12 November 2007

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

"There were no beneficial effects — none."

Having learnt earlier this year that there has been almost ten-fold increase in use of behaviour control drugs among under-16s in the last decade and an almost twenty-fold increase among 16-18 year olds in full-time education, a study monitoring the treatment of 600 children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) since the 1990s has now shown that drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta are not effective and work no better than therapy.

Perhaps we can now better invest the £28m that is spent unnecessarily medicating around 55,000 children — and those children can start receiving the treatment, attention and discipline that they actually need?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

"treatment, attention and discipline that they actually need?"

Yes, yes, yes! Having seen one or two of the TV programmes where a 'nanny' goes into a family and sorts out the problems of a badly behaved child (and it's parents)I agree that these children do not need a pill each day, but the correct treatment, attention and discipline to allow them to behave in a socially acceptable manner.

Too often school children will tell the teacher that 'I cannot behave well today, Miss, because I forgot to take my Ritilin this morning.' What utter rubbishm, and now it is proved so!

Let us start spending our hard-come-by NHS monies where it is needed on salaries and help for the elderly rather than on poorly educated parts of society.