Drug Education News

The Daily Telegraph covers a story from the Ecologist which looks at the increasing use of Ritalin with children diagonsed with ADHD:

The Ecologist article, written by Rachel Ragg, a former Leeds University lecturer and mother of two, points out that almost 400,000 children were last year prescribed Ritalin, a drug almost unknown in Britain in the early 1990s.

It argues that this is symptomatic of a sudden and dangerous crisis facing our next generation. Mrs Ragg said: “Childhood is no longer childhood for the vast majority of children and I think this Government has been absolutely appalling to children.

“They have provided financial incentives to parents to go back to work, and pressurised them to send children to nurseries by implying that their children will be economically, academically and culturally disadvantaged if they aren’t in a nursery by the age of two. In fact, all evidence suggests this is the reverse of the truth.

“It may very well be that ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] stems from a culture in which young children are stuck in nurseries listening to lectures about diversity when they should be out splashing in puddles and climbing trees.”

Without wanting to comment on Mrs Ragg’s understanding of what happens in a nursery readers of this blog might be interested in the paper that DrugScope did on managing Ritalin in the context of schools. There is little doubt that Ritalin is a controvercial drug, and the DrugScope paper points out:

Schools are not required to manage pupils’ medicines but where these are they must be managed safely. Schools are referred to Managing Medicines in Schools and Early Years Settings (Department for Education and Skills and Department of Health, 2005) for further information.

Where schools and other institutions are managing pupil’s Ritalin then the paper sets out some useful guidelines.