Alternatives To Drugging Children
Citizens Commission on Human Rights does not give medical or legal advice. However, medical studies show that underlying, undiagnosed physical problems can manifest as unwanted behavior or so-called “psychiatric” or behavioral symptoms. Parents need to know the alternatives to mind-altering damaging drugs.
Citizens Commission on Human Rights does not give medical or legal advice. However, medical studies show that underlying, undiagnosed physical problems can manifest as unwanted behavior or so-called “psychiatric” or behavioral symptoms. Parents need to know the alternatives to mind-altering damaging drugs.
Dr. Sydney Walker III, a psychiatrist and neurologist, wrote that labeling a child with a mental disorder “is a danger to ill children whose true diagnoses remain undiscovered and untreated. Most important, however, the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] is dangerous because doctors are using the book as a substitute for clinical judgment and diagnostic skills. If a doctor tells you that your child has a ‘DSM diagnosis’ of ADHD…find another doctor who relies on real medical knowledge and evaluation rather than on this diagnostic cookbook.”
He pointed out that you “need to find out what’s causing the symptoms, otherwise, you’re just sticking on more Band-Aids.”
Common causes of the symptoms of so-called “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” or “ADHD” are poor reading and math skills requiring tutoring, and educational basics, including phonics, reinforced. Environmental toxins, allergies, nutritional deficiencies, and other easily detectable and treatable physical conditions can also be a source of the behavioral or learning problem.
Allergies: Solvents and cleaning agents, aerosol sprays, and industrial chemicals can affect behavior. Gary Oberg, M.D., President of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, says that these as well as “chemicals in food and tap water, carbon monoxide, diesel fumes… can cause symptoms of brain dysfunction which may lead to an inaccurate diagnosis....” Allergic reactions can also come from trees, weeds, grass, mold, cats, dogs, or dust and dust mites.
It is, therefore, important to find a medical doctor that will conduct a thorough physical examination to first determine if an underlying physical condition may be causing any unwanted behavior or emotion, including, but not limited to testing for:
- Lead- or pesticide-poisoning
- Thyroid conditions
- Early-onset diabetes
- Heart disease
- Viral or bacterial infections
- Malnutrition
- Head injuries or tumors
- Allergies
- Vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies
- Mercury exposure
Diet: Local parents have used diet and common sense to solve the fake psychiatric problem of 'ADHD'. As reported on the current affairs program Today Tonight in 2003,
‘Since taking a vitamin and mineral powder mixed into yoghurt Zach has become a different boy…"You could actually start to reason with him, whereas before you had to walk away from it because you couldn't reason with him." Margaret (his mother) said.’ From the same program: ‘For 17 years Jade Taylor lived in hell; her son Tyler was so out of control she had to take out an Apprehended Violence Order (a legal order to restrain a person physically) against him.
A mineral analysis found he had extremely low levels of vitamins and minerals but a supplement treatment changed everything. Four years on, and now a father himself, Tyler can't believe the change. "I thought it was great. It was like a whole weight lifted off my shoulders," he said.
Overseas, the Washington D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) cited 17 controlled studies in a 1999 report that found diet adversely affects children’s behavior, sometimes dramatically.
Intelligent, Gifted and Bored: Scores of children are also very intelligent and gifted, but faced with a non-stimulating curriculum, are bored. Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, says, “Creative, intelligent children often have trouble concentrating in school. Goal-oriented children have a rough time focusing unless a specific challenging goal is outlined because they much more quickly, and to a greater degree, feel…[bored].” The real test is “How much attention can a child give to what he or she likes doing?”
Discipline: Dr. Walker also warned that drugging a child because his or her behavior is unacceptable, sends the child the wrong message: "One of the greatest sins of doctors who label normal children hyperactive is that they are telling children, in effect, 'You're not responsible for your behavior.' In addition, they are telling parents that simple discipline won't work, because their children have brain disorders that prevent them from behaving. Excusing out-of-control behaviors in a normal, healthy child simply causes more such behaviors—and the range of behaviors that are being attributed to hyperactivity and attention deficits, and which can thus be excused by children as out of their control—borders on the ludicrous."
Exercise: The December 2005 issue of The Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport & Exercise reported that exercising rather than antidepressants relieves symptoms of “depression.”
Education: Renowned educator Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld says that psychology based teaching methods create “reading disability and dyslexia.” Children “know that something terrible is being done to them, but they don't know how it is being done. And so they become angry and frustrated and their behavior reflects their hatred of school.”
He says, “all of this could have been avoided had the child been taught to read with intensive, systematic phonics….” He advises parents to remove their children from schools that use psychological curricula and “put them in private schools or teach them at home. Parents still have the freedom to take matters into their own hands. If they don't, then it is the children who will suffer.”
In a recent article, in June 2006, Sydney University's dean of education and social work Derrick Armstrong said, “…children had been given the ADHD ‘label’ to cover a multitude of problems that had not been addressed and given drugs ‘basically to quieten them down’”… and added in the same article that ‘it was still debatable whether the condition actually existed or had been promoted by ‘hype and vested interests’’.
Communication: Parents act out of a strong desire to do what is best for their child; the child doesn’t always understand this. But truthfully, there is no barrier as long as parents are frank and have honest communication with their children, where both sides understand each other and can agree.
For further information, log onto www.cchr.org.
CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
In Australia, Citizens Committee on Human Rights
National Office Tel: (02) 99649844, Fax: (02) 99297362
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International Website: http://www.cchr.org
What Are The Alternatives? Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D
“All children exhibit ADHD-like behavior. Observe children right before recess, or riding on a bus heading to an exciting field trip, or anticipating a birthday party. Nothing short of strapping them down can keep them still. Healthy children have verve—a zest for life that is exhibited in curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, animation, vigor, and imagination.”
Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D..
Clinical Psychologist and
Author, Rape of the Soul, 2001
No one can discount the fact that troubled children and even children not doing well in school need help. However, they first require accurate diagnosis and not the “hit-and-miss” subjective evaluation of childhood psychiatric “disorders.” Such subjectivity opens the door to abuse and is even more abusive when psychiatrists fail to provide information to parents on what physical conditions can be underlying their child’s challenging behaviour.
There is a world of difference between the art of identifying symptoms and the science of finding and treating causes. Psychiatrists specialize in cataloguing symptoms, work to convince us that the symptoms are causes, that their treatments work, and then persist in endlessly treating the symptoms.
Sydney Walker III, M.D., psychiatrist and author of The Hyperactivity Hoax, warns: “A child who sees a DSM-oriented doctor is almost assured of a psychiatric label and a prescription, even if the child is perfectly fine…This willy-nilly labeling of virtually everyone as mentally ill is a serious danger to the health of children, because virtually all children have enough symptoms to get a DSM label and a drug. And, of course, DSM labeling is a danger to ill children, whose true diagnoses remain undiscovered and untreated.”
Dr. Walker reports a number of conditions/reactions that can be erroneously diagnosed as mental disorders in children:
- High lead levels place children at great risk for both school failure and delinquency.
- High mercury levels can cause agitation and cognitive problems.
- Iron-deficiency anaemia can lead to poor job performance, despondency, fatigue, and often aggression and irritability.
- B-vitamin deficiencies, common in teens and young adults, can lead to symptoms of subclinical beriberi, including hostility and violent outbursts.
- Hyperthyroidism can cause fear, hostility, and demanding, hypercritical behaviour, all of which can lead to job and social failure. It can also manifest as symptoms of hyperactivity.
- Temporal lobe seizures, sometimes almost continuous and often too subtle to be detected by eye, can cause violent outbursts, restless movements and bizarre behaviour.
- The fluctuating blood sugar levels seen in subclinical diabetes can cause “fugue” states in which individuals commit unexplained and sometimes violent acts.
- Cardiac conditions can reduce the supply of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the brain and, over time, can cause the death of brain cells. This results in impaired thinking and aberrant behaviour.
- Some drugs, both prescription and illegal, can cause the brain to atrophy, leading to disturbed cognition and behaviour.
- Solvents can severely disrupt the function of brain cells or even destroy neurons. Children exposed to pesticides can exhibit nervousness, poor concentration, irritability, memory problems, and depression.
- Carbon monoxide or CO poisonings can manifest as the flu, and long-term exposure can cause memory loss, hyperactivity, attention deficits, and personality changes. Mercury amalgam dental fillings can affect a small but significant number of people, causing mercury sensitivity leading to headaches, restless behaviour, and irritability.
Dr. Walker said: “Children with early-stage brain tumors can develop symptoms of hyperactivity or poor attention. So can lead- or pesticide-poisoned children. So can children with early-onset diabetes, heart disease, worms, viral or bacterial infections, malnutrition, head injuries, genetic disorders, allergies, mercury or manganese exposure, petit mal seizures, and hundreds—yes hundreds—of other minor, major, or even life-threatening medical problems. Yet all these children are labeled hyperactive or ADD.”
Here are examples cited in his book:
- Dana was diagnosed as having hyperactivity and oppositional defiant disorder because of bad moods, tantrums and aggressive behaviour. She was always in the principal’s office, usually for starting fights. However, she was also thin, pale, fragile-looking, not sleeping, wetting the bed and losing her appetite. Something was making her feel miserable. That something turned out to be the beginning phases of diabetes. An endocrinologist taught her family how to control Dana’s diet and manage her disease; she never needed a psychiatrist.
- Neurologist J. Gordon Millichap reports the story of a 9-year-old boy labeled as having ADHD because of “inattention, distractibility and homework organizational problems.” The boy suffered from headaches and was struggling through his classes. However, Millichap noted that the boy’s body had brief right-hand tremors and experienced episodes of confusion and suggested seizures. Brain scans revealed a large cyst in the temporal lobe of the boy’s brain.
- Debby, age 5, was tiny and delicate but was described by her mother as a “mean little kid” who had temper tantrums and screaming fits. She cried continuously, slept very little, and banged her head. A doctor recommended a psychotropic drug for her out-of-control behaviour. However, a second opinion discovered Debby had a defective blood vessel between her heart and lungs, preventing a normal flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Surgery corrected this serious and potentially fatal condition, which would have been masked had she been given a drug. Almost immediately, Debby’s behaviour improved, her tantrums stopped, and her teachers began praising her academic achievement.
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Child Drugging