Children from Broken Marriages Twice as Likely to be Prescribed Ritalin as Kids in Intact Homes
July 20th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families.jpg)
According to the Washington Post, 10% percent of 10-year-old American boys are on Ritalin or similar drugs. From my experience as a teacher I can tell you that there are some kids for whom the drugs are useful--I've seen it firsthand. On the other hand, for most boys it is useless and counterproductive.
I've long campaigned against these drugs, and it seems that every time I discuss this problem on a radio show some aggrieved mother or father calls up and tells me that the school wants him or her to put their kindergarten or first grade son on Ritalin. It's an outrage. The problem is not our boys--the problem is that our schools refuse to adapt and accommodate boys' educational needs and learning styles. In my column The 'Boy Parent Dilemma' (Los Angeles Daily News, 9/6/02) I explained:
"Modern schools are not suited to boys' personalities and learning styles. This can be seen from the time boys enter school, when many of them are immediately branded as behavior problems. The line of 10 kids who had to gather every day after school in my son's first grade class for their behavior reports--all boys. The names of kids on the side of the chalkboard who misbehaved and would lose recess--all boys. The kids as young as five or six who must be drugged so they will sit still and 'behave'--almost all boys...
"This afternoon, millions of us will pick our little sons up from school and hope to hear that it was a good day. Yet many of our boys will have spent much of the day being scolded and punished, often for doing nothing more than being boys. And with each of these mistreated little boys--waving their arms and running toward us across the yard, happy to be away from that place where everything feels so unnatural and they somehow always seem to be doing something wrong--comes the boy parent dilemma."
According to this recent Reuters article, "Children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents stay together." I don't believe there's one easy answer to explain this phenomenon, but it's interesting that nobody in the article sees the most obvious possibility--the kids (largely boys) have in most cases had their fathers removed from their regular lives.
Kids twice as likely to get Ritalin after divorce
(June 4, 2007)
TORONTO - Children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents stay together, a Canadian researcher said on Monday, and she said the reasons should be investigated.
More than 6 percent of 633 children from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, compared with 3.3 percent of children whose parents stayed together, University of Alberta professor Lisa Strohschein reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The study of more than 4,700 children started in 1994, while all the families were intact, Strohschein said. They followed the children’s progress to see what happened to their families and to see what drugs were prescribed.
“It shows clearly that divorce is a risk factor for kids to be prescribed Ritalin,” Strohschein said.
Other studies have shown that children of single parents are more likely to get prescribed drugs such as Ritalin. But is the problem caused by being born to a never-married mother, or some other factor?
“So the question was, ‘is it possible that divorce acts a stressful life event that creates adjustment problems for children, which might increase acting out behavior, leading to a prescription for Ritalin?”’ Strohschein said in a statement.
“On the other hand, there is also the very public perception that divorce is always bad for kids and so when children of divorce come to the attention of the health-care system — possibly because parents anticipate their child must be going through adjustment problems — doctors may be more likely to diagnose a problem and prescribe Ritalin.”
Commonly prescribed Ritalin, known generically as methylphenidate, is a psychostimulant drug most commonly prescribed for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.
There is a big debate in much of the developed world over whether it may be over-prescribed — given to children who do not really need it. In March, a University of California, Berkeley study found that the use of drugs to treat ADHD has more than tripled worldwide since 1993.
Strohschein said it is possible that some mental health problems pre-date the divorce, so “it is possible that these kids had these problems before, but are only being identified afterward.”
Her study was not designed to find out why the children were prescribed the drug.
“I might be finished with the survey, but I am not necessarily finished with the question,” she said in a telephone interview.
"));
19 queries. 0.333 seconds.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
The reason is simple - two hardworking parents can work through ADD without drugs. A single parent is far more likely to be overwhelmed, and be forced to medicate their kid. That's even before considering problems like lax parenting and people who abuse ritaline.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Honestly they shouldn't even be drugging kids... at all.
Slap on the butt did a lot more for me than any pill in terms of being calm and disciplined
July 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
10%??
The problem is that our education system has been completely feminised. Boys are better at maths, this has a biological basis. Yet to rewrite this terrible imbalance, the UK curriculum advisors introduced maths coursework. This does nothing in the way of teachings kids anything useful for their qualifications, yet it has been shown that boys do worse at coursework than girls.
Of course, this has now been remvoed because it is so easy to cheat on.
This does not occur with boys. The competitive, hard-working environment in which boys perform at their best is removed for fear of not being girl-friendly enough.
While the education system is moulded around girls needs, boys are just expected to keep up, like it or not. Most of this is due to the old feminist lie of the privelidged male. There is an assumption that by punishing men and rewarding women, we are making up for invisible crimes of the past.
A good article on the matter.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=432947&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
July 20th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Glenn, could you forward my email to someone about the ritalin thing?
I am a very long time lurker, and just posting now. My son in entering kindergarden this year. A couple of years ago we (Mom and I are still together) had an issue with a preschool educator who insisted that all boys should be on Ritalin(that incident is how I found MRA websites...), and wondered why our son wasn't on Ritalin yet (he was 3-4 at the time and the doctor laughed at the suggestion) At the time the solution was simple. We just pulled him out of the pre school. Anyhow that woman is now taking a position in our local elementary school, and I am concered about having such a person working again with my child. Can I do anything about this? How do I inteligently take action?
July 20th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Most cases of ADHD are not even true ADHD to begin with. In most cases, these kids are just that, they are kids. High spirited, active kids, and the lazy adults around them just can't be bothered 'dealing with them'. I had a complete sh**-fit when I found out my nephew was put on drugs for ADHD. He does not have ADHD!!! I asked my sister one question: "If you put in a movie that he likes, other than pausing the movie for potty breaks, can he sit still and watch the whole movie?" Her answer, which was "yes", tells me that he does not have ADHD. A kid with true ADHD would not be able to sit still for 1/4 of the movie let alone the whole thing. She and I went 'round and 'round about it. He is now in more activities than I can count, though at different times of the year so his sched is not too much at any one time. He plays football, baseball, wrestles, and more. The ADHD diagosis was when he was just 6 years, he is now 9.5 years and is a wonderful kid!! My sister made the mistake of listening to the wrong people, people that she should have been able to trust.
July 21st, 2007 at 1:17 am
The Drug industry is too much. Let's all act nomal.
July 21st, 2007 at 2:02 am
JeanB,
You make an excellent point! Kids who are diagnosed as ADHD often have no problem concentrating for hours when they're doing something they enjoy. Same with kids who "don't respect authority" yet are little angels when they visit grandma and grandpa. To me, this speaks to not enough discipline at an early age -- or something else, but definitely not the "diagnoses" of "teachers" and "counselors."
If I had to do it again, my step-son would never have been part of the US educational system.
July 21st, 2007 at 2:43 am
"ADD" is simply sticking a label on various types of behavior. It has no empirical basis. Future generations will look at the system which brands people as having "ADD" the same way we look at the Inquisition or the Eugenics movement.
The real crisis is that the schools are still stuck in a 19th century industrial model. We're in the information age. Time to get with the 21st century. If we had any sanity, we'd be dismantling the schools and coming up with alternatives to factory education.
As for drugging children, typical of the hypocrisy of bourgeoisie morality. We have a great big war on drugs, which includes various forms of child abuse as drug testing (I call it child abuse when you make a minor drop their pants and urinate on command). At the same time, we mandate the drugging of other children via Ritalin. Looks like what all those long haired dope smoking hippies said back in the 1960s is true: there are drugs for social control, and drugs for Revolution; the government will outlaw the latter and use the former against the people.
Groovy.
July 21st, 2007 at 4:23 am
Boys have feelings, boys have emotions: That is something our feminized educators cannot realize, cannot understand: We also have a huge problem in our educators refusing to throw out the anti-male bigots, as Greg pointed out. Thus, boys hurt by divorce need to show their emotions in stronger ways. This results in Ritalin. It is a simple progression.
To me, it is obvious that kids from broken homes will be more commonly on Ritalin, almost all of them boys I would imagine. This is a Canadian study so I doubt if it is possible to get the gender breakdown. In today's Canada speaking of anything which would hurt males is close to forbidden.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:35 am
[...] boys on Ritalin? Here's a fascinating — and troubling — read from Glenn Sacks at Men's News Daily: According to the Washington Post, 10% percent of 10-year-old American boys are on Ritalin or [...]
September 12th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
video asian free girls xxx milky free xxx asian video