From ABCs to IEPs: ADHD Stories from Loss of Brain Trust
By Anne Dachel
Over the past week science has once again spoken on the declining health of children in the 21st century. And like the autism epidemic we celebrate every April, it’s nothing to really be concerned about, besides no one can explain why it’s happening anyway.
I’m talking about the findings that CNN, CNBC, Fox News, TIME and other sources announced recently, namely that 10% of kids today have ADHD, up from the previously accepted 6%.
The headlines sounded worrisome.
ABC NEWS: ADHD rates in kids have increased over the past 20 years, new study says
CNN: 10% of US children diagnosed with ADHD, study finds
Fox News: ADHD diagnoses may be rising in US
TIME: One in 10 U.S. Kids Has Been Diagnosed with ADHD
No need to panic. In the actual text, all of the reports immediately downplayed the new rate with a whole host of reasons that disprove any real increase. Most of them were right out of the THERE AREN’T REALLY MORE KIDS WITH AUTISM playbook that officials have used for years. And it always helps to have folks with lots of credentials from big name institutions to back up the claims.
ABC News: (The old “expanded spectrum” explanation.)
The way the disorder is evaluated likely plays a part.
"The diagnosis and assessment for ADHD has evolved over the past few decades. The diagnostic criteria that we use is now a little more liberal and captures cases that the older criteria would have left out," said Dr. Neha Chaudhary, a child psychiatrist at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Stanford Brainstorm, in an interview with ABC news.
CNN: (And of course there’s “better diagnosing” along with improvements in medicine.)
Advances in medical technology also may have contributed to the increase, according to the research. Twenty years ago, preterm or low-weight babies had a harder time surviving. Those factors increase the risk of being diagnosed with ADHD.
In interpreting their results, however, the study's authors tied the higher numbers to better understanding of the condition by doctors and the public, new standards for diagnosis and an increase in access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Over the past several decades, Hinshaw said, there's been an expanded view of who can develop ADHD.
Fox News: (There’s also the possibility that it’s really misdiagnosing of other conditions as ADHD.)
"You really have to interpret the study with caution," said Amie Bettencourt, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine….. It's possible it's on the rise. But it’s also possible that these could be symptoms of something else.”
Bettencourt has seen a lot of misdiagnoses.
TIME: (Where would we be without “greater awareness”…and “less stigma”?)
…But the study suggests that heightened awareness of the condition and changing diagnostic criteria may partially explain the higher numbers. Better access to care and weakening stigmas around mental health care, particularly among minority populations, may have also led to more diagnoses, the authors write.
THIS IS THE REAL MESSAGE: the dramatic changes we’re seeing in the physical and mental health of children will never be recognized or addressed as such.
Don’t expect either the medical community or government health officials to ever sound worried. No matter how bad the numbers are, they don’t mean anything.
There will always be a confusing multitude of explanations for what’s happening, and officials will always be scratching their collective heads.
The media will continue to condition us to accept whatever we’re told.
Countless stories inform us that 20 percent of children today are mentally ill and 2 percent have autism. No one cares about those numbers. IF someone actually raised concerns, they’d be quickly shut down.
We either have to believe that there have been no real changes in kids’ health, OR else we have to believe that society is at fault.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others have had the science since 1998 that shows adverse childhood experiences (ACEs—trauma kids are exposed to at home) are behind behavior changes, including ADHD. We’re to believe that children today live with MORE “TOXIC STRESS” than in past decades. This is why there’s more ADHD, along with all kinds of other physical and mental health problems.
More studies showing ACEs are linked to ADHD have been published over the past few years, for example:
Associations Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and ADHD Diagnosis and Severity.
Children with ADHD have higher ACE exposure compared with children without ADHD. There was a significant association between ACE score, ADHD, and moderate to severe ADHD. Efforts to improve ADHD assessment and management should consider routinely evaluating for ACEs.
Is the water muddy enough for you?
Yes, there is more ADHD being diagnosed in children, but that doesn’t mean more kids have ADHD. Maybe it’s just misdiagnosing, better diagnosing, greater awareness, less stigma, or a broader definition of the disorder.
OR maybe there really is MORE ADHD. If that’s the case then, it’s parents to blame.
Take your pick.
Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.
Jeanette,
It is not your imagination that humanity is losing its mind. Martin Pall estimates we have 5 years left before the brain damage from EMF/wireless renders us unable to do anything about it.
5 years.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 04, 2018 at 02:16 PM
To me it's much worse than this 10% (even though there is financial incentive to apply this diagnosis more, but I think it is also actual functional incentive in the classroom to seek easy pill-popping "solutions" that did not exist in prior decades). After viewing quite a few videos of completely unvaccinated children, I suspect most of us are on an attention compromised spectrum. Many adults I know complain they cannot focus their thoughts as they used to, seems to be approaching half, and I'm sure it's a slow boiling frog kind of thing for many others. There is some research for instance on wireless radiation exposure impact on students' math calculations that suggests we do not detect adverse effects that are there.
Does our society has the collective ability to face, calculate (some of us have intense personal incentive to contemplate this certainly, but I know others in the same boat that are actually dis-incentivized by the personal proximity) and appreciate all we've sacrificed to "control disease" and are sacrificing further in subjecting our metal toxic (and in other ways compromised) bodies to almost continual wireless radiation?
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | September 04, 2018 at 12:02 PM
To add to my last comment -
According to the research, every pregnant woman should have a wired land line in her home in order to avoid exposing her fetus to cell phone radiation. No pregnant woman should have wifi or a "smart" utility meter - the radiation is the same. I don't know of any pregnant woman whose OB told her that.
Most colleges and universities are no longer offering land lines to dormitory students. Our young are being taught to use only wireless. Big telecom has set a goal of doing away with all landline service by 2020 - with our stupid bought government's approval. That means that even though we know that wireless damages the developing brain and we know that it causes cancer and cellular dysfunction and opens the blood brain barrier, there will be no alternative for anyone in 2 years. Think of toddlers talking to grandma and children talking to each other on a brain cancer causing cell phone.
PLEASE demand that this march to extinction be stopped. It is not just vaccines.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 04, 2018 at 11:01 AM
And the cover up and march to extinction continues.
Yale - 2012 (excerpt):
“This is the first experimental evidence that fetal exposure to radiofrequency radiation from cellular telephones does in fact affect adult behavior,” said senior author Dr. Hugh S. Taylor, professor and chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.
Taylor and co-authors exposed pregnant mice to radiation from a muted and silenced cell phone positioned above the cage and placed on an active phone call for the duration of the trial. A control group of mice was kept under the same conditions but with the phone deactivated.
The team measured the brain electrical activity of adult mice that were exposed to radiation as fetuses, and conducted a battery of psychological and behavioral tests. They found that the mice that were exposed to radiation tended to be more hyperactive and had reduced memory capacity. Taylor attributed the behavioral changes to an effect during pregnancy on the development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain."
https://news.yale.edu/2012/03/15/cell-phone-use-pregnancy-may-cause-behavioral-disorders-offspring
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Dr. Hugh Taylor, head of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Yale, discussing the above research that showed permanent altered brain in mice exposed only in utero:
https://vimeo.com/73431739
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Autism, ADHD, and Wireless
Electromagnetic Fields and Children’s Brain Development
Dr. Martha Herbert speaks at the Press Conference from the Symposium on Children, Cell Phones and Wireless at the 2016 Pediatric Societies Annual Conference.
https://ehtrust.org/key-issues/cell-phoneswireless/autism-adhd-wireless-electromagnetic-fields/
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Someone should introduce Dr. Neha Chaudhary, child psychiatrist at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, to Drs. Herbert (in the same institution) and Dr. Taylor.
Pregnant women are being bombarded with microwave (ie cell phone, wifi, etc.) radiation. Bombarded is not even a good enough word.
Women of child bearing age have no idea. You can make a difference by getting this information out there.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 04, 2018 at 10:11 AM
ADHD, like so many other psychiatric diagnoses, is a "condition" invented for the sole purpose of selling pharmaceutical poison. It is no wonder numbers are rising. Essential that the profit stream increase. They are giving these dangerous drugs to children as young as three. This is evil. The swamp just gets murkier.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | September 04, 2018 at 09:04 AM
Anne, that was a very well written and supported piece. You're "preaching to the choir" here, and that's not a bad thing. Maybe you could look up something?.... I can't recall name or details, but I recall a certain "Dr.", who was key to the invention of the ADHD "diagnosis", and who later came out and publicly claimed his work was FRAUDULENT. As I recall, he even wrote a book about the fraud behind most "ADHD "diagnoses"".....
As usual, it's psychiatrists and their poison pills which are leading the charge. Even here in my small college town, I now MANY young people regularly use Ritalin and Adderal "recreationally".
The invention and creation of so-called "ADHD" was largely driven by the desire of PhRMA to expand their market for DRUGS. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, a drug racket, and a means of social control. It's 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry and it's poison pills have done, and continue to do, far more harm than good. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, FOLKS!
Posted by: Bill | September 04, 2018 at 08:56 AM
ADHD up to 10% up from previously accepted 6% ..
"No need to panic. In the actual text, all of the reports immediately downplayed the new rate with a whole host of reasons that disprove any real increase .. expanded spectrum, greater awareness, better diagnosing, misdiagnosing, less stigma, adverse child experiences (ACE)" .. to name the usual "plausible denials" that have been used for decades in a very successful effort by public health officials to continue
NORMALIZING ABNORMALITY
Our most recent generations of parents have grown up where 1 in 35 children diagnosed autistic and 10% of children are ADHD … is not troublesome .. indeed … now considered NORMAL .. as opposed to past generations where autism was unheard of and ADHD had not even been identified.
Posted by: bob moffit | September 04, 2018 at 06:50 AM