Concentration and Assisting Death

Well, two of my most interesting subjects are back in the news.

There is an article in the journal Nature today which recommends the drug Ritalin as an aid to improving concentration and memory for those without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). As sometimes I lack both, perhaps I should take some after all

The other subject, assisted suicide has been raised by a member of the Scottish Parliament Margo MacDonald.

The Lothian MSP, who has Parkinson’s Disease, does not wish her own condition to be the centre of the debate, but is sure from the post she receives from her constituents that the legislation covering assisted death must be changed.

A Beautiful but Distracted Sequel

I was very interested to hear today on the news that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE to you and me) is requesting that doctors are more careful when prescribing Ritalin for newly diagnosed cases of ADHD. It seems that this particular government agency has realised this reliance on Ritalin is too widespread among the medical profession – at last!!!! I wonder if they read my blog on the subject  

However, it’s advice that alternative therapies should be sought in all but the most severe cases is all well and good as long as the support is available out there. Given the sad history of so called Care in the Community in this country – willing but drastically under-resourced, we will have to reserve judgement for now. A number of parents have told me they only need to resort to the medication at school, because they have found strategies to work with their children with ADHD at weekends. 

Certainly there has been some worried parents in the media today thinking that the Ritalin treatment which has worked for their children will be withdrawn. Hopefully, there will be enough backup to support them – Ritalin or not. Perhaps it should be targeted at teachers too!!!

A Beautiful but Distracted Mind…

There was a story on the BBC news last week about Ritalin, the drug used to moderate the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. According to the BBC, and other learned sources, symptoms of ADHD range from poor concentration and extreme hyperactivity, to interrupting and intruding on other people and not being able to wait in queues (though this last is shared in my experience by many teenagers!  

Ritalin is an amphetamine (mild stimulant) which works on the central nervous system to improve concentration. Although it is licenced for the treatment of ADHD, it is still an amphetamine, an addictive class A drug. Anecdotal comments in the educational system in Swansea have cited examples of parents getting their sons (as boys are 3 times more likely to experience this condition) on Ritalin, only to sell the drug on the street to boost their income.

This form of treatment has been criticised because it can cause serious side-effects in some children, leaving them depressed, robotic, lethargic, or withdrawn. I remember watching the film A Beautiful Mind the story of the Nobel Prize Winning Mathematician John Nash, amazingly played by Russell Crowe. Although this was a completely different mental condition, schizophrenia, the effects of the medication on him seem to be remarkably similar to the side-effects experienced by some taking Ritalin for ADHD.

Nash decided not to take his drugs and to live with his hallucinations instead. This course of action may not be possible for many to completely abandon Ritalin, as they need the at least some of drug to be able to concentrate for study, at home and to be generally socially acceptable. I assessed a number of students with ADHD, and I do not think that they would have been able to sit in a room with me for 90 minutes, or indeed in lectures without the aid of the drug and even then it was a little bit of a struggle for one or two of them to keep concentration levels at their optimum.

As the BBC reported “The government’s drug watchdog ruled in 2000 that Ritalin should be prescribed on the NHS to children with serious hyperactivity problems. It is not licensed for people under the age of six, but doctors have prescribed it to children as young as 15 months. There is also concern that doctors are prescribing the drug without considering alternative treatments.”

Maybe there is a parallel here again with the treatment of schizophrenia, where there was, and perhaps is still, too much reliance on drug therapy for some clinicians and not enough investigation into alternative therapies. As more and more individuals are diagnosed with ADHD, shouldn’t lessons be learned and natural spirit not be completely wiped out by drug-induced control?