Recently, I have seen about three different major news agencies highlighting a very dangerous trend in the treatment of ADHD and the prescription of ADHD medications. To read the context of these articles and understand my concern related to them please take a look at this
article written in Forbes. I understand the desire to help kids get an edge and be given every chance in the world to succeed in school and in life. I want my children to have as much advantages as they can in order to be the kind of person they want to be in life. However, I am not willing to cheat or risk my child's health for them to have those added advantages. A few years ago there was a lot of attention given to college students misusing Adderall in order to study better and get better grades, even when they didn't have ADHD. I was shocked to hear that this trend has migrated to school age children. I am even more alarmed to hear that some doctors are complicit in this "doping" of children. I know my words are harsh, but I don't think this is any different from athletes taking drugs to give them an extra edge to perform. We (as a society) think that this is not fair and we rail against athletes. When we find out that they have been "doping" we slap them with regulations and sanctions. Just see what happened to
Lance Armstrong and
Barry Bonds when they were found to have been using "performance enhancing drugs". So, what are we teaching our children, when parents, teachers and doctors are okay with giving them "performance enhancing drugs" so they can perform on par with their classmates despite their lack of diagnosis. I think we are telling them that it's okay to use drugs to perform better. It doesn't matter if you "really" need it or not. We as parents, teachers, therapists and doctors need to take a moral stand, that this is not okay to teach to our children. If we continue this behavior, we are setting ourselves up for more "doping" in places other than just in sports.
What are your thoughts?
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