Sukhmani SoniUniv 200-066Effectiveness and Suitability Of Stimulants On ChildrenAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is a common struggle many people, especially children must face. The struggle is not necessarily identifying if a child had ADHD, but rather how to go about treating it. There are many thing to take into consideration when trying to treat ADHD in children. You must take into account what kind of treatment may that child adapt to best to as well as how suitable is the actual treatment itself is for the child. Anotherthing to look for is the difference in behavior when given alternative treatments. If our children are struggling in their day to day lives, we should obviously take care of them, but is prescriptiontreatment really the only option? Or do doctor and parents just want a quick and easy fix? Alternative treatment methods can be just as effective means of treating focusing issues associated with ADHD as prescription drug treatment is, and is more likely to promote an overallbetter quality of life. Treatment with prescription medication by no means is a bad thing, but if there's another option that is just as or more effective in terms of treatment and can help them strive in their overall lives, don’t our children at least deserve for alternative treatment o be presented as an option? Millions of people across the world live with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, orADHD, much of that population is comprised of young children. The regular protocol when a person is diagnosed with ADHD is to start them on prescription stimulants like ritalin or the extremely famous drug adderall. The issue with this is, since so many people with ADHD are usually diagnosed at a very young age, as young as five years old, so there is a likely possibility that the child may just need some additional guidance or attention to help them, not necessarily highly controlled drugs like adderall. When a patient's concern is focusing issues, that patient's diagnosis is subjective to the physician who is treating it, so one doctor may believe their patientSukhmani SoniUniv 200-066is struggling with ADHD, and a different doctor may not think much of it. When a young child has issues focusing, often times they are automatically diagnosed with ADHD, but the problem isthat many things can contribute to a child's lack of focus, but as a quick fix many doctors will prescribe young children strong stimulants without closely evaluating them. Everyone is on a spectrum when it comes to focusing, those at one far end usually have strong symptoms of being ADHD, and those on the other end do not show strong characteristics of having ADHD. When diagnosing a child suffering from a lack of focus, a lot of the time the issues were recognized by teachers, or anyone closely working with them, so a lot of the time doctors jump into diagnosing children with ADHD, but if they evaluated children more closely, maybe they could find that the child’s focusing issues are not as extreme as they are made out to be. We are diagnosing and “treating” children with ADHD now more than ever “According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately eleven percent of U.S. children aged 4–17 have ever been diagnosed with ADHD and more than half of them are taking stimulant medications such as Ritalin for their condition” (Schwarz 58). Starting children, sometimes only when they are in kindergarten on such heavy drugs can severely impairtheir growth mentally and physically, “Despite information on the effects of stimulants in laboratory animals, profound species differences in susceptibility to stimulant-induced neurotoxicity underscore the need for systematic studies of prolonged human exposure. Early amphetamine treatment has been linked to slowing in height and weight growth in some children” (berman). When extremely young children have focusing issues, it may be just becausethey are so young and have not yet figured out a way to control their energy. Now this is not always the case but it is an important thing to consider before medicating a child, stimulants like adderall give the impression that the child's focus has improved, but that is because theseSukhmani SoniUniv 200-066stimulants repress outgoing and spontaneous behaviors which make it seem like a child is more calm, when in reality their energy is being repressed. Stimulants also encourage obsessive and compulsive behaviors with enhance focus, but often times also enhance aggressive behaviors. This is not to shame people who rely or take medication, but just to be more cautious of the whatthe drug actually does to someone and if it is worth it, and for many people it is, but I do believe that for ADHD specifically it should be used as a last resort treatment plan “ Results showed thatchildren with ADHD who received MPH generated more hostile responses to provocation than controls, but children with ADHD on placebo did not.” (king). By trying to solve one issue a child may have, such as lacking focus, a multitude of other problems that were not there before may arise; by treating one issue and as a result creating another issue, we are just burdening are children with struggles that they can and should live without. One of my sources shows that a behavior based treatment plan is effective at treating focusing issues. The treatment plan is called ADAPT and it teaches students mindfulness and other techniques that can help then control their behavior and remain focus. Studies show that theADAPT project provides effective treatment for focusing issues it’s more effective to apply behavior modifications to daily life than to ignore the real issue at hand and repress and use prescription drugs as a a”quick fix”, “ADAPT (adaptation of depression and anxiety psychological treatments for youth) uses behavior modification strategies to help youth improve overall quality of life”(Lewisohn). Alternative treatment methods are more effective than stimulant drugs because they actually treat the child’s issues studies show that the “improvements” that prescription stimulants gives kids are not real improvement, but rather just encourage obsessive and controlling behaviors. ““Long-term beneficial effects have not been verified by research. Short-term effects of stimulants should not be considered a permanentSukhmani SoniUniv 200-066solution to chronic ADD symptoms.