My Adult ADHD & Medication

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I have adult ADHD, and many are making it harder for me to get my medication.

The psychiatrist who identified attention deficit disorder - the condition blamed for the bad behaviour of hundreds of thousands of children - has admitted that many may not really be ill.

Dr Robert Spitzer said that up to 30 per cent of youngsters classified as suffering from disruptive and hyperactive conditions could have been misdiagnosed.

They may simply be showing perfectly normal signs of being happy or sad, he said.

'Many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders,' he continued.

Dr Spitzer developed the bible of mental disorder classification in the 1970s and 1980s, which identified dozens of new conditions including ADD and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Since then hundreds of thousands of children have been diagnosed with ADD, a behavioural disorder linked to poor attention span, and ADHD, which adds an element of hyperactivity.

The disorders describe disruptive and restless behaviour that results in children having difficulty focusing their attention on specific tasks. ADHD is most commonly noticed at the age of five, and as many as one in 30 British children is said to have it.

It is often treated with drugs, with Ritalin being the most commonly prescribed. Some scientists say ADHD is a genetic disorder that does not disappear with adulthood. But sceptics believe the diagnosis is a 'biobabble' label, which has evolved from a soundbite culture that is too prepared to medicalise anti-social human traits.

Dr Spitzer, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, now says the classification led to many people being diagnosed as medically disordered when their mood swings and behaviour were simply normal feelings of happiness and sadness.

In a BBC2 documentary series The Trap, which begins on Sunday, he says that between 20 and 30 per cent of mental disorder diagnoses may be incorrect.

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Madgravity

3 months, 2 Weeks, 19 hours, 26 minutes ago

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