A Disease Called Childhood

January 19, 2015
Part exposé, part advice manual, this accessible text rails against the proliferation of Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder diagnoses in American children. A family therapist and author of Pills Are Not for Preschoolers, Wedge argues that “ADHD is neither an unnatural condition of childhood, nor illness that requires medication” but a “normal childhood response to stressful situations.” However, due to shifts in the last 50 years—including the reconceptualization of ADHD as a biological disorder, a pharmaceutical industry with the “dream of medicating large numbers of healthy children with amphetamines,” and parents and educators eager for a quick fix for troublesome tots—typical childhood behaviors have been pathologized and deemed worthy of heavy-duty medication. Wedge notes tartly that “society today would label ‘mentally disabled’ and give them drugs to make them behave like normal children.” She offers parents a range of environmental solutions for modifying behavior, which include trading in “fast-paced cartoons” for PBS, maintaining a positive home environment, and carrying out dietary changes such as avoiding food dyes. Buttressing her arguments with patient case studies and descriptions of positive outcomes from social interventions in European countries (particularly France and its envy-inducing bébés), Wedge has produced an eye-opening and compelling manifesto.

January 15, 2015
An astute examination of the ADHD epidemic, what's causing it, and how a radical, nonmedicinal treatment approach may help. Author and longtime family therapist Wedge's industry-shaking 2012 Psychology Today article "Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD" challenged the American psychiatric industry to reframe the way classic ADHD-associative behaviors are understood. The article also questioned whether medication should be the first approach to treating it and asked why diagnosis rates in America so greatly differed from those in European cultures. To Wedge, ADHD is not biological but psychosocial; in the U.S., it has become substantially "overdiagnosed and overmedicated" with powerful pharmaceutical stimulants prescribed to children. With direct aim at parents open to alternative therapies, the author discusses dietary (food dyes, processed sugar), situational and stressful familial causes for behavioral disruptions and offers nonmedical interventional treatment plans-e.g., stricter parenting, educational reform and even exercise-to counter behaviors traditionally deemed as ADHD markers. She makes impressive use of referential cases from her own practice, yet instead of the more typical rapid-fire diagnosis, Wedge, while agreeing that stimulant drugs like Adderall and Ritalin do work, insists on exploring the drug-free avenues available to children instead. She is concerned about the changing landscapes and parameters of what "normal childhood" behaviors are and that those falling outside of them are rashly diagnosed and swiftly buffered with psychiatric medication. Chapters detailing how modern medicine came to the conclusions it has about ADHD, the pharmaceutical industry's influential omnipresence in medicine, rickety research studies and why diagnosis rates continue to mushroom are consistently startling and distressing. While Wedge offers options not every medical professional or concerned parent will swallow willingly, her affable approach and compassionate universal concern for the wellness of children are evident throughout. In an important read for open-minded parents, Wedge offers fresh perspectives and practical approaches to the continuing ADHD conundrum.

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