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My thoughts? I've asked my DH to send it to his mum, who he finally told about the ADHD and medication after nine months of gratin her terrible negative reaction (which he was right about). That's our journey.

If it was (mild) Asthma and you'd tried OT and physio and diet and swimming (and, and, and), and it still wasn't enough for them to participate fully in life, do you send your kid out into the world and say "Well it's not bad enough to kill her and medication is evil, so she can just stay like this and manage..."

And before anyone says "but Asthma could still kill, even though for that person it's usually mild", ADHD sufferers are at risk of very serious consequences too (death by motor vehicle comes most immediately to mind).

I agree completely. While I don't think medication is the be all/end all solution, I can never understand the "absolutely not" view. If a child has diabetes, would you deny them insulin? If they needed an antibiotic for strep throat, would you just say "oh, it'll go away". Yet for some reason mental health issues seem to be an entirely different ball of wax for some people. My dd will tell anyone that asks that her medication makes her feel better, and will remind me when it's time for a dose. Of course I wish she didn't need it, but I would never deny her the chance to feel better about herself and her functioning by not letting her have it.

The problem is when your child is misdiagnosed as having a condition that they don't actually have and then they are given medications (or therapies or other "services") which cause them harm.

I am against meds. Always said I wouldn't medicate my kids unless they became violent. And then ... DS3.2 had to be on Zantac pretty much the first 12 months of his life due to severe silent reflux and DS4.9 won't sleep at night without a heavy dose of Melatonin and sometimes needs hydroxyzine to knock him out for the night (strong antihistamine used for allergies as well as anti anxiety medication) and as of last week he's on regular allergy meds twice a day (found out he's not only severely allergic to certain foods but also has a very strong allergy to trees, grass, molds, dust mites, cats, dogs, you name it he's go it). And we thought we were done. Than last week he started developing asthma (thanks to the crazy delayed spring season when now EVERYTHING is blooming) and on Saturday I watched him go in some sort of asthma attack / anaphylactic shock (not sure which one yet, but for sure caused by the tree pollen concentration) so now we are looking into more meds. As much as I hate it, I'd rather have my son on regular medication that "may" change his mood than watch him stop breathing like he did on Saturday ever again. So, I'm against medication yet ready to medicate my child I guess it comes down to the lesser of two evils?

THIS.

YES.


The difference between a diagnosis of diabetes/asthma/etc. is that there is a measurable impairment relative to a normative control.
There is absolutely nothing subjective about impaired breathing or blood glucose metabolism. You can monitor it and plot it, and then measure it again after interventions.

No human subjectivity comes into play at all. Now-- before anyone assumes that I think that allopathic = nonsubjective and that psychiatric = subjective, that's not the case.

I loathe studies that use "exercise tolerance" or "pain perception" as indicators for efficacy. They are notorious for producing artifacts that can't be reproduced.

But I agree with the complaints re: the DSM V, and there is a good reason. There is a huge difference between telling someone "I think that you're flirting with diabetes-- get out and get moving, drop some weight," and offering a person insulin because you think that they "might try it to see if they benefit" from it because they meet 3 of 7 items on a checklist.

Better diagnostic tools = better prescribing practices.

I agree that misdiagnosis is a definite problem in identifying things like ADHD in children. Unfortunately until science comes up with a way to definitively, objectively test for mental illnesses, we're stuck with what we have. When my daughter was diagnosed (AS, GAD) there were no doubts in my mind the diagnoses were right on. If there was doubt, I would have pursued it further. (Been there, done that, bought the shirt when she was younger and went from pneumonia to cystic fibrosis, enough said.)

I do think however, there can be measurable impairment with psychological issues, the only problem is, therapy or medication is needed to see the improvement. Until we tried the other avenues and went to medication, there was little visible improvement. When she started the meds, improvement was almost immediate. Relatives, friends, teachers, all commented within a week that they could see a major difference in her anxiety and irritation levels. I wish there HAD been a way to tell without the meds, but unfortunately none of us have a crystal ball.

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd

I am against spanking and CIO, but I agree with the rest of the article.

Anybody who thinks a serious argument about anything can be built on the basis of that book by Pamela Druckerman shouldn't be allowed to write in a serious publication (oh, wait, Psychology Today?).

There are too kids with ADD in France.

http://www.midilibre.fr/2013/02/21/enfants-hyperactifs-la-maman-et-la-psy-decodent,648554.php

http://www.topsante.com/sante-au-qu...i-la-prescription-de-Ritaline-fait-debat

And yes, the French approach to psychiatric treatment can be a little different. Not always in a good way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/h...utism-strongly-criticized-in-france.html

Because if all psychological difficulties in children can be tracked back to bad parenting... well...

That depends on your definition of "bad" parenting.