Should Children Be Medicated for Ad/adhd at School?

English 102

Argument

Essay 4

Michelle Brooks

November 28, 2012

Should Children be medicated for AD/ADHD at School?

        Should children be medicated at school is a very controversial topic.  There are many peoples invited into the argument.  It crosses many lines from parents, doctors, teachers and many professional who work to solve the problems of AD/ADHD in children daily.  I guess at this point I will take a stance on the question and my opinion is that children should not be medicated at school.

There are so many children who are being misdiagnosed with these disorders.  Many doctors and other medical profession who wrote the articles I researched my information from touch upon the fact that many children fall into several categories of AD or ADHD, but may not really have the full diagnosis of the disorder.  By these children having some symptoms and it may be slight may be instrumental in doctor and medical personnel in making decisions to medicate or not medicate.  For these reasons I base my opinion on children should not be medicated at school.

In the article “ADHD in children: Are millions being unnecessarily medicated? Dr. Gwen Dewar, Ph.D. defines ADHD in children as follows:  “Attention deficit disorder, or ADHD, has been defined as “the co-existence of attention problem and hyperactivity.”  According to the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), this means a child who seems to be in constant motion-squirming and fidgeting and moving around the room.  It also may be impulsive behavior, blurting out comments without thinking them through first.  Unrestrained displays of emotion.  And it may mean the child quickly becomes bored unless it’s an activity that he particularly enjoys.  The ADHD child may often be easily distracted, makes mistakes, forget things, have trouble following instruction, or skip from one activity to another with finishing anything.” (Dewar, Ph. D 1)

In several of my articles the authors have the same sentiments as Ms. Dewar.  At what point do you come to the conclusion to medicate a child who may be just acting out.  This child could be out of control because his parents allowed him to act out until he got their message that he would not win.  Classroom teachers and social workers are not going to tolerate this type of acting out.  How do you handle, because recommendations are definitely going to start flying from the medical community on down to the educational community.  Decisions are going to be made because this child is conditioned to this type of behavior and many are at a loss on how to handle it or do they really want to be bothered in trying to recondition this child without medication.

This argument has gone on for days, months and years.  What can we do?  What is best for the child?  What is best for the school and the education process?  Will medication take care of the problem?  Well, medication in most cases is the overwhelming decision, it gets the majority vote and the child gets to be medicated and his life changed probably forever.

Once the decision has been made to medicate the child what medicine will be prescribed.  We are looking at the two most popular medicines for tis disorder Ritalin or Adderall.  The medicine will be given according to the symptoms the child has.  In the article: “AD/ADHD Children & Adults against Drugging America” addresses the drug issue as such:  “The drugs used to treat ADHD are NOT mild stimulants!  They are schedule II narcotics and share the same category as cocaine.  Many, many children have died from these drugs!  Many of the deaths are swept under the carpet to protect pharmaceutical profits.” (chaada.org).