The psychiatrist who identified attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - the condition blamed for the bad behaviour of hundreds of thousands of children - has admitted that many may not really be ill.
Dr Robert Spitzer said that up to 30 per cent of youngsters classified as suffering from disruptive and hyperactive conditions could have been misdiagnosed.
Dr Spitzer, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, now says the classification led to many people being diagnosed as medically disordered when their mood swings and behaviour were simply normal feelings of happiness and sadness.
In a BBC2 documentary series The Trap, which begins on Sunday, he says that between 20 and 30 per cent of mental disorder diagnoses may be incorrect.
His admission comes as figures show that the amount spent by the UK's National Health Service on drugs to treat ADHD and similar disorders in children trebled to £12 million in just five years, from 1999-2003.
Almost 400,000 British children aged between five and 19 are believed to be on these drugs.
And if Dr Spitzer is right, around 120,000 of them should not be!
1 comment:
Only 20% misdiagnosed? Seems an underestimate to me. Surely it's time to recognise psychiatrists as the pseudoscientists that they are. Doctors`do not prescribe medicines based on the opinions of astrologers or phrenologists. On what basis is the opinion of psychiatrists any different?
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