At least this Doc’s Honest: Drugging to Improve Performance:
Front page (where it should be) in today’s NY Times, a pediatrician in rural Georgia promotes stimulants to improve poor children’s school performance…regardless of diagnosis. This pediatrician fesses up that the “diagnosis” is “an excuse…to treat what he considers the chilren’s true ill — poor academic performance…” Imagine if this were a medical diagnosis he made up, say tuberculosis, and then gave INH to children, claiming that the school or home is infested with TB, so this is the way to help the child. Another example in the article is more egregious — a child is given Risperdol without regard to accurate diagnosis. Read more and let’s think about a multi-pronged approach to address this worrisome way to practice medicine.
N. Szajnberg, MD
Click Here to Read: Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School By Alan Schwarz in The New York Times on October 9, 2012.