Another highly readable tour-de-force, Robyn, showing that, yet again, Big Pharma has been caught with its finger on the scales. For a behaviour disorder for which there is no "identifiable, measurable differences in the brains of children" with or without ADHD, Big Pharma is making a killing by getting the psychiatric field to prescribe "mind-altering and heart-damaging drugs" for years to come. Still, you must give it to Big Pharma because prescribing a drug for a biological condition which doesn't exist is one hell of a business model (a bit like pumping the profitable Magic Covid Goo into billions of arms which cause all manner of medical mayhem and then double-dipping by prescribing life-long drug treatment for the cardiac and neurological problems the quaxxes cause). A "giant racket", indeed.
Your article brought back grim memories of my early career as a high school teacher, when the problem of hyper-inattentive, disruptive students was up close and personal so the behaviour problems covered by ADHD are quite real but, as you point out, there is a suite of reasons for such dysfunctional behaviour which can be addressed more holistically rather than enrolling the kids in a fruitless pharma regime.
You might be interested that even The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-new-study-186672) has argued along similar lines with regard to depression which a new 'umbrella review' of the actual evidence for the hypothesis that it is caused by a “chemical imbalance” of serotonin in the brain simply doesn't stack up and is, instead, traceable to the pharmaceutical industry's "efforts to market a new range of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs" which received the imprimatur of the American Psychiatric Association (which must be regarded as an 'asset' of the money-splashing pharma giants). And hasn't that been a wild success with one in six of the adult population in England, for example, being doped up with emotion-numbing anti-depressants.
There's no doubt whatsoever that some kids display highly challenging behaviours that disrupt classrooms and compromise their own lives. But as you rightly point out, and as all teachers who actually show an interest in their students rapidly discover, there are a host of reasons for these behaviours, and deficiency of psychostimulant drugs is not one of them! I find it staggering than any sane person could actually believe that behaviour caused by junk food, a dysfunctional home environment, ineffective parenting techniques, plain old boredom, or a personality that just isn't wired for sitting still for long stretches of time, can be 'fixed' with amphetamine-like drugs!
The article you referred to landed in my inbox the day after I wrote the ADHD article. Joanna Moncrieff has been among the small cadre of academics and clinicians (others include David Healy, James Davies, Peter Goetzsche, Irving Kirsch and Peter Breggin) who've been trying to draw attention to the giant fraud of the 'biochemical imbalance' theory of depression for decades. My sense is that a tipping point has finally been reached on this topic, and Joanna Moncrieff's metanalysis is going to break through. I hope so! Too many lives have been ruined by psyche-deadening SSRIs and SNRIs.
When I was at high school it was accepted to get a belting or the strap if one misbehaved. We mused as to whether the cane or strap was worse.
Not only did I get the strap, my mother also gave me a belting when I got home as well. Lesson learned, I don't think I mis-behaved too often after that.
Corporal punishment was still 'a thing' when I was in high school. It had deterrence value for some kids, but there were others with personalities that weren't at all responsive to it - or not in the intended way! I knew boys who saw corporal punishment as just the price to be paid for sticking it to the man. I wonder what happened to them when they left school - did they turn out to be criminals, star athletes, or CEOs?
When I was a kid in the 70's we had a relative who had a baby called Paula. Paula appeared to be an evil baby and then toddler of 2, she screamed and cried and had tantrums, threw things, played-up, was angry all the time and drove everyone nuts and was a nightmare. No-one knew what to do. Then one day they took her to the pediatrician and he diagnosed her as being allergic to MSG which was only a relatively new thing then and not widely known about (it was well-before they did the whole thing about taking it out of Chinese takeaway). I mean people knew it was around, but not many people yet knew it was something people reacted badly to. Well in those days MSG was in loads of mass-produced canned foods and it turned-out they were feeding her and her older sister loads and loads of canned foods packed with MSG. So they cut it all out of her diet and bang, she was suddenly good as gold. She stopped constantly crying, stopped screaming, wasn't angry all the time anymore, she was well-behaved and calm as can be. She became happy and well behaved. It was an allergy to the MSG which had been making her act that way all the time. So all these years later I often wonder if it's just a food allergy making kids act-out or act strangely. After all, we now have even more strange things in our food chain than ever before.
This is a great example of the necessity to examine each individual child's behaviour in context rather than slap some generic diagnostic label on them. Lucky Paula, that her parents found a paediatrician who was aware of food sensitivities!
And yes, there are many more concerning things in the food supply today, including all manner of pesticides, endocrine disrupting chemicals, colours and flavours, you name it. I read a study some time ago which found that fish contained residues of all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs, including psychiatric medications, statins and Viagra :(.
I Loved this article, thanks again. I have agonised for years over how intrusive i should be in sending students, parents, teachers to resources which go against the ADHD narrative. It seems yet another topic now has the Empowered! substack as my preferred reference. Your style and effort at substantiating claims - 'bringing receipts' - truly are a blessing for people like me.
A related issue of interest may be the failing effort to replicate pivotal scientific studies in Psychology, or the links between tech and attention in Johan Hari's 'Stolen Focus'.
Thank you for that feedback - it's heartening for me to hear that my work is landing with my readers, and providing a useful resource for them.
Thanks also for the valuable suggestions for future articles. I keep a file of ideas for issues I'd like to cover; as you might imagine, I have more ideas than time!
What is the difference between a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist? If I am still correct the Psychiatrist has added by postgraduate studies a certification in a discipline called Psychiatry after completing a Degree in Medicine. This is all based on the Medical Model philosophy of human health which posits that a fault must be the cause of the condition. This may be a bit simplistic but is not far off.
A Psychologist does NOT need to first complete a Medical Degree and may not study Psychiatry but a broader range on Psychology, as well as Scientific Methods and Statistics, and others.
The language of Psychiatry, dominated by the giant of the field Sigmund Freud, is embedded in our language to the degree the DSM, written completely in Psychiatric language, words, terms and meanings, is THE reference that defines ALL conditions. The language and words invade everyday conversations to a point we do not question them. Health management systems, rules of treatment and support, government documentation and legislation, almost all use the DSM as the bible of mental health. We all know what the Ego is - right?
Now we have the Neuroscientists moving in with wonderful research and insights but it is also a field strongly based upon the mental model of 'there must be a fault' which is so much underlining the processes of neurology.
ADHD is a multi-faceted condition nearly impossible to define and not possible to simply define in the language of the DSM. Starting with the DSM to explore the needs of an individual and pinning on a label, especially one of ADHD, as an inherent fault that then structures whatever follows is in my mind bordering on the criminal. It is at the least, non-science, and unethical.
You are exactly right, Peter: a psychiatrist is a doctor, steeped in the medical 'disease-based' model, who does postgrad training that doesn't even come close to the depth of study of human psychology that a psychologist undertakes. Mostly, psychiatry training simply involves the application of drugs to the diagnostic categories identified in the DSM.
Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, psychologists (who used to pride themselves on being independent professionals) have been brought into the medical field. Psychologists have had to accept the use of the DSM so that they can get their precious Medicare rebate, be on panels for assessing workers' compensation claims, and generally be accepted as 'allied health professionals'. Now most psychologists will refer patients to doctors for medication rather than presenting an alternative to it that involves educating them on how the mind works, and how to manage their difficulties of living.
Neuroscience research is absolutely fascinating, but you're 100% correct that much of it is focused on identifying 'disorders' rather than discovering the nuts and bolts of how our amazing brains work, and how to use this knowledge for self-empowerment.
Thanks Robyn for your comments and even bigger thank you for the regular articles and all the work that produces them.
I graduated end of 1997 learning during my study that rather than find a fualt to fix, it was far more productive and beneficial to the individual to help them alter their responses and behaviour consciously, in their control, to produce a more beneficial outcome for themselves. Seemed a far more positive and patient centered approach to psychology to me. (BSc hons Psych, British Psych Soc member 18 years for what it is worth).
BINGO!!!!! The psychologists of your era and those who came before you would surely be horrified to see how slavishly today's psychologists follow the psychiatrists' lead. Every variation in human behaviour is now labelled a 'disorder' or 'syndrome' and rather than taking responsibility for unproductive responses and behaviour, people are encouraged to wield their diagnostic labels as excuses.
Dr. James Davies also exposes the DSM scam, 9 people sitting around making stuff up, it was all total fiction, but used as a Bible for diagnosis and treatment by the entire worldwide mental health and pharma industry, this should be all over the media as one of the biggest cons in modern history. Dr. Davies gives a brilliant summary in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nd40Uy6tbQ
That paracetamol is still being recommended for pregnant women, just unbelievable!
You raise a really important point. True autism (not the vague 'autism spectrum disorder' baloney which attempts to classify people who are simply at the extreme end of the bell curve on certain personality characteristics as 'being on the autism spectrum') is most definitely a biologically-rooted phenomenon, with multiple factors including in utero exposure to drugs (including paracetamol, as I mentioned in this post), mercury, aluminium, glyphosate and vaccines playing roles in triggering it.
The behaviours that we see in children with true autism should NOT be ascribed to "ADHD", which is a wastebasket diagnosis, when there are biological abnormalities identified that explain these behaviours.
FRA and NMDA antibody tests can be used to check how many ASD cases have clear biological basis. Since antibody levels can vary, there will be a spectrum. To complicate matters, Mom can have FRA antibodies that resulted in in-utero brain damage, causing ASD.
I really dislike the term 'ASD' as it's become a wastebasket diagnosis and a way of muddying the waters between true cases of autism as described by Leo Kanner, and people who are perfectly functional but have certain personality characteristics at the far end of the bell curve.
But if you look at it biologically, there are people who have been exposed to a range of FRA antibody titers and therefore have a spectrum of damage. They will fall between the two points you describe. Is there a better way to describe it than ASD?
Are you aware that there are people who have elevated titres of rheumatoid factor, or ANA, but they have no observable pathology related to these? Yet we don't talk about people being 'on the rheumatoid arthritis spectrum' or 'on the lupus spectrum'.
There have always been people who had personalities that were extreme on some dimensions (look up Jordan Peterson's work on personality psychology as an excellent entry point to this fascinating field of research). We used to just call them 'quirky' or 'odd'. Now everyone and their dog lists 'autistic' in their LinkedIn bio along with their pronouns. It's beyond ridiculous.
Yes, many autoimmune diseases can be subclinical. As you know, T1D symptoms may not be observed until 90% of islet cells are destroyed. If "quirky" or "odd" test positive for FRAA, we know there is a biological basis.
Disease has no place on LinkedIn. The reason it shows up there is because Pharma criminals have tried to normalize vaccine-induced autism as "neurodiversity" and vaccine-induced gender dysphoria as "gender diversity".
Another highly readable tour-de-force, Robyn, showing that, yet again, Big Pharma has been caught with its finger on the scales. For a behaviour disorder for which there is no "identifiable, measurable differences in the brains of children" with or without ADHD, Big Pharma is making a killing by getting the psychiatric field to prescribe "mind-altering and heart-damaging drugs" for years to come. Still, you must give it to Big Pharma because prescribing a drug for a biological condition which doesn't exist is one hell of a business model (a bit like pumping the profitable Magic Covid Goo into billions of arms which cause all manner of medical mayhem and then double-dipping by prescribing life-long drug treatment for the cardiac and neurological problems the quaxxes cause). A "giant racket", indeed.
Your article brought back grim memories of my early career as a high school teacher, when the problem of hyper-inattentive, disruptive students was up close and personal so the behaviour problems covered by ADHD are quite real but, as you point out, there is a suite of reasons for such dysfunctional behaviour which can be addressed more holistically rather than enrolling the kids in a fruitless pharma regime.
You might be interested that even The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/depression-is-probably-not-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-new-study-186672) has argued along similar lines with regard to depression which a new 'umbrella review' of the actual evidence for the hypothesis that it is caused by a “chemical imbalance” of serotonin in the brain simply doesn't stack up and is, instead, traceable to the pharmaceutical industry's "efforts to market a new range of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs" which received the imprimatur of the American Psychiatric Association (which must be regarded as an 'asset' of the money-splashing pharma giants). And hasn't that been a wild success with one in six of the adult population in England, for example, being doped up with emotion-numbing anti-depressants.
There's no doubt whatsoever that some kids display highly challenging behaviours that disrupt classrooms and compromise their own lives. But as you rightly point out, and as all teachers who actually show an interest in their students rapidly discover, there are a host of reasons for these behaviours, and deficiency of psychostimulant drugs is not one of them! I find it staggering than any sane person could actually believe that behaviour caused by junk food, a dysfunctional home environment, ineffective parenting techniques, plain old boredom, or a personality that just isn't wired for sitting still for long stretches of time, can be 'fixed' with amphetamine-like drugs!
The article you referred to landed in my inbox the day after I wrote the ADHD article. Joanna Moncrieff has been among the small cadre of academics and clinicians (others include David Healy, James Davies, Peter Goetzsche, Irving Kirsch and Peter Breggin) who've been trying to draw attention to the giant fraud of the 'biochemical imbalance' theory of depression for decades. My sense is that a tipping point has finally been reached on this topic, and Joanna Moncrieff's metanalysis is going to break through. I hope so! Too many lives have been ruined by psyche-deadening SSRIs and SNRIs.
When I was at high school it was accepted to get a belting or the strap if one misbehaved. We mused as to whether the cane or strap was worse.
Not only did I get the strap, my mother also gave me a belting when I got home as well. Lesson learned, I don't think I mis-behaved too often after that.
Corporal punishment was still 'a thing' when I was in high school. It had deterrence value for some kids, but there were others with personalities that weren't at all responsive to it - or not in the intended way! I knew boys who saw corporal punishment as just the price to be paid for sticking it to the man. I wonder what happened to them when they left school - did they turn out to be criminals, star athletes, or CEOs?
When I was a kid in the 70's we had a relative who had a baby called Paula. Paula appeared to be an evil baby and then toddler of 2, she screamed and cried and had tantrums, threw things, played-up, was angry all the time and drove everyone nuts and was a nightmare. No-one knew what to do. Then one day they took her to the pediatrician and he diagnosed her as being allergic to MSG which was only a relatively new thing then and not widely known about (it was well-before they did the whole thing about taking it out of Chinese takeaway). I mean people knew it was around, but not many people yet knew it was something people reacted badly to. Well in those days MSG was in loads of mass-produced canned foods and it turned-out they were feeding her and her older sister loads and loads of canned foods packed with MSG. So they cut it all out of her diet and bang, she was suddenly good as gold. She stopped constantly crying, stopped screaming, wasn't angry all the time anymore, she was well-behaved and calm as can be. She became happy and well behaved. It was an allergy to the MSG which had been making her act that way all the time. So all these years later I often wonder if it's just a food allergy making kids act-out or act strangely. After all, we now have even more strange things in our food chain than ever before.
This is a great example of the necessity to examine each individual child's behaviour in context rather than slap some generic diagnostic label on them. Lucky Paula, that her parents found a paediatrician who was aware of food sensitivities!
And yes, there are many more concerning things in the food supply today, including all manner of pesticides, endocrine disrupting chemicals, colours and flavours, you name it. I read a study some time ago which found that fish contained residues of all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs, including psychiatric medications, statins and Viagra :(.
Very timely considering the meta study that indicates anti-depressants are a scam.
Yes, I'll be covering that one soon!
Look forward to it. I like your data driven reasoned approach to things.
I Loved this article, thanks again. I have agonised for years over how intrusive i should be in sending students, parents, teachers to resources which go against the ADHD narrative. It seems yet another topic now has the Empowered! substack as my preferred reference. Your style and effort at substantiating claims - 'bringing receipts' - truly are a blessing for people like me.
A related issue of interest may be the failing effort to replicate pivotal scientific studies in Psychology, or the links between tech and attention in Johan Hari's 'Stolen Focus'.
Thank you for that feedback - it's heartening for me to hear that my work is landing with my readers, and providing a useful resource for them.
Thanks also for the valuable suggestions for future articles. I keep a file of ideas for issues I'd like to cover; as you might imagine, I have more ideas than time!
What is the difference between a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist? If I am still correct the Psychiatrist has added by postgraduate studies a certification in a discipline called Psychiatry after completing a Degree in Medicine. This is all based on the Medical Model philosophy of human health which posits that a fault must be the cause of the condition. This may be a bit simplistic but is not far off.
A Psychologist does NOT need to first complete a Medical Degree and may not study Psychiatry but a broader range on Psychology, as well as Scientific Methods and Statistics, and others.
The language of Psychiatry, dominated by the giant of the field Sigmund Freud, is embedded in our language to the degree the DSM, written completely in Psychiatric language, words, terms and meanings, is THE reference that defines ALL conditions. The language and words invade everyday conversations to a point we do not question them. Health management systems, rules of treatment and support, government documentation and legislation, almost all use the DSM as the bible of mental health. We all know what the Ego is - right?
Now we have the Neuroscientists moving in with wonderful research and insights but it is also a field strongly based upon the mental model of 'there must be a fault' which is so much underlining the processes of neurology.
ADHD is a multi-faceted condition nearly impossible to define and not possible to simply define in the language of the DSM. Starting with the DSM to explore the needs of an individual and pinning on a label, especially one of ADHD, as an inherent fault that then structures whatever follows is in my mind bordering on the criminal. It is at the least, non-science, and unethical.
You are exactly right, Peter: a psychiatrist is a doctor, steeped in the medical 'disease-based' model, who does postgrad training that doesn't even come close to the depth of study of human psychology that a psychologist undertakes. Mostly, psychiatry training simply involves the application of drugs to the diagnostic categories identified in the DSM.
Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, psychologists (who used to pride themselves on being independent professionals) have been brought into the medical field. Psychologists have had to accept the use of the DSM so that they can get their precious Medicare rebate, be on panels for assessing workers' compensation claims, and generally be accepted as 'allied health professionals'. Now most psychologists will refer patients to doctors for medication rather than presenting an alternative to it that involves educating them on how the mind works, and how to manage their difficulties of living.
Neuroscience research is absolutely fascinating, but you're 100% correct that much of it is focused on identifying 'disorders' rather than discovering the nuts and bolts of how our amazing brains work, and how to use this knowledge for self-empowerment.
Thanks Robyn for your comments and even bigger thank you for the regular articles and all the work that produces them.
I graduated end of 1997 learning during my study that rather than find a fualt to fix, it was far more productive and beneficial to the individual to help them alter their responses and behaviour consciously, in their control, to produce a more beneficial outcome for themselves. Seemed a far more positive and patient centered approach to psychology to me. (BSc hons Psych, British Psych Soc member 18 years for what it is worth).
BINGO!!!!! The psychologists of your era and those who came before you would surely be horrified to see how slavishly today's psychologists follow the psychiatrists' lead. Every variation in human behaviour is now labelled a 'disorder' or 'syndrome' and rather than taking responsibility for unproductive responses and behaviour, people are encouraged to wield their diagnostic labels as excuses.
Dr. James Davies also exposes the DSM scam, 9 people sitting around making stuff up, it was all total fiction, but used as a Bible for diagnosis and treatment by the entire worldwide mental health and pharma industry, this should be all over the media as one of the biggest cons in modern history. Dr. Davies gives a brilliant summary in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nd40Uy6tbQ
That paracetamol is still being recommended for pregnant women, just unbelievable!
James Davies' book Cracked is a great read. He really pulled the curtain on the DSM scam.
At least some ADHD cases seem related to autism and autism has a clear biological basis.
Cow's milk protein contaminated vaccines cause 75% of autism cases
https://vinuarumugham.substack.com/p/cows-milk-protein-contaminated-vaccines
You raise a really important point. True autism (not the vague 'autism spectrum disorder' baloney which attempts to classify people who are simply at the extreme end of the bell curve on certain personality characteristics as 'being on the autism spectrum') is most definitely a biologically-rooted phenomenon, with multiple factors including in utero exposure to drugs (including paracetamol, as I mentioned in this post), mercury, aluminium, glyphosate and vaccines playing roles in triggering it.
The behaviours that we see in children with true autism should NOT be ascribed to "ADHD", which is a wastebasket diagnosis, when there are biological abnormalities identified that explain these behaviours.
FRA and NMDA antibody tests can be used to check how many ASD cases have clear biological basis. Since antibody levels can vary, there will be a spectrum. To complicate matters, Mom can have FRA antibodies that resulted in in-utero brain damage, causing ASD.
I really dislike the term 'ASD' as it's become a wastebasket diagnosis and a way of muddying the waters between true cases of autism as described by Leo Kanner, and people who are perfectly functional but have certain personality characteristics at the far end of the bell curve.
But if you look at it biologically, there are people who have been exposed to a range of FRA antibody titers and therefore have a spectrum of damage. They will fall between the two points you describe. Is there a better way to describe it than ASD?
Are you aware that there are people who have elevated titres of rheumatoid factor, or ANA, but they have no observable pathology related to these? Yet we don't talk about people being 'on the rheumatoid arthritis spectrum' or 'on the lupus spectrum'.
There have always been people who had personalities that were extreme on some dimensions (look up Jordan Peterson's work on personality psychology as an excellent entry point to this fascinating field of research). We used to just call them 'quirky' or 'odd'. Now everyone and their dog lists 'autistic' in their LinkedIn bio along with their pronouns. It's beyond ridiculous.
Yes, many autoimmune diseases can be subclinical. As you know, T1D symptoms may not be observed until 90% of islet cells are destroyed. If "quirky" or "odd" test positive for FRAA, we know there is a biological basis.
Disease has no place on LinkedIn. The reason it shows up there is because Pharma criminals have tried to normalize vaccine-induced autism as "neurodiversity" and vaccine-induced gender dysphoria as "gender diversity".