Add Reaction Essay Essay, Research Paper
Psychology
ADD Reaction Essay
Mr. Fabrizio
ADD: Who does it effect and what are the treatments?
I chose this topic because being a young person I personally know a good
amount of people who have ADD and are treated with the drug Ritalin, and at one
time or another most people have a hard time focusing and think whether they
have a problem or not. While doing this report at times I found myself looking
away or doing other things but I realized that there is a difference between
getting lazy for a minute or two and not actually being able to do the project
at all which some people with ADD might have to put up with.
There have been many different people effected by ADD since it was first
described medically in 1902. Attention Deficit Disorder effects approximately 10
million Americans including adults and effects around 4% of school-aged children
and once it
was estimated that between 3 and 5 % of all children had it . What’s
interesting about these numbers is that there is an increasing amount of experts
who are examining the possibility that ADD may be genetic. For a long time it
was presumed that diet, like too much sugar, was the main cause of this
disorder, but this was later disproved by the National Institute of Health.
Another assumed cause of the disorder was environment like bad family life,
neglect, and/or divorced parents that caused this. But the more research was
done, the more counterexamples against these premonitions were found. What
experts realized through this research was that the only concrete cause was
genetics. Studies of twins revealed in the article by James Freeman (6th para)
shows that identical twins are more likely to get the disorder than fraternal
twins which suggest that the stronger the genetic relationship with a relative
who has ADD or ADHD, the greater the likelihood of developing one of the
disorders.
Many adults are shown in the articles I chose as having ADD. Showing that
perhaps people don’t grow out of the disorder once they reach puberty and even
when they reach their twenties. What’s even more interesting is that many of
these people who
never grow out of ADD are led to a life of crime. Whether it is impulsive
acts, poor attending, and distractibility many youths participate in criminal
acts before they are adults but even when they are adults, never really grow out
of these things. In T. Dwaine McCallon?s article (1st para), these people can
stop from considering the consequences of their actions putting them at risk of
criminal activity. Further research in this article shows that in Utah prisons,
that 24 percent of male inmates have ADD. After tests and treatments with the
drugs Ritalin, Cylert and other medications the inmates behavior was greatly
changed for the better. In fact, of the 41 prisoners paroled while on these
drugs, only three violated parole and only one had a new criminal charge brought
against them.
Of the drugs used in that experiment, Ritalin is by far the most popular and
widely used. Of the people given this medication about 80 percent of children
and 50 percent of adults improve with medication. Ritalin has been found to
greatly improve behavior,
participation, performance and how the children get along with their peers
and family. Most of the people who have taken the drugs are supporters but there
are some who say that the drug may have certain things that are wrong with it
that haven’t fully been looked into which makes it unsafe. Many critics say that
because there hasn’t been a sufficient amount of research put into the lasting
effects of the drug so that doctors who prescribe it don’t really know whether
it will effect the patient negatively in the long run.
There was many things I found out by doing this project that I didn’t know
before doing this report. Beforehand I had no idea that as many children had it
as there was. I thought that a good amount of them had it but not three to five
percent of all children in the United States. Another thing I didn’t know prior
to doing this was that many adults are effected by this disorder. Before doing
this I thought only children and teenagers got ADD, but after perusing through
some of the articles these experts wrote i found out that adults were indeed
effected by this disorder. After reading all these articles from the journals of
some of the best psychological experts on ADD, I have come to the conclusion
that there needs to be more testing on the effectiveness and long-lasting
effects of Ritalin before doctors should be allowed to give it out as treatment
as much as they do. If there is some bad side effects down the road people
should know about it before they are severely effected negatively.