Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis?

Feingold Association - Pure Facts, October 1995

The following is a press release provided to Pure Facts by the Public Broadcasting System. 

New evidence uncovered by the Merrow Report suggests that the current epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is largely man-made and that hundreds of thousands of children are being misdiagnosed and unnecessarily medicated.

That is the conclusion of a special edition of The Merrow Report, "Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis."

The program is strongly recommended by the National PTA, the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, and the National Education Association.

ADD is fast becoming a household name.  In 1990, 750,000 children were diagnosed with it.  Today, that figure is approaching 4,000,000.  Most of these children take medication under a doctor's prescription, usually the powerful psychostimulant Ritalin or its generic equivalent - methylphenidate - to help them pay attention in school.  Evidence of dramatic increase is everywhere.   At Nova Middle School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for example, only three students were being medicated for ADD when Steve Friedman became principal in 1990.  Today, he tells correspondent John Merrow, "We probably have over 60, and most of them are on Ritalin.  You come up here at lunch time and watch the line waiting to receive their pills, it's amazing to me." 

Ciba-Geigy, the company that manufacturers Ritalin, attributes the surge in ADD to "heightened public awareness," but The Merrow Report has uncovered evidence suggesting that Ciba-Geigy created much of that awareness by giving money to "ADD support groups" that recommend medication - including Ritalin - to parents.

One ADD support group has received nearly $1 million from Ciba-Geigy. CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder) uses the money to pay for national "ADD awareness campaigns', "educational meetings", and mailing to hundreds of thousands of parents and teachers.

None of the parents, all of who rely on CHADD for information about ADD and medication, knew of the Ciba-Geigy/CHADD financial connection.

However, as the program reports, CHADD's information is sometimes incomplete, misleading, or inaccurate.  For example, CHADD's "Fact Sheets" do not report that Ritalin's pharmacology is essentially identical to amphetamine or that Ritalin is classified by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with potent drugs like codeine and morphine - drugs with legitimate medical use but high potential for abuse.

Many doctors feel comfortable prescribing Ritalin as a treatment for ADD. Dr. Simon Epstein, a psychiatrist in Stamford, CT, says medication "is what works, it removes the symptoms, it takes a non-functioning or limited functioning child or adults and turns his whole life around."

Young people on the program feel differently.   Fourteen-year-old Matt Scherbel, who worries about Ritalin's side effects, tells Merrow, "Ritalin focuses everything down to such a fine point that nothing's fun anymore and you're not the same person that you were."

Ritalin is so readily available, the program reports, that young people have begun to abuse it.  A 15-year-old recovering addict explains on the program, "Snorting it is one of the big things to do now, because it's free.  I mean, if a friend has a couple of extra pills, he'll just give them to you."

CHADD is now petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration to relax its oversight of Ritalin and methylphenidate, but at least one DEA official is skeptical.  "The evidence suggests we're overprescribing," Gene R. Haslip says, "the United States is using five times as much (of this drug) as the entire rest of the planet combined."