One last post to wrap it all up.

This isn't a formal post. I found this video after the blog was due and thought that it summed up the idea perfectly.

What is my Opinion?

Over-diagnosis is a serious issue. There is a plethora of evidence that most diagnoses are results of drug companies trying to make big profits. It's no lie that pharmaceutical companies benefit more with more patients. The easiest way to obtain more patients is to make the masses believe they have a disorder. It is quite clear that as time goes on, the diagnostic criteria for mental disorders and other diseases is constantly broadening. Though this does help people who really do need the medicine be noticed, it puts those who don't need medication at risk for harmful side effects of pills that weren't made for them. There are people who need to be subdued by medication, and then there are those who don't, and the line between those two is growing fuzzier every day, and drug companies are benefitting. Even if it isn't a scam, who is to say that everyone who can't concentrate needs a prescription filled out because they have ADD, or is autistic just because they are a little awkward? Maybe the truly harmful effect of hasty over-diagnosis is the fact that no one is seeing these disorders as gifts and letting the child choose whether they want to be "fixed" or not.

The world's most famous ADHD patient...

Scammed If You Do, Scammed If You Don't

In “Attention Deficit Disorder Is Over-diagnosed and Over-treated,” Allen Frances asserts that the increased diagnosis of mental disorders such as ADD is a fad caused by drug companies. First, the rates of ADD diagnoses increased exponentially in the 1990’s after more expensive medications came out that were not, for the most part, any different from the previous medications, prompting more aggressive marketing with the promise of profit. Second, these drug companies “educated” specialists to see ADD in children who before had been considered perfectly healthy, a step that helped people who truly needed medication but had been looked over, yet also labeled many “false positives”. Also, mental disorder medication is prescribed rather carelessly and quickly as a first solution to children showing signs of ADD, dyslexia, and others, where one might have seen results through simpler methods. This has often caused harmful side effects for those who are taking medication unnecessarily and even illegally due to the easy nature of procuring these mentally stimulating pills.

Frances, Allen. "Attention Deficit Disorder Is Over-Diagnosed and Over-Treated." The 

            Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 03 May 2012. Web. 08 Mar. 2012. 

            <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/attention-deficit-

            disorder_b_1206381.html>.

I thought that this article was very well written. It made the same assertion that the first article I read made, except this one gave concrete facts and statistics, as well as some history on the ADD "epidemic". It drew connections between the years of new medication releases and increases in diagnoses. I found it disturbing how easily a person could be diagnosed and medicated, without even clear proof that the patient has the disorder. This article opened my eyes to just how broad the definition of ADD is and how easy it was to be put into that category. Perfectly fine people are consequently put on medications they do not need, and more and more college students are obtaining these drugs for studying, putting them in danger of legitimate health problems.