I understand your point a little but “chemical imbalance” is a layman’s term that is shorthand for “something is wrong in the brain”. It is not a scientific or even a pharmaceutical term. Many psychopharmacological drugs like SSRI’s change the way that neurons communicate with one another over time and at a fundamental level. That is a physical change. While stimulants used to treat ADD many not cause very many long-term changes in the brain, they too are being treated with a drug that causes short-term changes in the way that areas of the brain interact.
But everyone subjected to this experiment will count off what they’ve memorized as an estimate of a basic unit of time. If someone’s “perceptual second” is longer, they’ll count the same number since not only is the subjective time longer but so is the subjective unit.
I’ve read the links in this thread and I still do not see if researchers make a distinction between those who have taken stimulants and those who have not. I assume the brain would begin to adapt to an altered neurochemical content and would eventually come to rely on the artificial stimulation. I tried google and I could not find any studies that recorded the consequences of long-term consumption of ritalin/adderall in a healthy population. To what extent are such adaptations permanent?
No, that is not the standard procedure. Medication is probably over-prescribed by regular physicians, but psychological and psychiatric counseling are still valued. In recent years there has been a trend to treat some depression with shorter, less frequent sessions that focus on the present rather than on the past. But counseling is part of therapy usually. Medications shouldn’t be used without monitoring by a physician. Psychologists often work in conjunction with a psychiatrist who can prescribe medicine.
There are many illnesses caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.
Insurance is beginning to treat mental illness with a little more respect. My insurance used to pay only 50 percent. Now it pays 80 percent. Eventually I think there will be parity.
There are very specific [DSM-IV] criteria for diagnosing ADHD. And while it is true that it has become a much abused buzzword for crack-pot alternative “medicine” charlatans, the fact is that it represents a legitimate issue for people who have to cope with it. It does noone any good to dismiss otherwise treatable problems with uninformed opinions.
The Wikipedia article on ADD/ADHD appears to be fairly well researched and cited.
If you look through the studies listed in the paper I cited, you will find examples of studies of diagnosed, but non-medicated ADD patients along with studies were the short term effects of medication on brain activity were measured.
You were correct regarding the one study, “Cortical atrophy in young adults with a history of hyperactivity in childhood” [Nasrallah, 1986]. The study stated that it could not determine whether the changes in brain activity were the result of prior medication or ADD itself as the majority of the participants were on a prior drug regimen. This study seems to be cited by many groups as a warning of the potential dangers of drug treatment. Many studies in the nineties avoided the problem of confusing the disorder with the potential effects of medication by using untreated groups.
Wow. I just looked over that Wikipedia article and it is indeed well written and concise. What a great reference.
Here’s an interesting article from a guy who spends a lot of time being skeptical about many diseases & stuff. He calls ADHD the Liberal Hoax that Turned Out to be True.
Weird.
Why does this disease exist? What causes it?
The callous whims of a cruel and vengeful God.
Sometimes stuff just happens.
There’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about, in my opinion.
QtM, MD
Midichlorians.
There’s some question as to whether it’s a disease, or a trait that would’ve been more useful in a non-agrarian society. ADDers (at least in my experience) tend to shift their attention to the latest sound they heard, which would be extremely useful for a hunter.
Ah, so it’s more like depression then it is like cancer. amphetamines still seem like an extreme solution, even if the ADD/ADHD seems to be a legitimate disease. More should be known about long-term toxicity of the drugs, in my opinion(including ritalin, etc).
The problem is when you get distracted while during a vital part of killing the mammoth and end up gored on its tusk instead.
People have been taking Ritalin for decades. So, yeah, we should know more about the long-term effects, but that’s true for everything. But we have a physical problem that needs a physical element for a solution. Ritalin is one of the best studies head-drugs in the world.
If taking speed seems extreme, keep in mind that there is a part of the brain that isn’t doing enough work and it needs to be stimulated. Because that part of the brain isn’t working hard enough, it can’t sufficiently control the other bits. The speed functions to get the understimulated bit up to task, and that allows it to regulate the other things that need regulating.
I appreciate your concern about giving drugs to kids. But that doesn’t mean that the alternative isn’t worse. If I had to choose between being diagnosed and medicated in kindergarten and living to the age of 50, or not being diagnosed and medicated but getting to live until the age of 100, I would choose the former without a second thought. Some people don’t want the drugs and don’t like the side effects. But you still are giving kids more choice when you diagnose and medicate early. They can go off the drugs and move on; but when you don’t medicate kids, you take away the chance to learn that they can accomplish things, how to organize and cope, how to live life as an effective human being. Not medicating kids is an irreversible decision that is very, very damaging—we know this, because if not medicating wasn’t damaging, we wouldn’t have the diagnosis of ADD to begin with! 
You’re just the idea man. The other poor slobs get to kill the mammoth.
My son’s been taking adderall for years and his prescribing doc orders a blood test to check his liver function once yearly, is that the kind of follow-up concern about toxicity you’re wondering about?
Part of the problem is thinking of these treatments as “stimulants.” If you take thyroid medication when you don’t need it, you’re going to stimulate a whole lot of things that don’t need stimulating. If you have an underactive thyroid, then the medication is just compensating for something that isn’t working right.
I was thinking of behavioural toxicity and/or permanent-semipermanent changes in the brain itself.
I doubt we know nearly enough about human behaviour or the human brain to understand the etiology of this disease. It would be interesting if they studied the situations that cause those with ADD/ADHD to excel. Or, even better, how the drugs prescribed to ADD/ADHD patients effect a normal group of people after a year or so.
I agree that the effect of the substance itself can cause the brain to function normally. The thing I wonder: how localized is this effect? What is the value of a short-term(relative to the span of a human life) benefit compared to a long-term detriment?
In purely physical terms, are these two conditions similar? In an emergency room, which patient would be admitted first?
Off Topic? dunno… any stats on how many children ADD/ADHD afflicted persons conceive compared to ‘normals’?