(December 6, 2000)
Children shouldn't become guinea pigs
I'm writing regarding Bohusläningen's article about the 13-year old Mikael who has ADHD because I think the text has some subtle disturbing messages.

Starting with your 'Facts about ADHD': first you start with a real fact - the literal meaning of the abbreviation. Something nobody can disagree with. Then you divide them into three subgroups, something of which most of us cannot disagree with.

Fact number three however where the parents' behavior is not the cause of ADHD, many doubt. Where is for example the father in the story about Mikael? Maybe he has no father? Can that play a part in the difficulties?

Some research indicates that smoking during pregnancies cause hyperactivity in the child. Other research shows the effect of electromagnetism on pregnancies in the form of electric blankets for example. Not to mention drugs and prescribed drugs that a pregnant mother can easily get.

Fact number four concludes it with a controversial statement that amphetamines (which is a dangerous drug) will help some ADHD children getting better. You can place that in the same category as electric shock treatment against depression. Some children indeed seem to get better. But better for whom? The environment? The parents? At the cost of what?

ADHD is not a handicap. The child doesn't suffer from it. It's the environment and the parent(s) who often cannot deal with it. The child reacts to that with depression, anger and/or (self) hatred.

In countries like my home-country Holland - where an ADHD epidemic rages - children often get misdiagnosed as having ADHD and are prescribed with dangerous drugs that made their situation worse. Not exactly a healthy development. Also children in the USA started to re-distribute their 'medicine' and selling them as the drug amphetamine.

We should be careful what we're dealing with and study both sides of the story before we let the pharmaceutical industry use the children as guinea-pigs. Good journalism is one step in the right direction.

Dennis Rodie
Ljungskile

Sure ADHD is a handicap

Thanks for your views on my articles about children and youth with ADHD problems. I shall very shortly comment to some of your views.

You write there are many who doubt that parents are not the cause of ADHD with their children. When it comes to a series of psychological handicaps/ illnesses, one has realized the old theories of the parents negative influence was a faulty conclusion. It shows there isn't any scientific support to blame the parents.

For many parents who have for example children with ADHD problems or some other disorder, for example compulsive disorder, it can be a relieve to hear that message.

What the relation is with smoking, electromagnetic radiation and such during the pregnancy with ADHD, I don't know anything about.

The point in the facts about amphetamines is surely controversial. But you first have to remember it's about very small 'homeopathic' amounts, not abuse levels.

You compare electroshock treatments against depressions and wonder what improvement the treated gets, maybe the environment or the parents, you ask.

Maybe you have something against such treatment? For some depressions, which don't react to a pharmaceutical treatment, is electroshock treatment an alternative that can work. And if it works, it means, as far as I understand, an improvement for everyone: for the one who suffers of a severe depression and for the family, friends and others who are influenced by the disease.

When it comes to a possible pharmaceutical treatment of ADHD, I would believe it has an improvement for the parents and the rest of the environment.

You write ADHD is not a handicap and I claim the opposite.

If you have for example severe difficulties to concentrate on a working task, not being able to finish schoolwork, then it's a handicap. Then, like many handicaps, both physical and mentally, it comes with secondary psychosocial disturbances, which put more burdens on those affected. But to only identify the handicap with the environment's reactions seems a bit exaggerated.

Sincerely
Carl-Gustaf Wikstrand
Reporter

(December 30, 2000)
CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES ARE NOT THE SOLUTION

Sure you can say electroshocks can be used against depression, as Carl-Gustaf Wikstrand does in the answer to my letter to the editor about ADHD on December 6^th. You can also cut off the hands of a thief, hoping he will stop stealing, but what you deal with are just the symptoms, not the basic causes. Hiding the symptoms does not cure depression, not with pharmaceuticals nor electroshocks.

About the question if parents have some responsibility to their child's behavior and so-called disorders, it sure is a liberation to hear from a doctor or anyone else that parents have no responsibility.

However, there are many who oppose that. One example is the American psychologist Lloyd deMause, who specializes on the external influences on the fetus.

He gives an example how a pregnant woman is offered a cigarette after having been deprived of smoking for 24 hours. Even before the cigarette is lit there is a significant acceleration in fetal heartbeat. Lloyd deMause claims that children, whose mothers have been smoking during their pregnancy, risk 3 times more to be diagnosed with ADHD.

But it's not just the intake of drugs, alcohol and tobacco that influence the fetus, even emotional stress. Threats of violence or a severe shock, for example if the partner or another close family member has suddenly passed away during the pregnancy, can cause damage to the fetus, according to research in several countries.

Margeret Fliess has conducted a 40-year study that statistically showed in cases where the mother had an unwanted pregnancy (in a Danish study 25 percent of expecting mothers confessed they carried an unwanted child) and/ or if the mother and therefore the child was exposed to stress and emotional and physical violence, there was a higher than average risk for a premature birth, lower IQ in early childhood, physical illnesses, psychological illnesses like schizophrenia and a higher risk to commit violent crimes, use drugs and commit suicide in their childhood and as adults.

But do we need scientific evidence to love, care, and respect your child? Do we want the pharmaceutical industry to raise our children? We should give our children and ourselves the opportunity to find out the cause of our problems, not trying to magically disappear the symptoms through chemical substances. The pharmaceutical industry is powerful and desperate parents blindly trust their doctors. In the USA half a million prescriptions of Prozac-type medicines were distributed to depressive children last year, despite the lack of scientific evidence regarding the safety and effectiveness.

For those who sincerely want to break an evil circle, I recommend the books by Alice Miller and Jean Liedloff.

Dennis Rodie
Ljungskile