The claim that ADHD is caused by low dopamine levels is a drug-marketing claim with little evidence
During the 1990s, the Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) advised the public that children with ADHD suffered from a genetically caused chemical imbalance, characterized by an underactive mesolimbic pathway, but that was simply a drug-marketing claim. Ritalin and other stimulants increase dopamine levels in the synaptic cleft, and thus CHADD was attempting to make it seem that such drugs “normalized” brain chemistry, but, as the American Psychiatric Press’s 1997 Textbook of Neuropsychiatry confessed, “efforts to identify a selective neurochemical imbalance [in ADHD children] have been disappointing.”
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2010). Anatomy of an Epidemic Chapter 11 The Epidemic Spreads to Children (Epub p. 301). New York , NY: Crown Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychiatry / Pharmacology / Biology / Neuroscience Status:☀️