

ADHD doesn't exist and drugs do more harm than good - imperio59
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2577814/The-eminent-doctor-convinced-ad-hd-doesnt-exist-In-fact-says-Dr-RICHARD-SAUL-symptoms-routine-causes-drugs-harm-good.html

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lutusp
Alert the media! Someone writes an article stating the obvious, revealing Big
Pharma's effect on psychiatry and clinical psychology and asserting the
uncontroversial idea that ADHD is an invention meant to promote drug sales.

With one difference -- the author isn't a science journalist, he's a doctor
with direct experience trying to treat ADHD over a period of decades.

A quote: " ... after 50 years of practising medicine and seeing thousands of
patients demonstrating symptoms of ADHD, I have reached the conclusion there
is no such thing as ADHD."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

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CocaKoala
One of my best friends struggled through college and ended up failing out of
grad school because she couldn't focus and couldn't get her work done. It
turned out that her teachers had tried to get her tested for ADHD as a child,
but her mother refused, not wanting her daughter to have the stigma of a
mental disorder. After totaling her car in an entirely preventable accident
that stemmed from how exhausted she was as a result of sleeping three hours a
night all semester trying (and failing) to get her work done, failing all her
classes, and getting kicked out of her school, she got diagnosed, went on
medication, and is currently one semester away from finishing her Master's
degree.

I'd like to see you explain to her that the medication is doing more harm than
good, and that she could have succeeded in school earlier if only she had
tried harder.

~~~
CocaKoala
I absolutely agree that ADHD is likely massively misdiagnosed as a result of
symptoms like "being a five year old child", but to say that nobody has it
seems as ill advised as to say that everybody has it.

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batoure
This is a frustrating article the author presents numerous case studies but
hasn't put together any long term and wide ranging data to address the
disease. The only thing he seems to be saying concretely is that few patients
that he saw in his practice presented the disorder. This doesnt really add
anything new to the adhd discussion.

~~~
lutusp
Yes, all true, but because ADHD has never been characterized, meaning no
causative agent has been located, and because there's no conception of a cure
as is true for real diseases, the scientific burden of evidence rests with
those who would like to say ADHD is real. And they aren't rising to the
challenge.

~~~
omegamu
I'm sure many mental related illnesses can be described this way though. We
know a lot about the brain but not nearly enough to form a clear
categorization.

Does something like
[this]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22983386](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22983386))
characterize the described differences symptoms report?

Anyway, when it comes to health issues, the burden of proof rests on ethical
issues. It's better to explore all these problems people seem to have. Years
ago in biopsych we were shown that early age treatment was important for
preventing much worse symptoms later in life. Unreversable but treateable.

If that IS the case, then there is a _great_ problem with people that make a
big fuss over children not being treated.

But I'm not a neuroscientist or a doctor. The claims of "over-diagnosing" seem
unfounded if there are treatable symptoms that we just happen to currently
call ADHD. Comparing diagnostic rates to an earlier time is just silly.

~~~
lutusp
> Does something like
> [this]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22983386](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22983386))
> characterize the described differences symptoms report?

Yes, but only as a description. Science requires testable, falsifiable
_explanations_. If I claim that I can cure the common cold by shaking a dried
gourd over the sufferer (which actually works), I have only described my
miracle cure, I haven't _explained_ it or considered alternative explanations
for the result.

There is a huge literature in psychology that stops at description and
increasingly offers drugs as treatment -- drugs that in most cases were
created for some other purpose but are now being prescribed off-label, to
treat ailments of questionable origin, with questionable results, to an
unquestioning public.

> Anyway, when it comes to health issues, the burden of proof rests on ethical
> issues.

No, ethical issues are orthogonal to the scientific issues. If there is no
scientific explanation for various mental illnesses, then there's no
scientific substance to the field, at which point an ethical debate may begin
about the consequences of treating illnesses we don't understand and that may
not even exist in an objective sense.

> Years ago in biopsych we were shown that early age treatment was important
> for preventing much worse symptoms later in life.

This sort of thing is meaningless until we know what we're treating, otherwise
we'll have any number of dried-gourd treatments masquerading as medicine. But
wait, that's already true -- Asperger's was brought into existence, and then
abandoned, based on votes, not evidence. So was homosexuality, which remained
an official, listed mental illness until public opinion shifted away from this
outlook.

> The claims of "over-diagnosing" seem unfounded if there are treatable
> symptoms that we just happen to currently call ADHD.

Not at all -- this won't be the first time psychology has created a new
illness out of thin air, and then "treated" it -- see above. Depression is
another example -- some argue that it's an illness that can be treated, others
have found that "depressed" people are better at reality-testing and
accurately assessing their circumstances than those not so diagnosed. This
calls into question the very meaning of "mental illness".

