Interesting article on ADHD-France v.s. US

[RC K9]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd

 

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

 

Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological--psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.

 

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain.

 

French child psychiatrists don't use the same system of classification of childhood emotional problems as American psychiatrists. They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L'Enfant et de L'Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000. The focus of CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychosocial causes of children's symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological bandaids with which to mask symptoms.

 

To the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child's social context, fewer children qualify for the ADHD diagnosis. Moreover, the definition of ADHD is not as broad as in the American system, which, in my view, tends to "pathologize" much of what is normal childhood behavior. The DSM specifically does not consider underlying causes. It thus leads clinicians to give the ADHD diagnosis to a much larger number of symptomatic children, while also encouraging them to treat those children with pharmaceuticals.

 

The French holistic, psychosocial approach also allows for considering nutritional causes for ADHD-type symptoms—specifically the fact that the behavior of some children is worsened after eating foods with artificial colors, certain preservatives, and/or allergens. Clinicians who work with troubled children in this country—not to mention parents of many ADHD kids—are well aware that dietary interventions can sometimes help a child's problem. In the United States, the strict focus on pharmaceutical treatment of ADHD, however, encourages clinicians to ignore the influence of dietary factors on children's behavior.

 

And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child-rearing in the United States and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are generally better-behaved than their American counterparts. Pamela Druckerman highlights the divergent parenting styles in her recent book, Bringing up Bébé. I believe her insights are relevant to a discussion of why French children are not diagnosed with ADHD in anything like the numbers we are seeing in the United States.

 

From the time their children are born, French parents provide them with a firm cadre—the word means "frame" or "structure." Children are not allowed, for example, to snack whenever they want. Mealtimes are at four specific times of the day. French children learn to wait patiently for meals, rather than eating snack foods whenever they feel like it. French babies, too, are expected to conform to limits set by parents and not by their crying selves. French parents let their babies "cry it out" if they are not sleeping through the night at the age of four months.

 

French parents, Druckerman observes, love their children just as much as American parents. They give them piano lessons, take them to sports practice, and encourage them to make the most of their talents. But French parents have a different philosophy of discipline. Consistently enforced limits, in the French view, make children feel safe and secure. Clear limits, they believe, actually make a child feel happier and safer—something that is congruent with my own experience as both a therapist and a parent. Finally, French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires." And spanking, when used judiciously, is not considered child abuse in France.

 

As a therapist who works with children, it makes perfect sense to me that French children don't need medications to control their behavior because they learn self-control early in their lives. The children grow up in families in which the rules are well-understood, and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place. In French families, as Druckerman describes them, parents are firmly in charge of their kids—instead of the American family style, in which the situation is all too often vice versa.

[RC K9]

Sorry about the typo in the title, should read "ADHD", NOT ADHA."

[ImUrOBGYN]

Being a father myself and having helped raise other children, I cannot agree more with the French side of things here.

[Orion]

One more way that folks in other parts of the world are making us look pretty dumb.

[RC K9]

Nahhh, just pump the ones we can't "control" full of drugs. That's the "natural" order of things.

[smokinHawk1647545499]

Then riddle me this, why are the French such sissies?

[RC K9]

Then riddle me this, why are the French such sissies?

 

Weren't they instrumental is the colonies beating the British?

[Orion]

Then riddle me this, why are the French such sissies?

 

...and what the rest of the world isn't doing to make us look dumber, we are doing ourselves.

[iwishiwascool]

Weren't they instrumental is the colonies beating the British?

 

First one:

 

Cracked.com

[Orion]

First one:

 

Cracked.com

 

 

I will set them, Ken will spike them.

[iwishiwascool]

I will set them, Ken will spike them.

 

 

Will do...

 

This one is the one I was originally thinking of on the AmRev and the French:

 

Link

[Mojoe]

Then riddle me this, why are the French such sissies?

 

Because ADHD and being sissies are so much on the same topic.

 

 

 

I deal with ADHD stuff almost every day. It's a disqualifier for the Army National Guard, if you haven't been off it for 12 months or more. Several times a week I have to tell a parent their kid can't join right now. Worst part is when I hear the kid say they have wanted off it for years and the parent made them stay on it. I had a Mom last week get pretty mad at herself for crushing her son's dream. We were the fall back plan for paying for his college.

 

ADHD, Depression and Anxiety meds are all the same, the way we see them.

[BigOxley]

parenting in the u.s. is shit.

 

my personal theory is that it was started with the baby boomers (the real ME generation) and is only now increasing exponentially now with their kids being bad parents.

[RC K9]

Watch "The War on Kids." It pretty much says it all about how we raise our kids in the US.

[boosted98gst]

Fuck that drug i was on ritalin since grade school untill 2002, its not so much parents its the damn school systems pressuring the medications. My parents regret putting me on the meds, in highschool i tried stopping the meds over and over but since i skipped a few classes they put me on probation, part of the stipulation was i had to take my meds. Everytime i skipped at lunch they had the probation officer come arrest me for probation violations.

[Green Bastard]

Fuck that drug i was on ritalin since grade school untill 2002, its not so much parents its the damn school systems pressuring the medications. My parents regret putting me on the meds, in highschool i tried stopping the meds over and over but since i skipped a few classes they put me on probation, part of the stipulation was i had to take my meds. Everytime i skipped at lunch they had the probation officer come arrest me for probation violations.

 

Same situation with my brother, the school recommended that he needed to be on Ritalin because of ADD. Funny part is that the Ritalin just made him more hyper, turns out he was a normal kid who was just hyper. The school still recommended he be on it, but our parents decided he didn't need it. I hate how schools these days seem to think they know best and that they should be telling the parents how to raise their children.

[boosted98gst]

Same situation with my brother, the school recommended that he needed to be on Ritalin because of ADD. Funny part is that the Ritalin just made him more hyper, turns out he was a normal kid who was just hyper. The school still recommended he be on it, but our parents decided he didn't need it. I hate how schools these days seem to think they know best and that they should be telling the parents how to raise their children.

 

Its bullshit its the schools way more then parents. At one point in marysville they had over 200 kids being medicated at lunch in 2 seperate groups. In 2000 after all the ritalin burglaries ( people robbing all the schools of medication) they switched to the slow release rx tabs and you could not even get the old md ritalin tabs because of all the tweakers. After that everyone was swapped over to adderal because its more "safe" fuck that. Im 6 3 and i was 155 lbs never could sleep or eat, made me angry as fuck.

[RyM3rC]

I hate how schools these days seem to think they know best and that they should be telling the parents how to raise their children.

 

They shouldn't be doing that, but you can't say there aren't plenty of deadbeat parents that dump their shitbags on the school system to babysit for half the day.

[RC K9]

Our educational system is such that they want conformity. One personality/learning type is "normal" and the rest is "abnormal" and those kids need to be on drugs. FK THAT!

 

Kid has extra energy? Ohh, there must be something wrong with him, put him on drugs. Johnny doesn't learn the same way that Bobby does? Put Johnny on drugs. Instead of embracing different personality types and energy levels and putting the work in to actually reach everybody, we just drug the kids to make life "easier", then we wonder why all these kids are shooting up schools, (and BTW, a majority of those school shooters, have prescribed drugs in their system."

 

Its the laziness of the adults/parents in this country that is causing these issues. No one wants to discipline and teach, everyone wants to coddle, drug, and be their kid's friend.

 

Instead of seeing a hyper kid, understanding his environment, how he perceives it, and constructively directing that energy, we pump them full of chemicals.

 

Stupid.

[wagner]

Its the laziness of the adults/parents in this country that is causing these issues. No one wants to discipline and teach, everyone wants to coddle, drug, and be their kid's friend.

 

 

Here is your problem right here, the parents are driving the change in the schools, and the .gov is not helping by putting their .02 in.

 

My mom is a special ed director for a school and she has been recomending taking kids off meds.

[boosted98gst]

Everyone in marysville use to say mhs schools was getting a kick back from all the pharmaceuticals.

[boosted98gst]

Read up on alot of the 20 and young 30s year old long term effects on the drug also. Studies are showing adults who took the drug for over a long period of time have the same type of brain damage as long term cocaine users .

[smokinHawk1647545499]

so the people here say there is no legitimate use for these drugs. LOL

[wagner]

so the people here say there is no legitimate use for these drugs. LOL

 

I think people are saying there is no legitimate reason for overuse of these drugs, like we are currently seing in this country.

[cstmg8]

I actually strongly agree with the French on this one....... hasn't happened for a while. Parents in this country are afraid/to lazy to discipline their children.