The diagnoses of ADD and ADHD are currently applied to 8.4 percent of US children, a total of 5.2 million (National Institute of Health). About 2.8 million of these children are taking stimulant medications to manage their symptoms.
The benefits and risks of stimulant medications continue to be debated, with problems ranging from children becoming addicted to the medication, teenagers trafficking it on the black market, danger for those with heart problems, and higher risks of bipolar and schizophrenia symptoms for children who use it long term.
A recent article in Scientific American underscored some of the issues being raised in animal research on the side effects of stimulant medication. Of serious concern is the fact that stimulants appear to affect dopamine neurons in the nuceus accumbens, the reward center of the brain, in ways that physiologically are very similar to brain alterations seen in cocaine addiction. Dopamine neurons develop unusual growths of spiny projections, and there appears to be an abnormal rate of atrophy of dopamine neurons.
The behavioral consequences? Juvenile animals treated with stimulants, even for just a short time, grow up to be apathetic and unresponsive to normal rewards in their environment, a problem often noted in cocaine addicts.
Questions about the differential diagnosis of ADHD include the fact that in two thirds of cases it co-occurs with anxiety, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder. In these correlations there is a suggestion of developmental trauma or fight/flight/freeze arousal, which can drastically reduce circulation to the cerebral cortex and make concentration on abstract tasks impossible.
In support of this concern, the World Health Organization states that “the diagnosis of ADHD can represent family dysfunction or inadequacies in the education system rather than individual psychopathology.”
European nations have resisted the medication approach and have expressed grave concerns about the American approach to treating attention disorders, a concern reflected in the fact that 95% of the entire world’s Ritalin usage each year is American and Canadian consumption.
Research on the effectiveness of stimulant medications has been criticized by the FDA for being incomplete, of poor quality, and showing little in the way of long-term follow-up. However, the pharmaceutical companies are becoming as good at search engine optimization as they are at television advertising, so that glowing endorsements of stimulant medication treatments dominate the results of a casual internet search on the topic.
Join me on Friday, February 10 to find out more about attention deficit disorder, its diagnosis, its causes, and a variety of viable treatments that do not involve medications.
This program will broadcast live on 1480 AM and will simulcast with video streaming on internet television at http://healingtalkradio.
Research Sources and Links:
studies on Neurofeedback treatment of ADHD: multiple studies are listed at http://www.eeginfo.com/research/adhd_main.html
CDC statistics on incidence of ADD and ADHD: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/adhd.htm
Study on rates of adhd medication published on Sept. 28 online edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, as reported in http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/09/28/number-of-us-kids-on-adhd-meds-keeps-rising
article in Scientific American by Dr.Edmond S. Higgins ”Do ADHD Drugs Take a Toll on the Brain? http://amphetamines.com/adhd/drugsbrain.html
Website on Sensory Integration Yoga: http://www.yogachicago.com/mar10/mira.shtml
“Boys Adrift”, book by Dr. Leonard Sax. Information on stimulant medications is on pages 79-90. This book is available at: http://www.boysadrift.com/
Information and research on Brain Gym http://www.braingym.org/studies