Why are we still giving any credence to the fraudulent diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? Because we’ve been bombarded since 1902 by public relations and marketing campaigns designed to provide psychiatrists, psychologists, and pharmaceutical companies with new patients and to sell drugs.
In 1987, ADHD was literally voted into existence by a show of hands of American Psychiatric Association members and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this, and to expand the client base it has also been associated with Asperger syndrome and Autism spectrum disorder.
The DSM-5 actually has six separate ADHD-related diagnoses:
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Combined presentation
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Predominantly hyperactive/impulsive presentation
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Predominantly inattentive presentation
- Other specified attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- Unspecified attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
plus other related diagnoses using various wordings:
- Other specified disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorder
- Unspecified disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorder
- Child or adolescent antisocial behavior
- Academic or educational problem
- Adjustment disorder
- Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
- Global developmental delay
- Intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
- Unspecified intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
- Other circumstances related to child neglect
- Other specified neurodevelopmental disorder
- Social (pragmatic) communication disorder
- Unspecified communication disorder
- Unspecified neurocognitive disorder
- Unspecified neurodevelopmental disorder
- Unspecified problem related to unspecified psychosocial circumstances
plus a host of additional disorders characterized by “behavioral disturbance.”
ADHD actually represents the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, reading difficulty, tiredness, street drugs, nutritional deficiency, toxic overload, and many kinds of underlying physical illness.
“ADHD remains a controversial condition as it is based on a subjective set of diagnostic criteria. There is no biological assessment for the condition and diagnosis comes from the use of subjective checklists of different types of behaviour.” [from the British Psychological Society]
“The use of ADHD drugs like Ritalin to control ‘non-compliant’ pupils is ‘politically totalitarian, physiologically inhumane’ and reminiscent of Stalin’s Russia, leading educational psychologists have said.” [from TES, originally Times Educational Supplement, an online network of teachers]
“If the only symptom of a child’s ADHD is their non-compliant and irritating behaviour, then control and compliance at home and in school achieved using drugs might also appear politically totalitarian, physiologically inhumane, a serious safeguarding issue, and in contravention of basic human rights and freedoms enshrined in international law at this time.” [also from TES]
The British Psychological Society says that giving stimulant medication to children under 5 years old is antithetical to safeguarding them.
Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an ADHD diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. These children need the adults in their lives to give them additional attention and to find and treat the actual causes.
There is no valid ADHD test for children. There is no valid ADHD test for adults. ADHD in adults is just as bogus as ADHD in children.
The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis is simply a list of behaviors that may appear disruptive or inappropriate, or that a psychiatrist or psychologist has decided they do not like.
No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.
Any parent whose child has been falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms the child should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.
Download and read the free CCHR booklet “Child Drugging — Psychiatry Destroying Lives — Report and recommendations on fraudulent psychiatric diagnosis and the enforced drugging of youth” for more information.
