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InvisibleSimplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
[Article] Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD
    #18576823 - 07/18/13 04:26 PM (10 years, 7 months ago)

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological--psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain.

French child psychiatrists don't use the same system of classification of childhood emotional problems as American psychiatrists. They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L'Enfant et de L'Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000. The focus of CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychosocial causes of children's symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological bandaids with which to mask symptoms.

To the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child's social context, fewer children qualify for the ADHD diagnosis. Moreover, the definition of ADHD is not as broad as in the American system, which, in my view, tends to "pathologize" much of what is normal childhood behavior. The DSM specifically does not consider underlying causes. It thus leads clinicians to give the ADHD diagnosis to a much larger number of symptomatic children, while also encouraging them to treat those children with pharmaceuticals.

The French holistic, psychosocial approach also allows for considering nutritional causes for ADHD-type symptoms—specifically the fact that the behavior of some children is worsened after eating foods with artificial colors, certain preservatives, and/or allergens. Clinicians who work with troubled children in this country—not to mention parents of many ADHD kids—are well aware that dietary interventions can sometimes help a child's problem. In the United States, the strict focus on pharmaceutical treatment of ADHD, however, encourages clinicians to ignore the influence of dietary factors on children's behavior.

And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child-rearing in the United States and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are generally better-behaved than their American counterparts. Pamela Druckerman highlights the divergent parenting styles in her recent book, Bringing up Bébé. I believe her insights are relevant to a discussion of why French children are not diagnosed with ADHD in anything like the numbers we are seeing in the United States.

From the time their children are born, French parents provide them with a firm cadre—the word means "frame" or "structure." Children are not allowed, for example, to snack whenever they want. Mealtimes are at four specific times of the day. French children learn to wait patiently for meals, rather than eating snack foods whenever they feel like it. French babies, too, are expected to conform to limits set by parents and not by their crying selves. French parents let their babies "cry it out" if they are not sleeping through the night at the age of four months.

French parents, Druckerman observes, love their children just as much as American parents. They give them piano lessons, take them to sports practice, and encourage them to make the most of their talents. But French parents have a different philosophy of discipline. Consistently enforced limits, in the French view, make children feel safe and secure. Clear limits, they believe, actually make a child feel happier and safer—something that is congruent with my own experience as both a therapist and a parent. Finally, French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires." And spanking, when used judiciously, is not considered child abuse in France.

As a therapist who works with children, it makes perfect sense to me that French children don't need medications to control their behavior because they learn self-control early in their lives. The children grow up in families in which the rules are well-understood, and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place. In French families, as Druckerman describes them, parents are firmly in charge of their kids—instead of the American family style, in which the situation is all too often vice versa.

Author: Marilyn Wedge, PsychologyToday
Date: July 10, 2013
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd?tr=MostViewed

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What is your opinion on the matter?

Personally, I'm not OK with giving children drugs "without their consent". I mean, when you are little you don't know much about the world and the development of your brain, so yeah... You can't necessarily make good decision based on fact or much anything. You trust your parents, the doctor, and you take amphetamine I guess... But some adult people also believe everything their doctor says and eat everything they are given... But anyway they can fully decide what they do with their body at this point so yeah.

"If the doctor says it, it must be so true!" :facepalm: I'm not saying all doctor are shit, but some of them are completely arrogant and asshole. Sorry if any of you are offended.

Anyway, I still didn't make my mind on both point of view on ADHD though. I'm still not even sure if I can make my mind on ADHD as I never been in contact with a child that is supposed to have it...

Damn.

All in all, I still want to read your opinion on this issue. Lets share! I'm pretty sure some of you will have something to say on the way this article is written too haha, comparing two nation like this can sometimes piss off some people :crazy:


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Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

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Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

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Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."


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OfflineMrdbrewer
Mr
Male

Registered: 06/17/13
Posts: 3,974
Loc: Galafrey.
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
Re: [Article] Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD [Re: Simplepowa]
    #18576848 - 07/18/13 04:32 PM (10 years, 7 months ago)

Just watch this video and you can tell that ADHD isnt a real thing and the people who actually diagnose ADHD children know that it it isnt a real thing
Also when you are an adult ADHD isnt a real thing anymore you are just an arsehole.


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Constantly checking my dick and nips to see if im not dying


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InvisibleSynth Ethics
substitution


Registered: 05/18/09
Posts: 5,525
Re: [Article] Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD [Re: Simplepowa]
    #18576893 - 07/18/13 04:41 PM (10 years, 7 months ago)

France have a very good approach. reminds me of how Portugal deal with drugs.

edits: I once knew an ADHD(un hyperactif ici) kids, he would never stop. it was getting annoying sometime because he always wanted to interact and if you ignored him he'd start to poke you or mess with you to get a reaction. he would sometime flip-out at his mother with the most deeply rooted anger I ever saw. he was very bad in school too.

when he would take his pills he was a totaly different persons, very calm and more self-centered. he'd had a lot more of concentration and a greater attention span.
but he really hated to take his pills, saying it was making him feel weird, so his mother almost never forced him to take them, and for that she was a good mother.

I would never give them to my child.


Edited by Synth Ethics (07/18/13 04:52 PM)


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Invisible22Carat
I'm a teapot


Registered: 11/15/12
Posts: 1,378
Re: [Article] Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD [Re: Synth Ethics]
    #18577015 - 07/18/13 04:58 PM (10 years, 7 months ago)

My best friend growing up had been on ADHD meds since he was around 8. He got taken off of them a year or two ago and seems slow now, it's kind of sad. I think his brain developed such a dependency to the stims that he can't function properly without them. He also does a lot of drugs, but this seems like more than that to me.


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