'ADHD' an interesting development

I have said all that I wish to say for the present about the fictional complaint 'ADHD', as the index will attest. (Anyone wishing to quarrel with me about this will find there a long article answering in advance all their objections, with which I am painfully familiar.Please do read it before posting angry comments).

But because the Times pay-wall will keep this from general web consumption, I just wanted to draw attention to an excellent article in Monday's 'Times' by Libby Purves, who is politically and culturally no ally of mine, on this vexed and important subject of drugging children.

Prompted by a Freedom of Information revelation that spending on 'ADHD' drugs in this country rose in 2010 to £31 million a year (a 65% increase in four years), Ms Purves wrote of her unease that we have become complacent about keeping thousands of children on psychotropic drugs during ten years of delicate brain development.


Adult convenience, she suggests, is as much involved as the alleviation of childhood suffering (I would say far more so).

Ms Purves concedes that there probably is a rare neurological disorder describable as 'ADHD'. I might also concede that, with heavy emphasis on the *rare*, and in my case adding that the enormous majority of those 'diagnosed' with this largely imaginary complaint have nothing wrong with them at all. At least,until they start being fed powerful drugs.

She then says : 'Look at the figures, look at the anecdotes, consider the unknown risks of prolonged medication, and reflect how a social pattern repeats itself: social control, homogenisation enforced by rigid societies impatient at the exuberance of children'.

It's an excellent article and I urge readers to obtain it if they can. I'd say it's worth paying for (especially given the awful price paid by our society and its children for the current complacency on this subject).