what does it exactly mean evaluate the child for ADHD ?

Answer 1

About ADHD

Despite claims of irrefutable science, there are absolutely no objective criteria by which Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be confirmed to exist. This is not science.

Nor is there any scientific evidence proving that a chemical imbalance in the brain is responsible for the symptoms attributed to ADHD, or that ADHD is a “brain-based disease.” Yet this is repeatedly claimed as fact by psychiatrists.

In fact, the diagnostic criteria to determine if a child has ADHD were voted on in committee by members of the American Psychiatric Association, by a show of hands. There are many reasons why a child might be displaying behavioral or educational problems. Drugging only masks the real cause.

INFORMATION

The information covers:
ADHD Facts
Targeting Children
Childhood Behavior Redefined
Throwing Learning into Disorder
Debunking the Diabetes Analogy
It’s Not All in the Genes
Brain Scan Scam
Brain Science: We think, suspect, suggest, perhaps…

PSYCHIATRY’S CHADD

Find out what the pharmaceutically-funded Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) is not telling parents, grandparents, teachers and others in their broad promotion of ADHD as a disease.



EUROPE
Submission to the Council of Europe, Inquiry into Psychotropic Drug Use, November 23, 2001.




ADHD Facts

“If there is no valid test for ADHD, no data proving ADHD is a brain dysfunction, no long-term studies of the drugs’ effects, and if the drugs do not improve academic performance or social skills and the drugs can cause compulsive and mood disorders and can lead to illicit drug use, why in the world are millions of children, teenagers and adults…being labeled with ADHD and prescribed these drugs?”


Dr. Mary Ann Block
Author, No More ADHD

The information provided here has been drawn from many sources and is only a fraction of the available knowledge. Armed with even this limited information, the ADHD controversy will be far less confusing and dangerous for parents, and certainly more predictable.
For all of psychiatry’s pretensions to being a science, the ADHD scientific “discovery” process was literally a vote by a show of hands at an American Psychiatric Association (APA) Committee meeting in 1987. After it was inserted into the American Psychiatric Association’s billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), within one year, 500,000 American children were diagnosed as ADHD sufferers. Despite the total lack of objective proof of its existence, millions of children have been harmed through the use of this diagnosis. Today in the U.S., over 6 million children are taking mind-altering drugs because of no more than an “expert’s” fancied ADHD opinion.

In the 1990s in the U.S., federal government incentives helped increase the number of children diagnosed with “ADHD": low-income parents whose children were diagnosed with “ADHD” were given more than $450 a month. In 1991, U.S. federal education grants also provided schools with $400 in annual grant money for each child diagnosed with “ADHD.” The number of children diagnosed with this “disorder” soared again. By 1997, the number of children labeled as having “ADHD” had risen alarmingly to 4.4 million. Today, the figure is closer to 6 million.

ADHD is actually a stigmatizing psychiatric label. Once labeled, your child is considered to have a psychiatric disorder, in fact to be mentally ill or diseased (euphemistically expressed as mentally disordered). This label can negatively affect a child’s and others’ perceptions of himself/herself, both now and in the future. For example, children diagnosed with “ADHD” and prescribed stimulants could later be ineligible to serve in the armed forces. In 1998, the U.S. military discharged more than 3,100 recruits with psychiatric histories, pointing to a rise in “medication” and treatment of ADHD and other “behavioral disorders” as a reason for discharge.

In 1998, Florida child psychiatrist Dennis Donovan said, “ADD is a bogus diagnosis. Parents and teachers are rushing like lemmings to identify a pathology....Our current pathologizing of behavior leads to massive swelling of the ranks of the diseased, the dysfunctional, the disordered and the disabled.”

According to Beverly Eakman, author of Cloning of the American Mind, “These drugs make children more manageable, not necessarily better. ADHD is a phenomenon, not a ‘brain disease.’ Because the diagnosis of ADHD is fraudulent, it doesn’t matter whether a drug ‘works.’ Children are being forced to take a drug that is stronger than cocaine for a disease that is yet to be proven.”

Dr. Joe Kosterich, Federal Chairman of the General Practitioners’ branch of the Australian Medical Association, said, “The diagnosis of ADD is entirely subjective....There is no test. It is just down to interpretation. Maybe a child blurts out in class or doesn’t sit still. The lines between an ADD sufferer and a healthy exuberant kid can be very blurred.”

In March 1998, James Swanson of the U.S. National Institute for Mental Health, and one of the foremost proponents of ADHD as a disease, addressed a meeting of the American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry, admitting: “I would like to have an objective diagnosis for the disorder [ADHD]. Right now psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective....We would like to have biological tests—a dream of psychiatry for many years.” Simply put, a child is mentally ill with ADHD if a psychiatrist thinks he/she is, or is of that opinion.

In his book, Ritalin Nation, Richard DeGrandpre, Ph.D., states, “One study, reported in the journal Pediatrics, found that 80% of the children thought to be hyperactive, according to home and school reports, showed ‘exemplary behavior and no sign of hyperactivity in the office.’ This finding is consistent with numerous studies showing, and dozens of newspaper articles reporting, considerable disagreement among parents, teachers, and clinicians about who qualifies for a diagnosis. This can only raise questions about the existence of ADD as a real medical phenomenon since it is these symptoms alone that are the basis of the diagnosis.”

Speaking at the 1998 National Institutes of Health Conference on ADHD, William B. Carey of the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, concluded, “What is now most often described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of normal behavioral variations....This discrepancy leaves the validity of the construct [of ADHD as a ‘disease’] in doubt....”



Go to ADHD & Learning Disorders

Answer 2

ADHD can only be diagnosed by a trained child psychiatrist. It's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The psychiatrist needs to spend enough time with the child to be able to evaluate if the child can focus, concentrate on tasks, evaluate their learning levels, etc... If you have a child who need attention, PLEASE find a University hospital or Specialist Education service provider that specializes in ADHD diagnostics. I have seen too many kids put on Ritalin because the small town psychiatrists were lax in their diagnoses.

Answer 3

ADHD can only be diagnosed by a trained child psychiatrist. It's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Answer 4

It means that they will ask a series of questions about your child and observe your child in all types of settings. I have listed a webpage that will help you with information on ADHD

Answer 5

it means you have good enough insurance to be worth milking for money or that you're on a social program that will pay for the treatment

funny how the amount of sugar a child is consuming never gets evaluated

Answer 6

What they will do is give him certain written test, to see how she or him answers the questions. Also depending on your child's age they check the school records and talk to some of his teachers. If I were you and had the finances or insurance this I would do outside the school realm. Get the information you need with the doctor and if he prescribe medicine then advise the school (again that is if in school). If you allow the school to do it own its own your child will be marked for all his years in school. This happened to me and I regretted it (my son).

Answer 7

Usually it is just a the parents, and teachers filling out a questionnaire. The is no medical test for ADHD.

Answer 8

adhd is attention deficit hyperacivity disorder. it sometimes affect children at school age. it is manifested by hyperactivity and results in see-saw classroom performance. the main reason is the child cannot focus or concentrate on what he/she is doing. there are specialist who see this kind of disorder. please note that not all hyperactive children have adhd.

Answer 9

Go here and slide down to Diagnostic Criteria.


http://www.aafp.org/afp/20001101/2077.html

(And Angelina is behind the times. Doctors don't like to prescribe Ritilin so much anymore becuase of problems related to the Drug.)

Answer 10

attention deficit hyperactive disorder is an affliction that requires riddilan as a course of treatment

Answer 11

it means the single mother doesnt have good parenting skills, and doesnt want to try, if she can find a quack who needs some money for a mercedes payment she can get him to prescribe drugs to keep little johnny stupified, and she can actually take some of them herself, which many parents do, as my cousin a gradstudent intern tells me they do