Schools have found Ritalin to be useful in subduing hyperactive students and making them more easily manageable
Stimulants have been shown to subdue children and make them emotionally flat. Each of these reports tell the same story. On Ritalin, a student who previously had been an annoyance in the classroom, fidgeting too much in his or her chair or talking to a nearby classmate while the teacher scribbled on the blackboard, would be stilled. The student wouldn’t move around as much and wouldn’t engage as much socially with his or her peers. If given a task like answering arithmetic problems, the student might focus intently on it. Amphetamines were first considered useful in treating hyperactive children when Charles Bradley gave them to students in 1937. Bradley thought this change in behavior was “an improvement from the social viewpoint,” and it is that perspective that shows up in efficacy trials of Ritalin and other ADHD drugs. Teachers and other observers fill out rating instruments that view a reduction in the child’s movements and engagement with others as positive, and when the results are tabulated, 70 to 90 percent of the children are reported to be “good responders” to ADHD medications. Why? Because public schools serve to manufacture a manageable population and to put down dissent and originality, and the stimulants help meet this goal. These drugs, NIMH investigators wrote in 1995, are highly effective in “dramatically reducing a range of core ADHD symptoms such as task-irrelevant activity (e.g., finger tapping, fidgetiness, fine motor movement, off-task [behavior] during direct observation) and classroom disturbance.” ADHD experts at Massachusetts General Hospital summed up the scientific literature in a similar way: “The extant literature clearly documents that stimulants diminish behaviors prototypical of ADHD, including motoric overactivity, impulsivity, and inattentiveness.”
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2010). Anatomy of an Epidemic Chapter 11 The Epidemic Spreads to Children (Epub p. 305). New York , NY: Crown Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychiatry / Pharmacology / Biology / Neuroscience / Biochemistry / Neurochemistry Status:☀️