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Ritalin: Child Abuse On Prescription?

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“Prescribing Ritalin is, in my view, authorised child abuse on a massive, global scale,” Dr. Vernon Coleman wrote in 1996.  “And, sadly, things aren’t likely to change.”

By Dr. Vernon Coleman

NOTE: The following essay is taken from Vernon Coleman’s global bestselling book `How to stop your doctor killing you’. This essay was written in 1996.

Family doctors are these days frequently under pressure (usually from teachers and social workers who know nothing about drug therapy and probably understand nothing about the way the international drug industry operates) to prescribe the drug called Ritalin for children who are accused of behaving badly behaved, reported as not doing well at school and “diagnosed” as suffering from something called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (known as ADHD).

For several decades now, Ritalin, and other amphetamine type drugs, have been prescribed for children diagnosed as suffering from various types of brain dysfunction and hyperactivity. (Other psychostimulants which have, at one time or another, been regarded as competitors to Ritalin have included Dexedrine.)

The first problem is that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (and other variations on the hyperactivity theme) is a rather vague diagnosis which is often leapt upon by teachers, social workers and parents to excuse and explain any unacceptable or uncontrollable behaviour.

Parents of children whose behaviour is in any way regarded as different or unusual are often encouraged to believe that their child is suffering from a disease for two simple reasons. First, it is more socially acceptable to give a child a pseudoscientific label than to have to admit that he or she may simply be badly behaved.

Second, when a child has been given a label, it is possible to offer a treatment. Commonly it will be one, such as a drug, which takes away responsibility and offers someone a profit.

ADHD (aka Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD, hyperkinetic child syndrome, minimal brain damage, minimal brain dysfunction in children, minimal cerebral dysfunction and psycho-organic syndrome in children) is a remarkably non-specific disorder. (I am always suspicious of diseases which have lots of names. Diabetes is diabetes. A broken leg is a broken leg.)

The symptoms which characterise ADHD (or whatever else it’s being known as) may include: a chronic history of a short attention span, distractibility, emotional lability, impulsivity, moderate to severe hyperactivity, minor neurological signs and abnormal EEG. Learning may or may not be impaired.

Read that rather nonsensical list of symptoms carefully and you’ll find that just about any child alive could probably be described as suffering from ADHD.

What child isn’t impulsive occasionally? What child doesn’t cry and laugh (that’s what emotional lability means)? What child cannot be distracted?

So, by this definition, Ritalin could be recommended for any child who seemed bored and restless or who exhibited unusual signs of intelligence or skill. Read the biographies of geniuses and you may wonder what we are doing to our current generation of most talented individuals.

“Is Ritalin a drug in search of a disease?” wrote one author, and it isn’t difficult to see why.

Ritalin has been recommended as a treatment for functional behaviour problems since the 1960s and by 1966, the “experts” had come up with a definition of the sort of child for whom Ritalin could usefully be prescribed.

Children suffering from Minimal Brain Dysfunction (“MBD”), the first syndrome for which Ritalin was recommended, were defined as: “children of near average, average or above average general intelligence with certain learning or behavioural disabilities ranging from mild to severe, which are associated with deviations of function of the central nervous system. These deviations may manifest themselves by various combinations of impairment in perception, conceptualisation, language, memory and control of attention, impulse or motor function.”

Other symptoms which children might exhibit and which could be ascribed to MBD included: being sweet and even tempered, being cooperative and friendly, being gullible and easily led, being a light sleeper, being a heavy sleeper and so on and on.

Given that sort of list to work with, I find it difficult to think of a child who wouldn’t (theoretically) benefit from Ritalin.

The bottom line is that it has become easy for social workers and teachers to define any children who misbehave or don’t learn “properly” as suffering from MBD or ADHD. It’s a convenient diagnosis which excuses parents, teachers and social workers from responsibility or any sense of guilt. How can the parents or the teacher be accused of failing when the child is ill and needs drug therapy?

Commercially, Ritalin and MBD became a huge success. By 1975, around a million children in the US were diagnosed as suffering from MBD. Half of these were being given drugs and half of those on drugs were on Ritalin.

(For the sake of completeness, I should point out that Ritalin has not always been used exclusively in the treatment of badly behaved children. When Dr Andrew Malleson wrote his book ‘Need Your Doctor Be So Useless’ in 1973, he reported that the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company had suggested to doctors the use of their habit-forming drug Ritalin for “environmental depression” caused by “noise: a new social problem.”)

Does Ritalin work?

Well, that’s a bit of a stinker of a question and I apologise for asking it, particularly since I can’t answer it. Actually, I honestly don’t think anyone else can answer it either. But the diagnosis (and the drug) are certainly popular. More than one in twenty children is said to be suffering from MBD (or ADHD or ADD or XYZ or whatever else anyone wants to call it) and over a million children are given Ritalin in the USA.

One five-year study of hyperactive children who were given Ritalin at Montreal Children’s Hospital found that the children did not differ in the long term from hyperactive children who were not given the drug. In Johannesburg, a study of 14 children is said to have produced a response in only 2 children. One child showed some deterioration and another showed marked deterioration.

At least one investigator has reported that drugs like Ritalin may produce a deterioration in learning new skills at school, and parents have reported that the symptoms of MBD have miraculously disappeared during school holidays.

However, the picture is confused by the fact that there may be a short-term improvement in behaviour among children given Ritalin. But is this a real improvement? Or is the child simply drugged and therefore less likely to do anything which might upset parents, social workers or teachers? Amphetamine type drugs reduce the variety of behaviour exhibited by children. A child taking Ritalin might be less disruptive and I can see that being popular in schools. But is the drug really helping the child? And should we give a child a powerful and potentially hazardous drug because it keeps him quiet?

There is evidence suggesting that children who are genuinely hyperactive may have been poisoned by food additives or by lead breathed in from air polluted by petrol fumes. If this is so, then is giving another potentially toxic drug really the answer to this problem?

The next problem is that I believe that Ritalin can reasonably be described as potentially toxic. Ritalin has been described as “very safe” but for the record here is a list of some of the possible side effects which may be associated with Ritalin: nervousness, insomnia, decreased appetite, headache, drowsiness, dizziness, dyskinesia, blurring of vision, convulsions, muscle cramps, tics, Tourette’s syndrome, toxic psychosis (some with visual and tactile hallucinations), transient depressed mood, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, tachycardia, palpitations, arrhythmias, changes in blood pressure and heart rate, angina pectoris, rash, pruritus, urticaria, fever, arthralgia, alopecia, thrombocytopenia purpura, exfoliative dermatitis, erythema multiforme, leucopenia, anaemia and minor retardation of growth during prolonged therapy in children.

Doctors who prescribe Ritalin, and who have the time and the inclination to read the warnings issued with the drug, will discover that Ritalin should not be given to patients suffering from marked anxiety, agitation or tension since it may aggravate these symptoms.

Ritalin is contraindicated in patients with tics, tics in siblings or a family history or diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome. It is also contraindicated in patients with severe angina pectoris, cardiac arrhythmias, glaucoma, thyrotoxicosis, or known sensitivity to methylphenidate, and it should be used cautiously in patients with hypertension (blood pressure should be monitored at appropriate intervals).

Ritalin should not be used in children under six years of age, should not be used as treatment for severe depression of either exogenous or endogenous origin and may exacerbate symptoms of behavioural disturbance and thought disorder if given to psychotic children.

It is claimed that taking Ritalin during childhood does not increase the likelihood of addiction but chronic abuse of Ritalin can lead to marked tolerance and psychic dependence with varying degrees of abnormal behaviour.

Ritalin, it is warned, should be employed with caution in emotionally unstable patients, such as those with a history of drug dependence or alcoholism, because such patients may increase the dosage on their own initiative.

Ritalin should also be used with caution in patients with epilepsy since there may be an increase in seizure frequency.

And height and weight should be carefully monitored in children, as prolonged therapy may result in growth retardation. (A child might lose several inches in possible height – though if treatment is stopped, there is generally a growth spurt). It is perhaps worth mentioning here my view that if a drug is powerful enough to retard growth, it does not seem entirely unreasonable to suspect that the chances are high that it may be having other powerful effects upon and within the body.

Doctors are also warned that careful supervision is required during drug withdrawal, since depression as well as renewed overactivity can be unmasked. Long-term follow-up may be needed for some patients.

There have also been reports that children have committed suicide after drug withdrawal. And one study has shown that children who are treated with stimulants alone had higher arrest records and were more likely to be institutionalised.

Long-term use of Ritalin has been said to cause irritability and hyperactivity (these are, you may remember, the problems for which the drug is often prescribed). In a study published in Psychiatric Research and entitled ‘Cortical Atrophy in Young Adults With A History of Hyperactivity’ brain atrophy was reported in more than half of 24 adults treated with psychostimulants (though I don’t think anyone can say for sure whether or not the psychostimulants caused the brain atrophy, the possible link should make prescribers, teachers and parents who are fans of Ritalin stop and think for a moment).

As an aside, there has been some research done on mice.

When early safety tests were done on mice, researchers found that the drug caused an increase in hepatocellular adenomas and, in male mice only, an increase in hepatoblastomas (described as “a relatively rare rodent malignant tumour type”).

“The significance of these results to humans is unknown,” we are told.

Here, once again, is yet more proof of the total worthlessness of animal experiments and the ruthless and cynical attitude shown by drug companies and those government departments which allegedly exist to protect the public from unsafe drugs.

I have frequently argued that when drug companies perform pre-clinical tests on animals they do so knowing that if the tests show that a drug doesn’t cause any problems when given to animals, they can use the results to help convince the authorities that the drug is safe.

On the other hand, when a drug does cause a problem when given to animals, the results can be ignored on the grounds that “the significance of these results to humans is unknown.”

The question here is a very simple one: if the experiments on mice which showed that Ritalin causes cancer were of value, why is the drug still available on prescription for children? And if the experiments can safely be ignored (on the grounds that animals are so different to human beings that the results are irrelevant), why were the tests done in the first place?

I don’t expect any answers. I just like asking the questions.

Whenever I write about Ritalin I am inundated with letters, faxes and emails from parents, teachers and social workers insisting that Ritalin is “very safe.” I suspect these optimistic folk must either be unable to read or too lazy to do any research into the safety of a product which they are recommending with such enthusiasm. Years of experience mean that I am not in the slightest bit surprised to find such crass stupidity exhibited by social workers. I am, however, surprised to find so many school teachers showing such a potent mixture of ignorance and misplaced trust.

Sadly, it seems it is partly through the enthusiasm of teachers and social workers that Ritalin is now so widely prescribed.

In theory, Ritalin should not be prescribed for any child unless a doctor has performed a thorough evaluation. However, despite this, when a team of researchers from the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board examined the records of nearly 400 paediatricians who had prescribed Ritalin, they found that half the children who had been diagnosed as suffering from MBD (or ADD or whatever) had not been given psychological or educational testing before being given the drug. The United Nations concluded that frustrated parents, teachers and doctors were too quick to stick a label of ADD onto children with behavioural problems (or, to be more accurate, to children whose behaviour was annoying the parents, teachers and doctors).

I am less than enthusiastic about this drug. In my view, the world would be a healthier place if all supplies of the damned stuff were wrapped in concrete and buried. I wouldn’t prescribe Ritalin for anyone – for anything.

But other doctors clearly don’t agree with me. Some observers have described Ritalin as a drug that can unlock a child’s potential. And although estimates about the number of children taking Ritalin vary, it has been claimed that in the USA alone, up to 12 % of all American boys aged between 6 and 14 are being prescribed Ritalin to treat various behavioural disorders. It is now not unknown for schools to arrange for children to be treated with Ritalin without obtaining parental permission.

I’ve been told that in some cases boys have been given Ritalin because they ran around the playground making a noise. They ran around the playground making a noise for heaven’s sake!

It is worth remembering that although doctors, parents and teachers have for over forty years now been enthusiastically recommending the use of Ritalin (and similar drugs) in the treatment of MBD, there are still a number of unanswered questions.

I don’t believe anyone definitely knows whether the drug works or whether it causes any permanent long-term damage. I don’t believe anyone knows for certain whether the drug does more harm than good. And, perhaps most astonishing of all, despite the fact that millions of children have been diagnosed as suffering from ADHD, ADD or MBD, and treated with powerful drugs, I don’t believe we even know whether any of these conditions really exist.

Back in 1970, the Committee on Government Operations of the US House of Representatives studied the use of behaviour modification drugs on children. At that time, around 200,000 to 300,000 children a year in the US were being given these drugs. The point was made that hyperactivity was considered a disease because it made it difficult for schools to be run “like maximum security prisons, for the comfort and the convenience of the teachers and administrators who work in them …”

Since then, the only thing that has changed is that the popularity of Ritalin has continued to rise and rise and rise inexorably.

Prescribing Ritalin is, in my view, authorised child abuse on a massive, global scale.

And, sadly, things aren’t likely to change.

When I wrote a paper expressing my doubts about Ritalin (a paper which encouraged several major newspapers to question the wisdom of prescribing this drug so widely), I received an avalanche of angry mail from furious parents, teachers and social workers.

“I’m not going to read your report,” wrote one father of a child on Ritalin. “I know it’s rubbish.”

Most worrying of all is the fact that parents who are reluctant to give their children Ritalin have been told that if they don’t give in and cooperate, their children will be taken away from them. This will, of course, not be the first example of “compulsory medication.” In some countries (notably parts of the USA), parents who do not have their children vaccinated are liable to arrest. And, of course, the fluoridation of drinking water is also common in many parts of the world.

Note: The essay above is taken from `How to stop your doctor killing you’ by Vernon Coleman, which was first published in 1996. You can purchase a copy of the book from the bookshop on his website.

About the Author

Vernon Coleman, MB ChB DSc, practised medicine for ten years. He has been a full-time professional author for over 30 years. He is a novelist and campaigning writer and has written many non-fiction books.  He has written over 100 books which have been translated into 22 languages. On his website, HERE, there are hundreds of articles which are free to read. Since mid-December 2024, Dr. Coleman has also been publishing articles on Substack; you can subscribe to and follow him on Substack HERE.

There are no ads, no fees and no requests for donations on Dr. Coleman’s website or videos. He pays for everything through book sales. If you would like to help finance his work, please consider purchasing a book – there are over 100 books by Vernon Coleman available in print on Amazon.


Please share our story!
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Rhoda Wilson
While previously it was a hobby culminating in writing articles for Wikipedia (until things made a drastic and undeniable turn in 2020) and a few books for private consumption, since March 2020 I have become a full-time researcher and writer in reaction to the global takeover that came into full view with the introduction of covid-19. For most of my life, I have tried to raise awareness that a small group of people planned to take over the world for their own benefit. There was no way I was going to sit back quietly and simply let them do it once they made their final move.

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