Who’s Afraid of ADHD Stimulants?
“To deplore the use of a tool that can not only relieve suffering, but actually turn it into success, health, and joy, well, that’s just plain ignorant, as well as cruel to the people who it scares away from ever trying medication.”This quote perfectly sums up the pervasive fear among adults and caregivers of children diagnosed with ADHD.
And it remains as detrimental now as it was when authors Edward Hallowell, M.D., and John Ratey, M.D., first published it in their book ADHD 2.0 (#CommissionsEarned).The first-line medications for ADHD are some of the most effective, best studied, most scrutinized, longest known, and safest drugs in all of medicine.
They have been safely prescribed to children for decades. Nonetheless, no other class of medications in virtually all of medicine inspires more baseless fears, intentional disinformation, and wild beliefs as do the stimulants used to treat ADHD.
Interestingly, these fears are almost entirely an American phenomenon that hardly exists elsewhere in the world.In the late 1970s, a public backlash against treating ADHD with stimulant medication began after groups launched nationally organized, and extraordinarily effective, disinformation campaigns.
United States
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Cases: 46 252 513
Deaths: 750 423
Recovered: 0
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India
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Cases: 34 321 025
Deaths: 459 652
Recovered: 0
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Brazil
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Cases: 21 835 785
Deaths: 608 235
Recovered: 0
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United Kingdom
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Cases: 9 215 683
Deaths: 141 607
Recovered: 0
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Russia
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Cases: 8 494 589
Deaths: 237 619
Recovered: 0
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