New NICE guidelines on ADHD and Ritalin

I was pleased to see that NICE has published new guidelines that recommend that Ritalin should be prescribed less often to children diagnosed with ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

As I am feeling all blogged out tonight, I shall refer you to an article I published in Open Mind magazine a few years ago:

A psychologist I know gives her last lecture of each year on a paper entitled ‘The aetiology and treatment of childhood’. It describes a worrying condition, with symptoms like short stature, emotional immaturity and a reluctance to eat vegetables – or ‘legume anorexia’. The good news is that when sufferers are investigated 10 years later they have almost all got better.

Yes, it’s a joke – a clever American satire on the way professionals turn normal human behaviour into a medical problem. But a lot of notes get taken before her students realise this.