The Market Could Easily Double
File this one under marketing news disguised as science — but don’t lose track of it, because it represents a real danger to our society. I think if, in a generation or two we find ourselves communicating with a primitive series of clicks & hand gestures, and beating each other over the head with clubs, our decline will be traced back to this.
Between 2000 and 2004, use of drugs that help keep ADHD patients focused doubled among adults aged 20 to 44, but rose only 56 percent among children…use rose 113 percent among women 20 to 44 and 104 percent among women 45 to 64, both far more than among men. Meanwhile, spending on the medicines quadrupled.
I’ve got to get into this racket somehow. Personal weaknesses, individual quirks, idiosyncrasies, are labeled as “symptoms,” and when noticed in normal children they represent a “disorder” for which drugs are prescribed as “medication.”
Things to notice about this particular article:
The National Institute of Mental Health, on its website, makes perhaps a noble attempt to bring some sanity to the discussion:
Is It Really ADHD?
Not everyone who is overly hyperactive, inattentive, or impulsive has ADHD. Since most people sometimes blurt out things they didn’t mean to say, or jump from one task to another, or become disorganized and forgetful, how can specialists tell if the problem is ADHD?
Because everyone shows some of these behaviors at times, the diagnosis requires that such behavior be demonstrated to a degree that is inappropriate for the person’s age. The diagnostic guidelines also contain specific requirements for determining when the symptoms indicate ADHD. The behaviors must appear early in life, before age 7, and continue for at least 6 months. Above all, the behaviors must create a real handicap in at least two areas of a person’s life such as in the schoolroom, on the playground, at home, in the community, or in social settings. So someone who shows some symptoms but whose schoolwork or friendships are not impaired by these behaviors would not be diagnosed with ADHD. Nor would a child who seems overly active on the playground but functions well elsewhere receive an ADHD diagnosis.
I’m not a pharmacist, doctor, scientist, shrink, schoolteacher, or even a school janitor, nor do I have even nominal training in any of these fields. Therefore, take it as a given: I’m going to get a lot of e-mail and other comments admonishing me, with varying levels of decorum, to refrain from “talking about stuff you don’t understand.” Well, I understand inattention, I understand being a weird kid who nobody can figure out, and I understand having a weird kid nobody can figure out. I understand coping with personal weaknesses through marshalling internal resources and becoming a better adult, versus coping with them through drugs.
And I understand women. I was just noticing this difference between the sexes, commenting on it to some people, not really writing anything about it yet, and then this article pointed it out for me. Go back and read the first paragraph I took from the MSNBC story. In a period where children have increased their ADHD medication addictions by fifty percent, adult women have doubled theirs, while men have not.
Want to know how this works? Men and women are different. Have you ever known a woman to get ahold of a book that describes a personal issue — ever — and, upon finishing with it, announce “that was an interesting book but it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with me”? It won’t happen; they aren’t capable of it. Even smart women who have demonstrated themselves to be gifted, critical thinkers, can’t seem to do this. They get hold of the book, they read it, and wham-bam: Whatever was described in the book, they got it or their kids have it, guaranteed.
Men, by & large, err in the opposite direction. What? Something that interrupts my status quo? Screw you, pal. Missing leg syndrome? What makes you think I only have one leg? There’s another leg around here somewhere, I just can’t find it. I’m hopping around the room because hopping is something I like to do. Just leave me alone.
So no matter what your priorities are, we have a problem here. You may be worried about our society over-medicating itself into oblivion, as each new personal quirk is categorized as a “disorder” and normal, albiet quirky, people are turned into drug addicts. If you are one of these people, know that as a longtime advocate of women’s independence and women’s rights, I will oppose with my last breath your attempt to stop women from reading books. That is, after all, the only thing we could do that would address this issue; a woman reading a book about a personal problem, is a woman who will, upon finishing the book, in her own mind have that problem. Let them keep reading, and the ADHD caseload will skyrocket.
Or, you could be one of the people who are worried that ADHD profiteers aren’t making enough money. In that case, you worry too much. You can see from the MSNBC article that all the “experts” interviewed, have at least one financial interest — often many more than one — in more ADHD cases being diagnosed and treated with prescription drugs.
�The market could easily double,� as more of the drug makers receive regulatory approval specifically to market ADHD drugs to adults, said Albert Rauch, pharmaceuticals analyst at A. G. Edwards & Sons.
There is no critical thinking applied to this anywhere. Marketing the drugs? Investment analysts predicting a market will double? Where is the traditionally-obligatory dissenting expert, having kittens over the hot new trend described in the story? When it comes to ADHD, the dedicated MSNBC reporter can leave him out of the story, sticking the microphone only into the faces of interested authors, advocates, investment analysts and other stakeholders.
If anybody read this blog, which of course nobody does, they would recall a pattern of questioning science — or to put it more accurately, calling out that “science” has metastasized into a school of thought far less accustomed to criticism, dissenting viewpoints, and general intellectual challenge than any religion ever has been. The current debate on “Intelligent Design” is one example of this. Now, keeping your own opinion on evolution versus design on the back burner for the time being, answer me this. Is it healthy for a society’s cloistered hallways of “science” to get into the opinion business, expurgating the less orthodox viewpoints with greater and greater vigor and hostility, while — simultaneously — that society starts to consume greater and greater doses of drugs, in a trend that can only be described as “skyrocketing,” specifically designed to eliminate personal traits considered by some to be abnormal?
Both of these trends are assaults on our cultural ability to question things. To check our societal course. To weigh, among a large, democratic audience, the pros and cons of whatever direction it is in which we’re moving at a given time.
I think we’re losing it.
I wish I could stop it. But failing that, I wish I could make money off it. The mind fairly boggles at how much money we’re talking about. Something to think about, next time you hear someone piss and moan about “corporations,” “greed” and “Halliburton.”