The Controversy of Medication

The controversy of medicating a child who has EBD or ADHD is big, people may not even realize how big it is because it’s hiding in the bushes so to speak, people try to keep it quiet so people don’t form a panic when they find out how their children will be affected if they give them the medication to slow their disability down. Now I say disability light heartedly, because people like to treat children with these conditions like they are breakable, and they shouldn’t, children with these problems should be treated like any normal person in society, just with special care.

The most common known drug out there to thin out the possibility or idea of these conditions is Ritalin, there are some successes out there, but there a lot of people who take their children off of it because of the side effects and how different their children start to seem after being on the medication for a prolonged period of time. According to The American Psychological Association, a Dr. Peter Jensen conducted a period of trials on children to see if the medication actually worked and how well it worked, it came back a year later that only 60% of children treated had a success, and the rest failed, but it is said that this medication is not for everyone and it can have some severe side effects. (para. 11). The Helium (2007) website says that the pros and cons of medicating children with these behaviors can include more sleep for those medicated, and less sleep for those who go unmediated, a child can appear to be depressed more as a side effect of Ritalin, but pro would be that they would be able to focus better in school, a pro is that it can help a child for a prolonged period of time, but into adulthood doctors say that it isn’t likely that the medication will have a long term effect. (Helium, 2007).

Now, my personal opinion on this matter is that you can medicate a child to death, but you need to learn how to deal with the behavior the correct way if the medicines don’t work. I personally had experience with a child who was put on Ritalin for her ADHD and as soon as she started taking it she turned into a completely different person. She went from vibrant and bubbly every day to unaware of her surroundings, and uninterested in most things, it seemed as if she was disconnected from the world. Since I have seen what it can do to a child, I don’t condone it, and I think experimenting can be worse because you make a child feel like they will never be normal if they don’t take medication to control their behaviors, I think it should be handled in a more effective way, such as special tutoring every day on top of normal classroom interaction.

References

American Psychological Association. (2001). Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec01/medicating.aspx

Helium. (2007). Retrieved from http://www.helium.com/items/261661-the-pros-and-cons-of-medicating-children-with-add-or-adhd