Medicating Behavior Problems Creates More Problems

By the [year 2000], an estimated 4 million American children were on [Ritalin] and doctors were issuing 11 million prescriptions for it each year.  In some schools, the proportion of students on Ritalin and similar stimulants has reached 30 or 40 percent.  America consumes nearly 90 percent of the world’s production of Ritalin, and the drug is now routinely prescribed for children below the age of three, despite the fact that it is only approved for use on children age six or older.  Pharmacologically related to cocaine, Ritalin is a potentially dangerous drug that can have serious side effects, including psychotic reactions.

Medical doctors as well as educators are apparently finding it hard to resist the lure of the materialistic quick fix offered by Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs.  Treating a behavior problem as solely a physical disorder of the brain is much simpler than trying to investigate a child’s dysfunctional relationships.  It also avoids the messy situation of having to get people to accept responsibility for their actions.  In the biological model, the child need not accept responsibility for his misbehavior because he is ultimately controlled by his disordered brain chemistry.  Similarly, educators need not take responsibility for creating a stimulating learning environment, because student boredom must be cause by organic brain disease rather than, say, the curriculum.  Above all, parents need never feel guilty about failing in their obligations as mothers and fathers, because in the biological model parents’ actions are unrelated to their children distress.

“When we diagnose and drug our children, we disempower ourselves as adults,” Peter Breggin testified at congressional hearings in 2000. “While we may gain momentary relief from guilt by imagining that the fault lies in the brains of our children, ultimately we undermine our ability to make the necessary adult interventions that our children need.”

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.99