainly in young children and doesn’t always disappear in adulthood.” All we know is that this genetic, inherited condition [ADHD] is not due to brain damage at all but rather a variation in how the brain functions.” Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) includes symptoms and characteristics that can be placed in one of three categories: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. These characteristics commonly leave a person with ADHD with lack of attention span, easily distracted, fidgety, struggling to stay seated, having trouble engaging in calm activities, impatient, and talking excessively or out of turn. A new study by researchers says that hyperactive children have behavioral differences due to under active parts of their brain, a biological malfunction, rather than due to way they were brought up. This was revealed by a magnetic scanning device that allowed researchers to look at the brains of children diagnosed with ADHD. These studies and statistics reinforce the claim that mental illnesses are not invented simply to justify drugging of children and a disease that needs be educated to the public for better understanding. Rather, ADHD is an illness that affects many people throughout their lives. This topic is often misunderstood by the public. The media and medical community need to educate the positive side of this controversy and not just show the opposing view, which often times misrepresented by the media.
ADHD is an exceedingly real diagnosis for many children in the United States. Are we over diagnosing our little ones just to keep from dealing with unpleasant behavior? “ On average 1 of every 10 to 15 children in the United States has been diagnosed with the disorder, and 1 in every 20 to 25 uses a stimulant medication” (Mayes, Bagwell, & Erkulwater, 2008). Several believe that virtually all ADHD diagnoses are retractable with appropriate discipline of children instead of being so hasty in medicating them. The material found on the CDC website describes facts about ADHD, it clarifies the signs, symptoms, types, causes, diagnosis tools, and treatment forms of ADHD. What the article neglects to go into is the reality that there is a considerable amount of controversy surrounding ADHD. The CDCs usage of ethos, pathos, and logos and by what method the website manipulates them to affect the reader will be the basis of this paper.
As a college student, the amount of students on powerful meds for ADHD and ADD is shocking. It is a topic seen in every classroom and heard in many dialogues. Conversations can be overheard frequently about how easy meds are to get and how effortless it is to receive a diagnosis. However, while I know that a vast number of students are taking prescription drugs for ADHD, I don’t think that I ever realized the full extent to which this disorder was effecting America’s youth. It wasn’t until I spent my time volunteering as a paraprofessional in a fourth grade classroom that I felt I truly understood the weight that the number of ADHD diagnosis’s were having on our nation’s children. The supervising teacher I was working with told me that in her classroom of 22 children, six of them were on some sort of prescription medication for ADHD, and many parents that I spoke to tended to blow off the risk factors involved, remarking that the drugs improved their school performance. I was shocked at this figure, especially because after working with the children, even on the days that they forgot to take their medicine, I found that by using different methods of instruction, many of the children didn’t seem to have much less trouble focusing than the children who did not have ADHD. So when we were assigned this paper, I set out to disprove the myth that children who act out in school have must ADHD and need to be put on prescription drugs in order to do well in school.
A diagnosis found that out of the 15 percent of high-school age children who take ADHD pills, the true rate of children needing to be medicated is closer to 5 percent. This over-diagnosis and prescription is a direct result of intense, multi-million dollar marketing campaigns of ADHD medication by the drug makers, through celebrity ads as well print and television ads that prompt patients and their families to ask doctors about those specific drugs. And the tactic has paid off, with a quintupling of stimulant sales since 2002, to over $8 billion in revenues.
Stolzer, PhD, J. M. (2007). The ADHD Epidemic in America. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 9, 109-116.
National Institute of Mental Health (1999). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Retrieved April 2, 2003 from www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.cfm#adhd3
Koerth-Baker, Maggie. “The Not So-Hidden Cause Behind the ADHD Epidemic.” New York Times, New York Times Company. 15 Oct 2013. Web. 21 April 2014.
According to Dr. Robert Epstein, Medco’s chief medical officer, seventeen percent of total drug cost spending last year was for behavior medicines; compared with sixteen percent for both asthma and antibiotics, eleven percent for skin disorders and six percent for allergy medicines. There was also a 369% increase in spending on ADHD drugs for kids under the age of five. A lot of children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and many of their parents have opted to give them behavioral drugs. Some parents give the drugs because they are not aware of the long term effects or the psychological dependency, and lastly because they are not aware of the alternatives. As parents we have to be more cognizant of what these disorders are and how they affect the child. Drugs are not always the only solution.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a psychiatric disorder that causes children to have problems with paying attention, trouble with following instructions, have impulsive behaviors and become easily distracted. Medications, such as Adderall and Ritalin, are used to treat the symptoms of this disorder by helping the patient to focus and pay attention while also curbing their impulsive behavior and hyperactivity. Side effects of these medications are, but not limited to, anxiety, addiction and in some cases psychosis. Proponents of giving ADHD medication to children argue that ADHD is a real disorder in children and the medication does improve the symptoms of the disorder by a large margin as well as being cost effective. Also, not only are the parents happy with the outcome of their children taking the prescribed medication but so are the children themselves. Proponents also argue that by not letting parents of the children, young adults and adults choose to take these prescriptions when diagnosed with ADHD that the medical and psychiatric communities would be in violation of the principle of autonomy. Justice as well would be violated since most of the burden of dealing with all the symptoms caused by this disorder would fall onto those with ADHD and partly on their families. Opponents of giving ADHD medication to children point out that it is not only going to children with ADHD but also being prescribed to those not diagnosed with the disorder as well as the pills being given or sold to other children and young adults. They also claim that the full side effects of ADHD medication are still not known and could have harmful long- lasting side effects on the children taking the medications. In this case, the princip...
In recent years, a new phenomenon has been sweeping through the country. People, mainly college students, are taking medications typically prescribed for ADHD in order to enhance their cognitive performance. In “Brain Gain: The Underground World of ‘Neuroenhancing’ Drugs,” Margaret Talbot chronicles the stories of people who have had firsthand experiences with these drugs and leads the reader to consider their implications and consequences. The very purposeful structuring, phrasing, and evidence all come together to craft a fairly convincing argument that these “neuroenhancers” are causing problems in which that the general populace is not yet aware.
During my childhood, many of my cousins have been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. They have been restricted from many different foods with high amounts of sugar because they became “hyper”. Because of the lack of information about ADHD, children are diagnosed very late and they have not received the proper treatment needed. Today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), have been helping spread information about various diseases including ADHD. The website provides types, diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment options for ADHD and many more diseases. While reading the web page, readers may find specific details about the authors’ writing and different tools they used to persuade the audience. The CDC spreads information and provides comfort to parents, and those suffering from ADHD by utilizing rhetorical devices such as logos, ethos, and pathos effectively.