TYRANNIZED BY PSYCHO-LABELS–ADHD
(letter from a mother)
I am responding to your reply to “Father of
5 year old labeled ADHD”. I previously tried to
e-mail you a note, I am not sure you received it.
All in all, I am against the use of drugs for
children with ADHD. My son David was diagnosed as
ADHD last year when he was 5. When he was 4 and in
pre-school the school coordinator was encouraging my
to have my son prescribed Ritalin.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
So much for disclaimers from educators that they are not to blamehave
no hand--in the incredible ADHD/Ritalin epidemicthe greatest health
care fraud of the centuryboth the last one, and this]
What concern’s me is the comment you made “you will care
….if the school, or Child Protective Services or
some court, tells you, you are an unfit parent if
you fail to give him his Ritalin or Adderall or
other amphetamine”. This comment has been in the
back of my mind, especially when my son’s teacher
asked me every chance she had if I had taken him to
the doctor yet?
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
What parents do not realize is that teachers, nowadays--under the
mistaken notion that their main responsibility is psychiatric diagnosis
(told this, encouraged in this by all in psychiatry, neurology,
pediatrics and family practice), begin making diagnostic observations
from your childs very first day of school--and you dont even know it.
You and your child are thus deprived of your fundamental right to
prior/previous informed consent, a right we all have in every single
medical encounter]
I felt as if I was bad parent
because I did not agree to put my son on drugs.
Schools, physicians, parents, and society are
contradicting themselves. The schools enforce “Say
no to drugs”, but are eager to get them on drugs.
So if someone who is having a bad day, should they
go get on drug’s. What is this teaching our
children. What is the right thing to do? What is
the ethical thing to do? My answer to all parents
keep your children off drugs. As a parent I can
cope with my child, I love my son, and only wish his
teachers, school mates, or anyone else who feels he
is a problem child with ADHD could live one week of
his life. To see and feel how they treat him.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
they not only deprive you of your informed consent right, they coerce
and bully families who resist their diagnosing and recommended
treatments (let there be no doubt that it is the rule not the
exception). Further they frankly bully the child in situations in which
their ministrations are resisted, set on seeing that their dire brain
diagnoses and prognoses are borne out. What is the frequency of
Child Protective Service referrals, of court referrals?]
Maybe then they could have some understanding of his
own struggles, yet eagerly attempt to overcome them
the best way he can. Please keep up your work.