ADHD largely a fraud- Harvard Psychologist

[Habitual_Ritual]

http://curiousmindmagazine.com/harvard-psychologist-says-adhd-largely-fraud/

[martin88nyc]

chemicals, heavy metals, bacteria, parasites, etc. (all that crap) has a lot to do with the so called ADHD

[JubilateDeo]

Wasn't excessive diagnosis of ADHD more of a 90's thing?

[Lynne]

Wasn't excessive diagnosis of ADHD more of a 90's thing?

Nope. Now we have ADHD coaches...

[Chestertonian]

what a poorly written and stigmatizing article. 

"as a result, from all the above, they can be a burden to society"

"therefore, he believed that his issues indicate that he is smart, instead of mentally ill, as modern medicine would define him." 

biased much? if anything, mental health diagnoses are even more common among the gifted.  The author of this article presents "smart" as dichotomous with "mentally ill" in a way that isn't done in the original interview"

also this guy writes as if drugs are the only treatment for ADD/ADHD--whereas from what i've seen from dealing with kids with IEP's for this issue, the approach the parents tend to take is more wholistic (and i'm not talking about essential oils and wacky diets).  Neurofeedback is also an effective treatment. 

the symptoms for adhd are very similar to a lot of psychological conditions--childhood depression, childhood anxiety, ASD, sensory processing disorder.  So it may be true that ADHD is overdiagnosed, especially in boys.  I wouldn't say it's "largely a fraud" i'm guessing that is there just for clicks.

the fact that psychologists have a richer vocabulary for identifying why some children have difficulty adapting to their environment and succeeding in school or coping with negative emotions doesn't strike me as bad unless we make it bad by stigmatizing people who have these conditions and referring to them as a "burden to society" or "not smart" instead of giving them the support and services they need to do well in life.

a lot of schools, especially in the early years, are not developmentally appropriate for children and so the children (often boys) get diagnosed with disorders, whereas it's the educational approach that's disordered. 

my younger brother (who has ADD) used to get into the coffee and eat the beans when no one was looking.  They didn't make him hyper like we expected.  I think he was munching on those coffee beans because they helped him feel relaxed and more in control of himself.  a lot of people with ADD have found that coffee helps them calm down and focus, because of the caffeine (which is a naturally occurring drug... but most of us don't see anything wrong with this since it's "natural" and not produced by evil big pharma. 

[Chestertonian]

Wasn't excessive diagnosis of ADHD more of a 90's thing?

Nope. Now we have ADHD coaches...

I think I prefer that to just mischaracterizing kids as lazy and then calling it a day.