Study: Thousands of Israeli kids incorrectly prescribed Ritalin

http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_breeding.html

Interesting reading: http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/david_keirsey.html

Don't drug your child! Ever! Being hyperactive is NOT an illness. Just one example of information, read this: http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/robert_mendelsohn.html

Experts in the psychology/psychiatry recognize a range of symptoms that need to be addressed and that sometimes medication helps. However, the goal should always be to diminish the drug intake and develop a better mechanism of addressing the symptoms. Dr. Amnon Gimpel has pioneered an approach to diminish the drugs and increase productivity through exercise and mental challenges. Worthy of further investigation...

i wk'd in mental health in the states when these diagnoses came into effect. they are simply money makers for the drug companies which created institutions around them based on psychiatry's creation of the diagnoses. as noted above, parents, teachers, community don't have the patience to work w/ difficult kids so they drug them. no drug gets at why li'l moshe is anxious. it is globally psychoactive on moshe but never goes to the root of finding out what makes him buzz so fast, never plays w/ him at his speed and then gently guides him down, etc. psychiatry has been bought by the drug companies and it has become a norm. insurance companies know it's cheaper to give a pill then to give sessions of psychotherapy or play therapy. this scam has become instituionalized and this has infected israel. good to see from the article that people are awakening!

if this is the way they are treated what will happen to this country in next few decades ? There has to be a better way to treat such conditions , high time we think outside the box and stop making these helpless children victims to pill popping that just removes the symptoms but and does not take care of the root of the problem .

I'm studying education & I think that ADD is way over diagnosed. Every second kid seems to have it & then Ritalin is prescribed. Whilst there are those that genuinely need Ritalin, I believe that alot of cases are simply misbehaved children. Teachers, doctors and parents don't want to have to deal with a misbehaved children, so they write it off as ADD. That's why kids behaviour is going down hill. I swear kids are worse behaved now than 10yrs ago.

they need a special diet; especially decreasing their sugar intake into minimum would significantly calm them down. This will also help them sleep better. Sugar and a hyperactive child are an unmanagable combination! Do read carefully the ingredients of various products for their sugar, even beverages. The best is of course home made food made from scratch, of natural rawmaterials as much as possible.

Your niece is lucky: there's a nurse in her school!! I've seen dozens of schools, both elementary and high schools, in Tel Aviv and the central area where classes are equally large or even larger and there's no nurse. Tell your niece. Maybe it'll help her cope with all the difficulties she might experience in a work that is poorly paid and brings so many, complex problems.

The operative word here is "rush"--and being a non-professional, I meant to use a question mark. Having said that (a fancy way to say "but"), I wonder if sometimes medication is the first resort, not the last, because (a) it enables patients to be processed in greater numbers in a given period of time, and/or (b) the processor simply doesn't know what else to do?

My oldest son was on Ritalin when he was 8. A few month's after starting the drug he suddenly convulsed - Drs. were baffled and could not find out what caused it. We took him off the drug immediately and 13 years later he has never convulsed again. He says he gets the same reaction from a strong cup of coffee as from the Ritalin. My other son also was on Ritalin and after about 2 weeks his hands started shaking. We lowered the dose, but it persisted. We eventually stopped the drug and everything went back to normal. Yes, at times he is a handful but I rather cope with that than a child whose hands shake and he cannot even carry a drink.

My niece is a teacher in an Israeli primary school. Her classes are large: 40 kids in a room. In each class there are kids on Ritalin. The kids need to go to the school nurse to check if they took their Ritalin dose of the morning before entering class. These kids need extra attention, an impossible task with such large groups. So easy to give pills.Both parents work, less attention at home too, so these kids are lost and doomed to enter criminal gangs when they turn 16/17. It has happened in Holland too, same story, same results. Only the class groups were smaller, but the ADHD kids got extra attention from remedial teachers, and extra supervision at home, to prevent them from entering the criminal network in their cities. A study showed that 80% of ADHD boys ended up doing criminal activities.

Our second child -- aka 'The Boy,' 'Genghis Boy,' 'Attila the Boy' -- was described as 'the Ritalin Poster child' when he was about four. Unbelievable. The stories I could tell. I figured I should have gotten a double tax deduction just based on the sheer destruction in a typical year. However, no way I was going to drug him. He's fourteen now. Still QUITE a piece of work, but I'd say he's one strong person. Pretty high-maintenance, but he's a keeper. You gotta let kids come to terms with who they actually are. We all have to do that.