Psychiatry has never validated attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as a legitimate, biological disease. Nevertheless, the myth of ADHD continues to prevail. Every year, Big Pharma diagnoses millions of children with ADHD, prescribing dangerous, expensive and mind-altering drugs.

Fred Baughman, MD, exposes ADHD for what it really is in his book The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children. In vivid prose, Baughman documents how teachers are apt to label a child as ADHD before a physician, and how Big Pharma stands to make a buck by promoting this pseudo-illness. The following includes a couple exerts taken from the book.

100% FRAUD

Between the years 1990 and 2000 the Food and Drug Administration received 186 reports of death caused by methylphenidate (Ritalin and all other forms of the drug) through its MedWatch program, a voluntary system for the reporting of post-marketing complications of drugs. [7] Epidemiological studies have shown that voluntary systems, such as this, report no more than 1 to 10 percent of actual adverse reactions, so the death count for Ritalin is sure to be much higher, as are the totals for the following additional negative effects reported due to methylphenidate: 569 hospitalizations (36 were life-threatening), 949 central or peripheral nervous system occurrences, 126 cardiovascular occurrences, 6 cases of cardiomyopathy, 12 of arrhythmia, 7 of bradycardia (slow pulse), 5 of bundle branch block (impairment of heart’s conduction apparatus), 4 of EKG abnormality, 5 extrasystole (heart rhythm abnormalities), 3 of heart arrest, 2 of heart failure, 10 of hypotension (low blood pressure), 1 myocardial infarction (heart attack), and 15 cases of tachycardia (rapid pulse).

Ritalin is just one of the drugs commonly prescribed for ADHD. Why doesn’t anybody know the true number of children harmed or killed by Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs? There is no nationwide data-gathering system that allows us to calculate the exact number of Ritalin-induced deaths or damage, or those induced by other psychiatric medications, but it is certain that parents and patients alike are routinely misled and uninformed. Even if the numbers the FDA does have represent only a sliver of the real total, they are still more than enough to raise alarms. The truth is that Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs given to children are dangerous, addictive substances that provide no benefits while exposing them to horrible risks.

A WIDENING PLAGUE

With the successful spread of the ADHD plague serving as a template, we now see diagnoses like anxiety, depression, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, and many others rampaging through the child population. We certainly do not claim that children have no real problems or never exhibit disturbing behaviors. Plenty of them do, but these are almost always in response to adverse situations in their environments, which are controlled by adults, and not dysfunctions in their brains, which have become the popular scapegoats. Troubled kids need real help, not chemical restraints administered by adults who refuse to address the true issues. When a child feels sad, distressed, or worried, when a child’s moods go up and down or she acts out with violence, sex, or drugs, there is surely something wrong that needs to be fixed, maybe something very wrong ut it’s not in their brains, it’s in how we, the adults who are responsible for them, are conducting ourselves.

Today we have reached the sad state where, according to a 2002 study conducted by Yale University, 9 of 10 children who visit a child psychiatrist are given a prescription for a psychotropic drug. [13] In this sad state the discipline of psychiatry serves as the administering arm of pharmaceutical companies who collude with them to invent diseases for profit, with no consideration given to the real needs of children, their futures, or their very lives. We are told this is being done in the best interest of suffering children, a lie that goes beyond mere hypocrisy. C.S. Lewis provided an apt description of this state of affairs when he wrote, “There is no tyranny so great as that which is practiced for the victim.”

Call the ADHD out for its bluff by purchasing a copy of Baughman’s book here.

Sources include:

(1) Baughman, Fred. The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children. Trafford Publishing: Oxford, UK. 2006.