Brian Daniels: Psychiatry is going too far with children

Published on Thursday 16 September 2010 22:04

Further concerns have been raised about the practice in schools of labelling children and adolescents as having special educational needs (SEN). Ofsted has supported a government report in July into the practice of labelling children with SEN, detailing its own concerns.

These concerns are heightened when those labelled with SEN are diagnosed with psychiatric "disorders" and prescribed mind-altering drugs as a "solution" to the behavioural problem. The psychiatric industry has been redefining poor childhood behaviour as a mental illness to excuse it, either at home or in the classroom. At the top of the list of excuses is "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD), conceived from the minds of psychiatrists and accepted as a condition, when in fact, it is nothing more than subjective psychiatric opinion.

Any one of us can have an opinion about the way someone behaves, but we do not claim our opinions as scientific fact. Psychiatrists however, do just this regarding disruptive, argumentative or boisterous childhood behaviour.

Psychiatrists also claim those diagnosed with ADHD have a "chemical imbalance" in their brains, but this has never been scientifically proven. Emeritus professor of psychiatry Dr Thomas Szasz says: "There is no biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness. If such a test were developed, then the condition would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease."

While the idea of drugging a child may be abhorrent, consider the cost of the drugs. From 2000 to 2009, the combined NHS spending in England, Scotland and Wales to chemically subdue those labelled with 'ADHD' was just under 250 million.

In practice, there is abundant evidence that real physical illness, with real pathology, can seriously affect an individual's mental state and behaviour. The emphasis must be on medical testing and treatments that improve and strengthen the individual. It is time to practice real medicine, not psychiatry.

• Brian Daniels is national spokesman of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (United Kingdom).