The FDA has approved a video game as a prescription “treatment” for ADHD.
The video game, called EndeavorRx from Akili Interactive Labs and approved on June 15, 2020, is prescription only and aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 12 with certain diagnoses of ADHD, specifically “children ages 8-12 years old with primarily inattentive or combined-type ADHD, who have a demonstrated attention issue.”
Of course, they recommend using harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs along with it.
We believe they approved it so that it can be marketed as an ADHD therapy, thus giving it a built-in patient base, and expanding upon the burgeoning digital entrepreneurship of the psychiatric industry.
Consistent with the FDA’s handling of psychiatric drugs, they list a series of possible side effects: frustration, headache, dizziness, emotional reaction and aggression. No surprises there.
Video Game Disorder
On the other hand, there has been a distinct effort in the psychiatric industry to make video-game-playing itself a mental illness.
The psychiatric industry has long attempted to make games the subject of mental disorders, so they can prescribe harmful psychotropic drugs and other fraudulent psychiatric treatments and make some money off of it. The International Classification of Diseases Revision 11 (ICD-11) has a category called “Gaming disorder”, in which a person is labeled mentally ill for persistently playing digital or video games.
What do you think? Can they have it both ways? Can they recommend a video game as a mental health treatment on the one hand, and say that playing video games is a mental disorder on the other hand? We think not. We think psychiatry is just demonstrating its basic purpose to harm and defraud.
ADHD is a Fraudulent Diagnosis
This is all not even to mention that ADHD is a fraudulent diagnosis. In 1987, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (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). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this.
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.
Perhaps playing a video game can help relieve some of these symptoms; but making it prescription only? We think that’s just a ploy to corner a market. How transparent can you get?
Since there are no valid clinical tests which can prove the existence of ADHD as a mental disorder, there are equally no clinical tests which can show if playing a video game cures it. The whole effort is a hoax.
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 other psychiatric treatments are not workable.
