October = ADHD Awareness Month
I just wrote a piece on HealthyPlace on why ADHD Awareness Month is important, only to read a blurb in the New York Times about the bestseller ADHD Nation: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic by Alan Schwarz.
What frustrates me is that critics of ADHD diagnosis and treatment often have very good points. Access to therapy is often less convenient and more expensive than access to medication. There is indeed racism in our medical system, and sometimes the patient’s environment is not taken into account during diagnoses. Plus, many would agree that drug companies have FAR too much power in this country.
But it is so frustrating that these critics throw out the baby with the bathwater. They end up invalidating research and the experiences of those with ADHD, using fear tactics that are frequently unscientific. For example, they love to trot out horror stories of people who take ADHD medication, often illegally or at least not as prescribed, and who meet a terrible end. They ignore or brush over those who are helped by it.
Then reviewers continue to use these unscientific studies as more reliable than those performed by doctors and scientist because they are tainted by their paychecks, coming straight from ‘big pharma.’ Of course skepticism is healthy, but this kind of skepticism seems to be based more on untested (or disproved) theories and feelings rather than facts.
