Is ADHD Fakery On the Rise?

[kong]

Is ADHD Fakery On the Rise?
Faking ADHD has become the latest strategy high school students use to gain the upper hand in the college admissions game, says a January 25th Daily Beast article. Parents (and in particular those whose children attend “elite Manhattan” private schools — I’ve known at least one) have become “amenable to lightweight diagnoses like ADHD that won’t brand kids with a scarlet letter while applying to schools” and seek out neuropsychological testing for children whose “ADHD” may be more perceived, if not pretend, than actual. The reason is the “accommodations” a student with ADHD can receive, such as more time to take standardized tests like the SAT, more time for assignments and even alternative assignments and access to medications including Ritalin and Adderall.
The Daily Beast cites a 2002 study by the College Board (which administers the SAT) that indeed shows that there has been an “increase in the number of applicants who take tests in nonstandard conditions.” Certainly, the number of students diagnosed with ADHD has increased in recent years, with nearly 1 out of 10 children in the US now diagnosed with the condition. More students may be diagnosed with ADHD because parents, pediatricians and teachers are better informed about it and aware of how accommodations can a help a child succeed. But as the Daily Beast suggests, greater awareness of ADHD can also mean that more parties will seek a diagnosis, whether a student really has had lifelong struggles with focusing, controlling impulsive behavior and hyperactivity.
Faking ADHD: Easier Than You May Think
A 2010 study in the journal Psychological Assessment found that it is not too difficult for college students, armed with some quick Google research, to feign ADHD. Professor David Berry of the University of Kentucky and his colleagues had a group of college students — some who had ADHD and were not taking their medication, and some who had been instructed to pretend to have ADHD — take two self-report tests, the ADHA Rating Scale (ARS) and the Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS). The researchers found that such self-report assessments had “no value” in detecting those who were only pretending to have ADHD. Saying that you have “attention issues” or “problems focusing” has become commonplace, but there are plenty of children, teenagers and adults who have ADHD — whose brains are “differently wired” — and who have faced immense challenges not only in taking tests and completing homework, but in everything from social interactions to sports, with effects on their self-confidence and sense of self-worth.
Growing Up With ADHD But Without a Diagnosis
My husband Jim has really severe ADHD and would tell anyone in a second that he’s had it all his life, as did his late mother. Jim was pegged with having “minimal brain damage” by a school psychologist in high school after spending his childhood being censured, and worse, by his parents for being unable to pay attention, sit still and stop talking. In those days (the 1960s), such behaviors were met not with testing, services and compassion, but with nuns (Jim attended Catholic school) taping his mouth shut and punishing him by keeping him after school to write “I will not misbehave in school” hundreds of times.
When Jim (he’s now a professor of cultural studies and religion in New York) visited a psychologist some years ago, he was told he definitely has ADHD (in contrast to a number of other people who had self-diagnosed themselves with ADHD and sought out the psychologist’s stamp of approval).
If the “faking ADHD college admissions strategy” is indeed the case — if an ADHD diagnosis is being understood as another tool to give a student an “advantage” in getting into a top college — it is a regrettable sign of the lengths students, and their parents, will go just to be able to put a sticker with [insert name of Ivy League school here] on the back of their SUV. Faking an ADHD diagnosis simply to “get ahead” in college admissions and in one’s educational performance does a real disservice — is a slap in the face — to those individuals who actually have ADHD and real, documented learning disabilities such as dyslexia and whose struggles in the classroom need to be taken seriously rather than discounted.

[kong]

Ritalin and Adderall are the drugs prescribed for ADHD and are unproven, they do not know the long term effects they have and are handed out way too easy. I feel this is another escuse to keep the citizens of this country "drugged up" and under control. also this keeps people using these drugs for the rest of their lives and keeps the money flow into the pockets of the drug companies. I know there are natural herbs that have the same results without the after effects

[kong]

3 Million Kids on ADD/ADHD Drugs: Not a Long-Term Solution

Ritalin and ADD/ADHD have become so closely associated with each other that to mention the one is to imply the other. Indeed, at the end of last year, a mild panic arose over a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. Three million children now take such medications, a 20-fold increase in the past 30 years. L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, says that the use of drugs in the name of helping children with attention issues is a case of “Ritalin gone wrong.” In a New York Times op-ed, Sroufe argues that based on his 40 years of studying the development of “troubled children,” the drugs are not effective in the long-term. Our overuse of them is a sign of insufficiently understanding of what ADD is and of not taking enough into account how experiences in early childhood can affect children’s development.

Drugs and ADD/ADHD

While stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall do increase attention in the short term, “when given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems.” Furthermore children develop a tolerance for the drugs over time. A 2009 study that examined how four different treatments affected children with attention problems over a number of years yielded inconsistent results:

The study randomly assigned almost 600 children with attention problems to four treatment conditions. Some received medication alone, some cognitive-behavior therapy alone, some medication plus therapy, and some were in a community-care control group that received no systematic treatment. At first this study suggested that medication, or medication plus therapy, produced the best results. However, after three years, these effects had faded, and by eight years there was no evidence that medication produced any academic or behavioral benefits.

Despite a lack of evidence, many “well-meaning” parents, therapists and teachers have, says Sroufe, have come to believe that medication is necessary based on research linking ADD/ADHD to different neural functioning.

…findings in neuroscience are being used to prop up the argument for drugs to treat the hypothesized “inborn defect.” These studies show that children who receive an A.D.D. diagnosis have different patterns of neurotransmitters in their brains and other anomalies. While the technological sophistication of these studies may impress parents and nonprofessionals, they can be misleading. Of course the brains of children with behavior problems will show anomalies on brain scans. It could not be otherwise. Behavior and the brain are intertwined. Depression also waxes and wanes in many people, and as it does so, parallel changes in brain functioning occur, regardless of medication.

I do think it is necessary to continually reevaluate the use of medications for children, but Sroufe is too quickly dismissive of findings from neuroscience about ADD/ADHD, perhaps due to his emphasis on the social and interpersonal environment a child is raised in. His own research has involved a several-years study of 200 low-income children who are “therefore more vulnerable to behavior problems”; 50 percent of the children qualified for some sort of psychiatric diagnosis as adolescents and 14 percent for ADHD.

In affluent families, Sroufe writes that behavior problems can result too, from stresses including domestic violence, lack of social support from friends or relatives, chaotic living situations, including frequent moves, and, especially, patterns of parental intrusiveness that involve stimulation for which the baby is not prepared.”

ADD/ADHD and Being “Differently Wired”

Sroufe’s discounting of neuroscience findings and his emphasis on early childhood experience — on the interpersonal environment a child is raised in — may not sit so well with parents and others.


Parents too often find themselves deciding to give a child Ritalin or Adderall out of clear and present worries about a student’s performance in school and overall well-being. But there is a general sense among many that it is best to be wary about giving children too medications or even any at all, precisely due to the side effects that Sroufe expresses concerns about, and to worries about a child becoming over-dependent on little pills from a bottle. Parents, teachers and therapists are, indeed, ever on the lookout for other ways to help children focus. These include diet and exercise and also an understanding of the sensory problems that can accompany an ADD/ADHD diagnosis. Small innovations such as changing the lighting in a room or allowing students to stand up while studying can make a huge difference.

My teenage son Charlie is on the moderate to severe end of the autism spectrum and takes a number of medications. Autism is understood to be a neurodevelopmental disorder today but once parents were blamed for causing it, by withdrawing emotionally from their young children and not bonding with them. Accordingly, I am wary of Sroufe’s emphasis on experience and environment as at the root of attention disorders, and all the more so as my husband Jim has ADHD (he’s been diagnosed by a number of professionals and is actually lecturing soon on this very topic). In the course of taking care of Charlie (who is only minimally verbal) and getting a better understanding of how his brain functioning is tied to his behaviors (Charlie does not have seizures but anti-epileptic medication helps him a lot), Jim has gotten a better sense of how he himself is “wired differently.” Exercise has been especially helpful for him (and for Charlie), as well as the understanding that, even when he appears not to be paying attention, he really is.

Yes, we need better solutions for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin and Adderall. But also necessary is a better understanding that some of us are “neurologically wired” in different ways and that this can indeed affect your early childhood development and how people respond to you.

[kong]

I am really scared when it comes to all these drugs being handed out far too easily. what is Ritalin and Adderall, just forms of speed which is banned. got problems just take a pill

[Oldschool]

i spent most of my elementary and middle school years on ritalin... that shit stunted my growth both weight and height as i went into high school like 4 foot 8 and 68 pounds

Didn't anyone notice you were obviously in need of some medical attention? What long term effects did it have after you were off of it???

[kong]

I know it is habit forming, and has side effects, DJ, you should stay on top of this. if they ever bring in a lawsuit against these people you should be all over it!