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Title: Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD by Peter R. Breggin, Dick Scruggs ISBN: 0-7382-0544-3 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.64 (22 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Misleading and Biased
Comment: I give this book two stars, even though it's not very scientific in its approach (using lots of statistical tricks and skews to aid its cause).
Parents, don't let this book scare you away from ADHD medications:
I was a B student and chronic underachiever until I started ADHD medication in college--my grades and academic enthusiasm immediately took off, and I'm headed for an Ivy league graduate program next year. I also became more socially conscious and cooperative--this fact stands in stark contrast to everything Dr. Breggin has to say. I haven't seen any deterioration in cognitive function--in fact, I would say that my critical thinking skills have vastly improved.
My general hypothesis on ADHD (as if you care) is that the human brain is meant for much more excitement and arousal than the bureacratic drudgeries of contemporary society can offer. We have the chemicals in our brain to relay such coarse messages such as "kill animal" and "run from animal." The ADHD "sufferer" is merely looking for this excitement, and stimulants provide it, so we can sit still.
Rating: 5
Summary: Let psychiatry rebut this point for point
Comment: I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.
It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.
Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.
The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.
Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.
I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.
These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).
But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.
This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".
Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).
If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
Rating: 1
Summary: The Importance of Critical Thinking
Comment: I agree with the reviewer who says you should check out the quackwatch website, where you can find a lot of interesting information about the book and the author, in addition to a critical review written by Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading expert on ADD/ADHD. For instance, according to the website, judges found Peter Breggin untrustworthy and incompetent as an expert witness in three of the legal cases that he mentions in the introduction (some cases were dismissed and others were withdrawn before the publication of this book, though, interestingly, Breggin does not mention the fact). One of the judges even states that he believes he can almost declare Breggin "a fraud" who has written "outrageous books" and made "outrageous statements" despite the fact that he (Breggin) is "untrained" and has no academic competence/credential.
Now, itÕs good to be skeptical and critical when it comes to health science. You should examine any claim rigorously, including those made by pharmaceutical companies, major medical associations and research institutions. But please use the same standard to judge all claims, including those made by Breggin in this book. You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and other ADD sufferers.
Instead of this book, I recommend Driven to Distraction by Hallowell and Ratey. They are not only competent doctors with the proper credentials but also fellow ADDers.
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