04-04-2009, 09:46 PM
The kids I saw most often who'd been diagnosed ADHD - and medicated - most likely didn't suffer from it in the first place. I saw too many come out of totally chaotic homes, and their reaction to that was acting out in school. Sadly there are too many teachers very willing to push a parent into getting their kids medicated, and, of course, the parents were happy to oblige, because their primary goal was to stay under the radar of teachers and school staff. I often wondered why teachers never caught on to the fact something else was going on, considering medicating a child who is not really ADHD doesn't do anything for their behavior problems. I do understand that ADD and ADHD are real issues, but the number of kids diagnosed is undoubtedly inflated dramatically beyond its real rate of occurrence.