ADHD Kids and Common Myths: Ritalin - Are Parents Doping their Children?

Myth: PARENTS WHO GIVE THEIR KIDS ANTI-ADHD DRUGS ARE DOPING UP PROBLEM CHILDREN.

Some people claim that medicating ADHD children is only a frustrated attempt to explain failures in parenting and to explain inattention, incompetence and inability of adults (or teachers) to control these children. These people say parents try to mask their own failings and use medicine to calm children down.

Truth: This is unfair because most of these people never got contact with any ADHD children or the parents for a longer period. People without such children have no idea what it's like.

They very often rely on wrong information which is influenced by authors like Breggin or even misinformation posted by Scientology church. There are strong interests in such wrong information and emotional discussions concerning ADHD and stimulant medicine in the public media. But they are not talking to self-help organisations or parents but only to authors with no experience in the field of ADHD who try to get publicity for their own books or institutes.

Randomised, controlled studies in both the United States and Sweden have tried combining medication with behavioural interventions and then dropped either one or the other. For those trying to go on without medicine the behavioural interventions maintained nothing. Only the combination of pharmacotherapy with psycho-social intervention and behavioural interventions for ADHD can achieve better results. Behavioural therapy is of special importance if comorbid disorders like conduct disorder or symptoms of secondary depression or anxiety are present. Myth and Scientific Evidence