New research, GREAT NEWS! The Truth, Reality, Facts.

Here is some current information and studies as of Early this year, 2003, much of the info can be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the studies currently being done by the National Institute of Mental Health;

For more than a generation now, we’ve been “drugging” our unruly kids to calm them down. And in doing so, we have risked damaging their young brains and setting them up for long-term drug addiction - or so we have been warned.

For years, that has been the mantra of those who criticized the making of “the Ritalin generation” - children literally raised on powerful psychoactive drugs to control aggressive, hyperactive, disruptive behavior.

But now, that mantra is being turned inside-out. The first long-term results of what some have called a huge drug experiment on our children shows what almost no one expected:

Not only do the stimulant drugs used to treat “attention-deficit-hyperactive disorder” - or ADHD as it is known - not damage the brain, they appear to enhance brain growth, helping afflicted children catch up in brain size to their more “normal” peers.

That blockbuster finding, printed recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is finally easing the fears of parents afraid of these drugs and is sending experts on a mission to get the word out.

In short, that word is: The drugs work; they’re safe over the long term; and it is in fact cruel not to use them on children who really need them.

“That we are getting positive results from raising a generation on Ritalin is not surprising to me,” said Dr. Michael Cohen, a now-retired Tucson pediatrician considered a top expert on ADHD, who wrote the book, “The Attention Zone,” on the issue in 1998.

“We have seen, and now the studies are showing, that the benefits of these treatments are huge. What we really have to stress is how much damage is done by not treating these children.

“As parents and as doctors, we are obligated to find out if we can ease their suffering, and now we know we can. Parents need to know this is a medical problem and there are safe and effective treatments for it.

“By early diagnosis and intervention, we have the opportunity to save a youngster’s life, to give a child a chance at successful life. I cannot express that strongly enough. It is absolutely critical. If anything, we are under-treating, not over-treating, our children.”

But, contrary to the claim by critics, parents are not clamoring for these drugs to make their lives easier. Most are extremely reluctant to put their young children on medications of any kind, doctors, psychologists and school nurses all say.

“The idea that ADHD is not a valid disorder is still out there, and parents get blamed a lot for how their child behaves - they’re not in control, they can’t handle the child. Parents take on that blame, and turning to a drug is admitting failure to them.”

“Disability” is a tough word to describe what experts call simply the “subtle brain differences” that have been found in children with ADHD - the most common psychiatric disorder in school-age children in the U.S. today, affecting anywhere from 3 to 10 percent of them.

“Anything that affects that big a chunk of the population is not a disease or even a disorder. It is simply the genetic makeup of certain people,” said nationally recognized child psychologist Dennis D. Embry.

“We now know several genes are involved in the brain chemistry that produces this kind of behavior - the hyperactivity, the inability to sustain attention or complete a task, the aggression. It occurs in humans cross-culturally, and it has been around forever and ever.

Most experts in the field estimate that about 85 percent of ADHD is genetic - that a child is born with the brain differences linked to the disorder, and that it is strongly inherited, passed down through families.

Just what is going on in the brain of the ADHD child was the focus of the landmark 10-year study just released by the National Institute of Mental Health - the study many say has proven the long-term safety of ADHD medications.

Using brain-imaging technology, scientists scanned the brains of some 150 ADHD-diagnosed children as they grew through childhood, comparing them to about the same number of non-ADHD - or “normal” - kids.

They found that those with the disorder start out with significantly smaller brains - by 3 to 4 percent - than those without it. And the more severe the disorder, the smaller the brain, the study showed.

But perhaps more crucial, those children who were treated for years with psychostimulants such as Ritalin experienced more brain growth over time than did untreated children, whose brains remained “strikingly smaller” in certain areas.

“There is no evidence that medication harms the brain,” said Dr. Xavier Castellanos, the National Institute of Mental Health child psychiatrist who led the study. “It is possible that medication may promote brain maturation.”

That likely explains why many students want to and can successfully taper off the medication by the time they reach high school, after years of using it. And that puts to lie another myth - that these prescribed stimulants set the stage for later addictions to illegal stimulants.

“By high school, kids just don’t want to go to the school nurse and get a ‘crazy pill’ any more,” said Kathy Jo Rucker, a registered nurse who is director of health services for the Tucson Unified School District.

While some 8 percent of TUSD’s 32,000 elementary school children are taking ADHD drugs, that figure drops to about 5 percent by high school.

Not only is the safety of ADHD medications now being proven in valid, scientific studies, so also is the effectiveness of them - notably in yet another decade-long National Institute of Mental Health study, this one comparing treatments in nearly 600 ADHD children.

Just giving psychostimulant drugs alone - under a doctor’s careful and consistent monitoring to achieve the right dose and control side effects - “normalized” almost twice as many ADHD children, some 56 percent, than did intense behavioral therapy without the drugs, the study found.

However, combining the medication with behavioral therapy achieved the best results - “normalizing” 68 percent of the ADHD children.

“But the problem is, in the real world of medical economics and managed care, can you get that - intensive, high-quality therapy along with the medicine? Probably not,” said Cohen.

“But we need to try. There is no doubt that kids did best when parents were trained to change their disciplinary tactics - taking the negativity out of it, and focusing on the child’s strengths. The negativity of parents to these kids - which can be constant - very powerfully affects the symptoms, making them much worse.”

Although these newly emerging studies are reassuring, they by no means have ended the long-simmering nationwide controversy over the medicating of our children.

But that controversy is moving away from dire threats about harmful drugs to warnings that, no matter how good the drugs may be, too many kids getting them don’t need them.

Most of the symptoms of ADHD - fidgeting, squirming, can’t stay seated, running around at inappropriate times, can’t play quietly, talks too much, won’t take turns, can’t complete tasks, can’t sustain attention or effort - describe “85 percent of all kids,” Leman said.

There is no doubt that attention-deficit-like symptoms often emerge from other causes - from child abuse, exposure to too much violence, bipolar disorder, blood sugar imbalances, even food allergies, studies have shown. On such children, stimulant drugs can backfire dangerously, worsening the behavior. Proper diagnosis is crucial. But once you have this, medication is safe and effective.[list=][/list][img][/img][list=][quote][/quote][u][/u][/list]