This morning I awakened to The New York Times article, written by Alan Schwarz, almost sent me back to bed.
A growing number of physicians across the country are resorting to drugs that increase focus and impulse control in low-income young children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D), to treat lackluster academic performance in public elementary schools that are not meeting their needs. Among them is Dr. Michael Anderson, who serves poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. And what he had to say to Schwarz was nothing less than chilling.
“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” he argued. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment.” He sees himself as a “social justice thinker,” who is “evening the scales a little bit.” The children he plies with pills are “mismatched with their environment,” with families who can ill afford therapy, tutoring, and the kinds of support that more advantaged families take for granted in their children’s “race to the top.”
A.D.H.D. is on the rise, as noted by the , with higher rates found in community samples [Italics are mine in the last bullet point]:
- The percentage of children with a parent-reported ADHD diagnosis increased by 22% between 2003 and 2007.
- Rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 and an average of 5.5% per year from 2003 to 2007.
- Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.
- The highest rates of parent-reported ADHD diagnosis were noted among children covered by Medicaid and multiracial children.
Although recognition and treatment of the disease have been welcomed by growing numbers of parents, and the recommends screening for ADHD among preschoolers, a debate has been raging for some time about over-diagnosis. Adderall, ritalin, and other psychostimulants are no sugar pills; they’re controlled substances, which are highly addictive. “We don’t have enough information to know the long-term effects of these medications on young developing brains,” said , director of Healthy Steps program at Children’s Hospital at NYC’s Montefiore Medical Center in an ABC News blog last year. “Young brains are like a sponge, they’ll soak up anything. Serious medication of this sort might affect them disproportionately as well.”
How this medication affects its youngest patients is of the utmost importance, of course. But ADHD treatment as a proxy for social justice and education reform is downright horrifying. One superintendent of a California school district who agreed to speak to Schwarz—others wouldn’t touch the controversial topic with a ten-foot pole—noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.”
“It’s scary to think that this is what we’ve come to,” said the school superintendent. Indeed.
The nation’s inability to support an equitable, high-quality system of public schooling that meets the needs of children is a travesty. As a colleague wrote today in an email: “We’ll let ‘a thousand points of light’ try and figure it out, with some working, some not. The idea of a public good is as distant as the Golden Age of Athens.”
What are you seeing among your preschoolers who are struggling with self-regulation? How can we countenance drugs as a proxy for social justice and education reform? Let me know what you’re thinking.
I find this trend very alarming, and such thinking will likely make investments in quality education that truly meets the needs of children more difficult to obtain, at least, in the short term. At the turn of the century we put anyone who did not confirm into institutions, and drugs are just another form of this institutionalism, rather than addressing the true causes. Maybe after we have a generation of children who grow up drugged but still unable to be productive citizens will we decide the investment in “changing environments” is worth it.
I, also, question any professional who recommends this approach when they know it is not the best course of action for the child rather than advocating to schools and parents for what they need to do. Maybe if these professionals started saying to parents and teachers, “I know you would like me to drug this kid, but instead you need to set up the environment to allow for all learning styles, turn off the TV, allow kids to be kids, and teach social/emotional skills, and if you tell me you don’t have the resources to do that than start advocating for them” we would get the change our children need.