(11-10-2024, 04:40 PM)Bchbunnie4 Wrote:

(11-10-2024, 04:35 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: I was diagnosed with ADHD back in 1998 at the age of 26 and it would have been interesting to have had reddit back then as comparison to now. I seriously doubt there were nearly the numbers there are now. 

The generation of kids in their 30s and 40s is when someone (big pharma, of course) decided to push Ritalin on kids who had any behavioral issues, even very mild ones, and incentivizing doctors to tell parents their kids had ADD/ADHD that must be treated if they want their kid to be 'normal'. Most of them were acting normal. They're freaking kids. Now we have what we have with these younger folks. 

I hate to think of how many kids were put on drugs that never needed them; they just needed parents who were paying attention to their kid and being willing to actually be a parent.

Yep, if you had a boy and they remotely acted like a normal boy the first thing they wanted to do is have them tested and give them medication so they can drug them into submission.

K - 4th grade I had teachers who developed strategies to deal with me.  They sat me by myself, I didn't mind, gave me different assignments, longer ones for things I did fast and shorter ones for things I did slow.  But my 5th grade teacher just hated me and basically demanded that my parents take me to a psychiatrist, and with an HMO we had to go to a psychologist first.  It did very little good and they ended up trying on some diagnoses that didn't apply and tried some medicines too.  Ritalin helped calm me down but being calm wasn't the problem.  Wellbutrin literally made me suicidal.  We kept the Ritalin prescription going for a year or two but I decided to stop taking it and told my parents about it later.  I was atypical.  My brain was ahead of my peers in some areas, and way behind them in others, and stimulants helped calm me.  It turns out that coffee does me just as much good as Ritalin.  Those 5th - 7th grade years were by far the most difficult.  Constantly in the principal's office, targeted by bullies, etc. But by 8th grade, with no new drugs and no new psych visits, everything changed.  I somehow figured out how to find and make better friends for myself. The teachers still might have thought I was odd, but I wasn't a problem anymore.

But that middle part was scary.  If my parents weren't paying attention very well, I may have ended up on Wellbutrin for longer and maybe worse drugs.  All started because of my [BLEEP] 5th grade teacher who just needed to lay off of me and deal with her own problems.

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