'Why are more kids being diagnosed with ADHD?'

 A growing number of children in the United States are being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) — what one recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) referred to as an “expanding public health concern.”  

ADHD diagnoses have been rising for decades. CDC data shows that the share of U.S. children with the condition increased from about 6–8 percent in 2000 to roughly 9–10 percent by 2018.   

The trend has picked up speed in recent years, with the rate shooting up to just over 11 percent by 2022. A total of 7.1 million kids across the country have now been diagnosed with the disorder at some point, according to the report.   

There is no single reason behind the rise in diagnoses, health experts say. But they point to both the growing awareness of the condition’s symptoms and the increased time kids spent at home as COVID-19 shuttered schools and other activities as factors that likely played a role.  

“Both increased recognition of ADHD symptoms and increased ADHD symptoms and impairment during the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to the higher ADHD prevalence in 2022,” Melissa L. Danielson, a statistician at the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, who helped author the recently released report, wrote in an email to The Hill.   

Popular culture has helped introduce Americans to ADHD and some of its symptoms, as shows like “Modern Family,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “The Simpson” have all featured a character with the condition, one 2022 study notes.  

ADHD–related content is also pervasive on the social platforms X and TikTok, the study says: The hashtag #adhd garnered 11.4 billion views on the latter platform in May of 2022 alone. 

“Many people credit these platforms with helping them realize they had the diagnosis and subsequently seeking treatment for it,” the study reads.   

But, as with most topics, misinformation about ADHD is common online, the study adds.   

Lara Litvinov, a senior psychologist in the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute, urged people to not accept everything said about ADHD on TikTok as fact.   

“They’re not necessarily giving all the right criteria,” she said. “They are giving criteria that a lot of people with ADHD may have those symptoms and but that doesn’t mean that they have ADHD.”   

Knowledge about how ADHD symptoms present themselves in children has also grown in the medical community, experts noted, which has likely resulted in more diagnoses.   

For example, mental health care providers are slowing learning how ADHD may present differently in boys and girls, according to George Sachs, a clinical psychologist who specializes in ADHD testing and treatment.   

While children with the condition can display hyperactivity regardless of gender, in boys with ADHD it commonly results in them being disruptive in a classroom, while girls may instead be extremely talkative.   

Girls with ADHD are also more likely to have “inattentive” symptoms like struggling to focus, forgetfulness or losing things that might be trickier for adults to notice, according to Sachs. 

Growing awareness of ADHD prior to the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with many families increased time together during the pandemic could have helped with increased recognition of ADHD symptoms, experts said.  

During the pandemic, millions of children were suddenly spending most, if not their entire, of their days inside their homes due to business and school closures.   

This could have allowed parents, many of whom were also at home, to more easily notice ADHD symptoms in their children that might have become worse with online learning, according to Danielson.   

It is also possible that online learning worsened the symptoms of some children with undiagnosed ADHD,  making them more noticeable to parents, experts added. Research shows that children with ADHD do better in classrooms with structure which many online classes may not provide.  

“Parents were at home with their kids, and they were able to see some of these behaviors in a way that they hadn’t seen before,” said Litvinov.  

The pandemic was difficult for Americans in general, but took an especially severe toll on the mental health of the nation’s young people. Multiple studies show that rates of depression and anxiety skyrocketed among kids and teens during COVID-19 lockdowns.   

One 2022 study found that before the pandemic about one in seven children between the ages of five and 17 reported suffering from a symptom of anxiety or depression at least once a week.  

That number grew to about one in six children by late 2020, according to the study.   

Some experts believe the rise in ADHD diagnoses arose in part from parents trying to treat other conditions their children suffered from during the pandemic, like depression and anxiety.   

Experts also think that increasing ADHD diagnoses stem partly from increased pressure on schools and students to perform.   

Since kids have returned to physical classrooms, schools and students alike have faced increasing pressure to make up for lost learning during the pandemic, and many are struggling to do so.  

Between 2019 and 2022, students lost more than half a year of learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, they have only recovered about a third of what they lost in math and even less in reading skills, according to an analysis of standard test scores by researchers from Harvard and Stanford University.   

That pressure has caused parents and educators to focus on figuring out why students are not doing well in classes, which could mean more kids are being tested for neurological differences like ADHD, according to Litvinov.   

“There’s a lot of pressure on parents and schools to make sure that people are meeting expectations,” she said.   

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-health/4710130-adhd-more-children-diagnosed-why/

Addiction and the End of Personal Responsibility

 There is no more critical tenet of conservatism than the assumption of  individual responsibility.  As Dennis Prager wrote in a summative essay thirty years ago for The Heritage Foundation,  “just as I am rewarded for my good behavior, I am accountable for my bad behavior.  This belief was a result of ... individualism ... and of the Judeo-Christian ethic that also animated the founders of this country.  Essential to Judaism and Christianity is the notion that you are accountable for your behavior-to God, ultimately.  This has been under attack.”

Nowhere is this perspective under attack more than in the use of addiction and mental illness — namely, to

1. excuse and undermine assumed responsibility,

2. eliminate punishment for illegal and anti-social behaviors and actions, and

3. require “therapeutic” compensatory behaviors on the part of alleged and real miscreants in the United States and elsewhere.

One of us wrote a book titled Addiction is a Choice (2000), arguing contrary to the accepted truth of the country’s addiction lobby that “addiction” happens randomly to unsuspecting victims, like a virus or bacterium.  Moreover, these sufferers of addiction are harmed by this allegedly serendipitous scourge that afflicts people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And these myths are not limited to liberals or progressives.  Since the heyday of Dr. Thomas Szasz and the conservatism that cast doubt on the existence of literal mental illness and stressed individual responsibility, the United States’ criminal justice system has gone, in the immortal word of Margaret Thatcher, “wobbly.”

As Phoenix Programmes, the widely respected and venerated addiction treatment center in Spain, puts it, and this is typical of establishment psychiatry and substance abuse psychology,

addiction is not your fault; whether it is to a substance such as alcohol or drugs, or a behavior such as gambling, online gaming, or sex; addiction is a disease that can drive a person to cheat, steal and manipulate to achieve their ‘fix’ and leaves their families and loved ones devastated by the destruction it causes.  No one chooses to be an addict.

The devastating consequences of criminal culpability are manifold.  Sometimes, it just disappears.

Another prototypical analysis from the National Institutes of Health News Letter leaves the decision-making of the addict completely unaddressed.

“A common misperception is that addiction is a choice or moral problem, and all you have to do is stop. But nothing could be further from the truth,” says Dr. George Koob, director of NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “The brain actually changes with addiction, and it takes a good deal of work to get it back to its normal state. The more drugs or alcohol you’ve taken, the more disruptive it is to the brain”

If the above is true, how does an “addicted” person ever stop using drugs?  Years ago, addiction experts were quoted in The Washington Post saying sex addicts were addicted to the chemicals released in their brains during orgasm.  Does this mean a rapist should be exculpated because “his brain made him do it”?

Ideas have consequences, as conservative commentator Richard Weaver wrote.  Nowhere is this more obvious than when putative addiction “experts” mistakenly refer to behavior as “disease.”

At this point, as with most analyses of addiction, mystification replaces serious evidentiary examination, since no one can understand human behavior without including individual choice.  “Scientists don’t yet understand why some people become addicted while others don’t.  Addiction tends to run in families, and certain types of genes have been linked to different forms of addiction.  But not all members of an affected family are necessarily prone to addiction.  ‘As with heart disease or diabetes, there’s no one gene that makes you vulnerable,’ Koob says.”

Just because a behavior runs in families does not mean the behavior is caused by genes.  Extensive research on those persons considered addicted shows that environment is by far the more significant explanation or statistical predictor.  Any true behavioral scientist knows this.  Those asserting otherwise are politicians, not scientists.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse modifies its view to some extent as to whether there is any individual responsibility in the process of becoming addicted to drugs.  “Addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences.  The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs” (emphasis added).

There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that a gene or an allele causes people to consume mind-altering drugs such as heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco in ways they cannot control.  

Let’s consider the facts about the meaning of addiction.

Addiction is a very old English word that has always meant “devotion” to something.  Its association with “disease” is something negative and came about through the alcohol temperance movement and self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) following repeal of prohibition.  E.M. Jellinek, a researcher at Yale and author of The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (1960), coined the term “loss of control” to suggest that people could not control their consumption of alcohol.  That theory, the cornerstone of the disease concept of addiction, has been consistently disproven by scientists ever since.

AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) are free self-help organizations for people who want help controlling their behavior.  However, alternative self-help programs are now widely available for people who reject the idea that they have a disease and that they must “turn their lives over to a higher power.”  Both organizations are shown by scientists to be no more helpful than leaving people to their own devices.  The views of these 12-step organizations such as AA and NA have more to do with religious activity than secular science.  

Twelve-step programs are also internally contradictory.  Those who attend AA insist that adherents believe they cannot control their own behavior: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable,” followed by a list of behavioral obligations tied to belief in a “higher power” — not a bad idea, but clearly not powerlessness.

Although adherents to AA philosophy are fond of saying the “higher power” can be anything a person wants it to be, there is one thing it cannot be: oneself.  When self is in charge of addiction, the disease model crumbles. 

Moreover, when the state coerces citizens into AA, as occurs in state-mandated attendance in AA for drunk driving, for example, the separation of church and state is violated.  We assisted the ACLU in Maryland in establishing this fact through the circuit courts back in 1988 (Maryland v. Norfolk).  That is only one of the consequences for viewing addiction and alcoholism as diseases instead of behaviors for which a person is clearly responsible.

Addiction in relation to drug use concerns behavior, not disease.  Although behaviors can clearly cause disease, the two are different.

Behavior refers to deportment or a mode of conduct.  As such, it is always the expression of a person’s values.  How do we know what a person’s values are?  By observing his behavior.  

This is not to say that people who use drugs destructively or constructively are bad or good people.  That is a misapplication of the meaning of moralism and addiction.  All behavior is volitional.  There is no such thing as an involuntary behavior.  Reflexes, such as convulsions, are not behaviors, and we do not hold people responsible for them.

A drug addict is no more the same as a diabetic than a diabetic is the same as a drug addict.  The popular analogy is neither true nor reciprocal.

Nevertheless, those who assert that addiction is a disease like diabetes, cancer, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis distort these meanings for reasons that are important to them.  They are also cruel and judgmental toward those with real disease.  Those reasons have to do with imposing their morality on others, garnering money through addiction “treatment,” and enjoying power over stigmatized others. 

A disease has a specific meaning: it refers to a cellular and biological abnormality.  However, those asserting that addiction is a disease are deliberately obscuring things.  Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902) was one of the 19th century's foremost leaders in medicine and pathology.  The meaning of disease as the expression of abnormal cells is the gold standard, attributed to his famous work. 

We do not see addiction listed in a standard textbook on pathology for good reason.  Behavior does not meet the nosological criteria for disease classification. 

Our close personal friend Dr. Thomas Szasz’s writings on the difference between behavior and disease since the 1950s are solely responsible for the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness.  True scientists have agreed with our perspective for a long time.  One of us debated these matters on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line along side Dr. Szasz. 

Think about the confusing messages that those who believe addiction is a disease give to the public, and, importantly, to children.  On the one hand, they assert that addicts cannot control their behavior because it is a disease, not the expression of their values.  On the other hand, they are told they have the power to stop using drugs when it is important enough for them to do so. 

The accepted view today is that everyone is equally vulnerable to the taking of drugs, and that no one can control his behavior.  This is manifestly false.

Fortunately, the erroneous views of addiction as a disease and the ubiquity of mental illness are not accepted by all social scientists, experts on disease, political progressives, liberals, and conservatives in public media.  Asserting that drug use in the form of addiction is both a disease and the expression of disease is wrong and dangerous.  It is used to weaken self-efficacy, stigmatize good citizens, and ultimately enslave people by teaching them that they are powerless instead of powerful.  

Courtroom debate and disputative base rhetoric are becoming undisputed but never indisputable.  It is past time for people to demystify addiction and mental illness and see the truth about human behavioral choices and responsibility: addiction and other psychopathies are far from literal diseases.  They are behaviors that people have always controlled, for reasons that are sufficiently important to them.

Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., M.Ed. is the author of Addiction Is a Choice (2000) and retired professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs and the psychology faculty at Johns Hopkins University. 

Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D. is the distinguished professor of political rhetoric at Towson University.  He is a well known critic of institutional psychiatry and its consequences for freedom and responsibility. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/addiction_and_the_end_of_personal_responsibility.html 

Minnesota Gov. Walz bans police training for 'excited delirium'

 According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, also known as the New World’s Pravda, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed a law prohibiting training for licensed police officers on “excited delirium.”

You may well be asking yourself, “Say what?”

Star Tribune: “Excited delirium usually refers to a person possessed by a potentially deadly form of agitation, sometimes abetted by drug abuse, and displaying aggressive behavior, profuse sweating, public nudity, mouth foaming and superhuman strength.”

Well, just because a perp is on drugs, foaming at the mouth, possibly nude, displaying aggressive behavior and deadly agitation while exhibiting superhuman strength, that’s no reason for law enforcement personnel to use force against that person! Or even to be trained in how to handle that situation! Why wouldn’t any and all sane police officers tell Walz: “O.K., you do this job!”

The Star Tribune noted that ‘excited delirium’ is “a diagnosis that national medical associations have rejected as pseudoscience.” The far-left paper for the far-left Twin Cities also quoted Dr. Altaf Saadi, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has called for the end of the term’s use in the United States, as saying: "Right now, there's not a single medical association that upholds excited delirium as legitimate.”

Pseudoscience? Legitimate? Medical associations in the U.S. and Canada recognize men who claim to be women as women, and women who claim to be men as men. They recommend the genital mutilation of young children. They were wrong about nearly everything pertaining to the coronavirus and the response thereto. They claimed that it was a necessary public health matter to allow Black Lives Matter and Antifa to riot in the streets and burn down buildings while the rest of us were told we must stay six feet apart — and that we couldn’t go to work, the gym, or to the funeral of a loved one. Some are pro-abortion … and pro-medically assisted suicide. Doctors and nurses now “assign” a baby’s “gender” at birth as “X.” Or refuse to give a life-saving organ transplant to someone who hasn’t had the full regimen of COVID-19 vaccinations. They claim alcoholism is a disease á la the common cold or pneumonia. (If so, how does one “catch” it?) and now they are buying into DEI at the expense of competence.

So if Walz and his sycophants at the Star Tribune want examples of the belief in pseudoscience, they should look in the mirror. Or at a picture of “Dr. Fauci.”

Excited delirium is real. Don’t believe me? Just look at the actions of “journalists” reporting on Donald J. Trump.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/minnesota_gov_walz_bans_police_training_for_excited_delirium.html

Clooney Shakedown of Biden gets worse: Biden caves to Clooney on the ICC

 It's bad enough that actor George Clooney had the temerity to call the White House to complain about the U.S. foreign policy stance on the International Criminal Court's planned arrest warrant of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a U.S. ally.

The guy, after all, is an actor. He did it to make his wife happy, the wife apparently dispatching him to do it since she helped write the plans for the warrant, and faced sanctions. Perhaps the loudly liberated woman was too cowardly to call them up on her own.

But now we learn that Biden actually caved to Clooney, changing U.S. foreign policy to suit Herodias, or rather, Amal Clooney.

The GOP says there was a causal relationship.

 

 

And yes, fundraising was involved. The Mercury News, or, Bay Area News Group, reports that yes, Clooney's still coming to that fundraiser for Joe Biden.

George Clooney is still expected to attend a star-studded June 15 fundraiser for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, even after a report raised questions about the actor’s call to the White House last month to complain about the president criticizing work his wife was involved in — the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for the war in Gaza.

The Washington Post, which reported on Clooney’s call to the White House, said there were concerns among some Biden campaign officials that the actor would drop out of the marquee event in Los Angeles, which is also expected to include former president Barack Obama, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel and actor Julia Roberts

That raises the possibility that the act a quid pro quo, or something resembling a bribe.

If true, it would be consistent with Biden's other behavior, around, for example, Hunter Biden, where acts were exchanged for cash with foreign characters and phone calls were made. And yes, Amal is foreign, a U.K. citizen.

This article from Al-Monitor, dated June 4, noted that Biden was vehemently opposed to sanctions on the ICC and is willing to defy 42 congressional Democrats in order to take that extremist position.

US lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed legislation Tuesday that would sanction the International Criminal Court for seeking arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders, setting up a potential showdown between the US president and congressional Democrats. 

The White House has previously said it “strongly opposes” new sanctions on the ICC. The stance pits President Joe Biden against Democrats in Congress who said they want a bipartisan response to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan's recent announcement that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity linked to the war in Gaza. 

If Clooney made his phone call on or before that date, then the possibility of quid pro quo is even stronger. Right now, we don't have the timeline, but the GOP, for what it's worth, is arguing that there was a policy shift after the Clooney intervention.

Yet favoring sanctions on ICC is a mainstream position, and a proper one for the U.S. to take. Wanting the warrant to go through is what the crazies of Hamas would like. While we know that Biden has been reportedly conniving to replace Netanyahu, it still would be normal to not want our U.S. allies to be arrested as war criminals when they are at war to defend themselves from terrorists who intentionally stick women and children out front as human shields and hog all the foreign aid food for themselves, as their big beer guts seen in pictures of surrendered Hamas fightes indicate. It's also self-preservation if nothing else from the U.S. point of view.

If Israel's leaders are war criminals and we are helping Israel's leaders, the ICC, feeling high and mighty, will soon be issuing arrest warrants for U.S. leaders in the Biden administration next, and maybe reaching back to the Trump and Obama administrations, too. We can throw every world leader who resists terrorism in some way in jail by their logic, and all will be hunky dory.

But that's not what we see from Biden, who seems to want to get through his fundraiser with Clooney first, changing U.S. positions on the ICC to oppose any sanctions on this overreach.

Any questions as to why the U.S. has lost respect in the world? Terrorists themselves must be rubbing their hands together with glee at this sorry specter of venality and weakness, U.S. foreign policy being set by the likes of a Hollywood movie actor whose wife is complaining, instead of its own principles and self-interest.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/the_clooney_shakedown_of_biden_gets_worse_biden_caves_to_clooney_on_the_icc.html

Anybody notice Emirati foreign minister call Palestinian authorities 'Ali Baba and the 40 thieves' in shouting match?

 By Monica Showalter

In a most welcome display of candor, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, which is a very credible well-run Arabic state with modern amenities, let the Palestinian authorities know that to them, they were "Ali Baba and the 40 thieves." He said that in an actual shouting match with

According to Axios:

A meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a group of Arab officials about a month ago flew off the rails after an unusual shouting match between the UAE foreign minister and a senior adviser to the Palestinian president, according to five sources with knowledge of the incident.

Why it matters: The heated spat reflects skepticism over the Palestinian Authority's planned reforms and disputes among Arab leaders, both of which could challenge the Biden administration's efforts to forge a post-war strategy for Gaza.

Driving the news: The April 29 meeting took place in Riyadh on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting.

That's the boring stuff, here's the juicy stuff:

Behind the scenes: According to the sources, during the meeting al-Sheikh said the Palestinian Authority is conducting reforms and created a new government as the U.S. and Arab countries asked, but it isn't getting enough political and financial support.

• Toward the end of the meeting the Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed pushed back and said he hasn't seen any significant reform inside the Palestinian Authority, the sources said.
• According to two sources, the Emirati foreign minister then called the Palestinian leadership "Ali Baba and the forty thieves" and claimed senior officials in the Palestinian Authority are "useless" and therefore "replacing them with one another will only lead to the same result."
• "Why would the UAE give assistance to the Palestinian Authority without real reforms?" he asked.

Al-Sheikh shouted back at the Emirati foreign minister and said nobody will dictate to the Palestinian Authority how to conduct its reforms, the sources said.

As I noted earlier, the United Arab Emirates are one of the best-run states in the world, with certainly the finest airline, Emirates, which I rode several years ago to Sri Lanka. They got at way because they don't steal everything that isn't nailed down the way the Palestinians do, and their wealth itself came about from earning it, providing things of value that others would like to buy.

The Palestinian leaders never do that. The only thing we ever hear about them is how much foreign aid they stole, and as for selling things of value to the world, what a sad story in a culture that is famous for its rug merchant bargainers and history of trade. If they had any brains at all, they'd learn from their neighbors in Israel, who would gladly show them their ways, or else the Emirates themselves.

The Emirati raised a question the rest of us have been wondering for a long time: If these creeps can't reform themselves and all they do is steal, why should they be allowed to remain in power at all? And why should any nation with money keep bankrolling them?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/anybody_notice_that_the_emirati_foreign_minister_called_the_palestinian_authorities_ali_baba_and_the_40_thieves_in_a_shouting_match.html

Alumis, a biotech focused on immune-mediated diseases, files for a $100 million IPO

Alumis, a Phase 3-ready biotech developing kinase inhibitors for immune-mediated diseases, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.

Alumis is initially focused on developing two Tyrosine Kinase 2 (TYK2) inhibitors. Its most advanced candidate, ESK-001, is an oral, highly selective, small molecule, allosteric inhibitor of TYK2. The company plans to initiate Phase 3 pivotal trials of ESK-001 in moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in the 2H24. Its second candidate, A-005, is a CNS-penetrant, allosteric TYK2 inhibitor for neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. The company initiated a Phase 1 program of A-005 in healthy volunteers in April 2024, and expects to report initial results by the end of the year.

The South San Francisco, CA-based company was founded in 2021 and plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol ALMS. Alumis filed confidentially on April 11, 2024. Morgan Stanley, Leerink Partners, Cantor Fitzgerald, and Guggenheim Securities are the joint bookrunners on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.

Relevant Profile: ALMS

https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/105111/Alumis-a-biotech-focused-on-immune-mediated-diseases-files-for-a-$100-milli

Change Healthcare Data Breach Suits Consolidated in Minnesota

 

• Data breach allegedly disclosed the health info of millions
• Disrupted health providers’ access to claims, payment system

Putative class actions alleging that UnitedHealth Group Inc. and its Change Healthcare Inc. subsidiary failed to protect the personal information of millions of people in a February data breach and failed to timely process payments to medical providers were consolidated infederal court in Minnesota.

The actions involve common questions of fact related to allegations that Change Healthcare failed to implement adequate data-security measures and botched the response to the attack, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation said in a Friday transfer order.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/change-healthcare-data-breach-suits-consolidated-in-minnesota