ADHD

I have to admit that before reading this article, I thought that ADHD wasn't even a valid disorder. My idea of what attention-deficit disorders are has changed but I do still think that we have a tendency to write a prescription before talking about other options. My mom moved myself, my brother, and my sister up here to Butte from Reno in the middle of a school year after we had only met our new step-dad once. My brother(8) and sister(6) started having issues at school almost instantaneously. The first thing they did, at my step-dads demand, was take the kids to a doctor to see if they had ADHD. Long story short, they ended up on Ritalin and it never worked. They both went through different doses for about two years and then my mom just gave up on the idea of medication. They stopped acting out a couple months later and they've been fine ever since. I felt very strongly about them being on medication at the time because I had a pretty good idea what was actually happening with them.

When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed as with bi-polar disorder. The first thing everybody wanted to do was start a medication regiment. I have never taken medication for it. What I did do was work my way through about six different therapists until I found one that was just as committed to teaching me how to deal with this disorder on my own as I was to learning.

I think that even if the medications work we should be more concerned with helping a child learn how deal with a disorder first if it's possible. I think that if we don't at least try behavioral therapy, we are just succumbing to a quick fix with medication. I work with kids on many, many different medications and the difference in there behavior before and after medication is obvious but that's not the only noticeable change. Every morning for four of the six kids that I work with, about 45 minutes after they've had their medications, it's almost as if somebody has come along and ripped the personality right out of them. They seem numb, tired, almost like little zombies. It breaks my heart. I really believe that if we had enough staff to devote one on one attention to every single one of these kids, we could do more for them in the long run with behavioral therapy than with medications.