Drugs for boredom

Recently, there's been a flurry of news reports on the risks of ADHD drugs. This Bloomberg article is representative:

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Drugs children take for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should carry stronger warnings about the risk of side effects like hallucinations and paranoia, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The agency since 2000 has received more than 500 reports of psychosis in children 10 and younger who took attention drugs including Shire Plc's Adderall, Eli Lilly & Co.'s Strattera, and Novartis AG's Ritalin and Focalin, a staff review found.

. . .

ADHD drugs have been previously criticized by other FDA advisory panels for potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and suicides. Last month, a different advisory panel unexpectedly suggested putting the FDA's strictest warning, a black box warning, on ADHD drugs advising users of heart-attack and stroke risks.

These risks have actually been known for a while, but the US government has not chosen to publicize these risks nor do anything about them. Canada, for instance, banned Adderall some time ago after a series of sudden deaths (by stroke or heart attack) which were attributed to the drug. Yet still the FDA was silent. On a related topic, certain antidepressants have been banned for use in children in the UK (e.g. Paxil) due to an increased risk of suicide, and the FDA has done nothing concrete to protect children from those medications, either.

What really irks me about the ADHD drugs is that school is usually the problem, yet the child is somehow seen as defective. Take these excerpts from an overview of ADHD available at the Help for ADD site:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a disorder characterized by a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity that occurs in academic, occupational, or social settings. Problems with attention include making careless mistakes, failing to complete tasks, problems staying organized and keeping track of things, becoming easily distracted, etc. Problems with hyperactivity can include excessive fidgetiness and squirminess, running or climbing when it is not appropriate, excessive talking, and being constantly on the go. Impulsivity can show up as impatience, difficulty awaiting one's turn, blurting out answers, and frequent interrupting.

Such a child is obviously bored out of their ever-loving skull, to the point where their skin is crawling. Possibly 6-year-old children should not be sitting at desks for 6 hours a day-- have they thought of that? Possibly they need one-on-one attention, autonomy, more physical activity? Perhaps they need to be actually learning instead of listening to some classmate struggle to read aloud, especially if they've already finished the reading book? (I remember reading somewhere that ADHD kids tend to test higher on IQ tests and may be more intelligent than average. That would partly explain the boredom.)

Another excerpt:

One perplexing aspect of ADHD is that a child's symptoms can vary considerably at different times and in different settings. For example, it is common for parents to wonder how their child can have ADHD when that child focuses intently when watching TV or playing Nintendo. Similarly, when engaged in free play activities, children with ADHD are often indistinguishable from their peers. In other settings, however, particularly those where activity must be restricted and attention sustained to tasks that seem uninteresting, the symptoms are quite evident. For children with ADHD, this variability in symptoms does not indicate laziness or defiance (although these can be issues that must also be dealt with). Instead, it demonstrates that ADHD symptoms are simply more likely to be evident in some settings rather than others. Unfortunately, the classroom is one setting where ADHD symptoms are very likely to be prominent, and sometimes this explains the very different views that parents and teachers have of the same child.

Right, the kid is defective but we just tend to notice it in the classroom. The parents don't notice any difficulty, but the teacher (a Trained Expert, don't you know) recognizes the symptoms. Give me a break.

I actually do think that there are environmental influences that can cause problems for kids, e.g.: mercury, dyes and preservatives, lead, arsenic, too much sugar, antibiotics (these can destroy the healthy intestinal bacteria we need for proper nutrition), trans-fats which prevent the body from utilizing omega-3 fatty acids (which in turn are critical to brain development, learning, and mood). Our kids have many strikes against them because of our food supply, our overuse of antibiotics, and pollution. But most ADHD cases are diagnosed only once the child begins school, and the symptoms are seen primarily in the classroom. In these cases, the problem isn't physical.

Our society is obviously willing to risk psychosis and stroke rather than question the modern classroom.