The rise of ADHD has been well documented in the research for decades, (with a 700% increase from a decade ago based psychostimulant use) and most findings seem to pinpoint the cause as being genetic or otherwise outside of any sociological phenomena. So far, our best research has concluded that the child isn't reared this way by an unhealthy culture, but that he or she is born this way. It's no surprise either that the age bracket has grown down toward the cradle. Research has determined that behavioral interventions pose no significant advantage without medicinal treatments, and that different strategies of intervention pose no real conclusive difference in effectiveness after one year of implementation. So while no one in the field openly advocates medication-only treatment plans for children, that is often all the smallest children end up receiving.
It makes sense considering that if such a syndrome were found to be environmentally caused, at least partially, the use of medication wouldn't seem as necessary. No doubt, the blatant capitalism that is procured under the name of scientific rationality--as researchers are desperate for funding and parents are made helpless to its effects--would have no fuel on which to run its engine. After all, if such a supposed generational genetic shift were found to be more environmentally caused, the weight would fall more on parents to govern that child's behavior--the same parents who would otherwise be willing to foot the bill to welcome this medicinal treatment into the house. The word about the industry has always been "don't insult your customers." That is not to say I'm throwing out vague conspiracies here, but just adding a dose of simple skepticism to this nefarious science-practice-commerce connection at the heart of all this lazy diagnosing.
There's no doubt though that the research on ADHD itself is "objective," for the studies that have been done are usually done under skepticism, scrutiny, controversy, and heavy analysis. The problem with this research is not so much the methodology--which is usually procedurally valid--but rather, the questions that are being asked to begin with. They tend to be questions proctored by drug companies about the efficacy of their treatments (at least the great majority of them), with very little into the causes of the symptoms. The designs themselves tend to focus on the genetic links rather than the effects the behavior has on the environmental realities. True objectivity can be called into question when the research that does exist is by in large the result of patronage--even if the findings themselves are valid.
Whatever the case may be, ADHD has been diagnosed to a point where one has to call into question the extent to which a supposed "genetic malignancy" can conceivably inflict a group of people. Disorders, after all, are supposed to be anomalies, not tendencies. One could be easily lead to theorize that the rise of ADHD might be corresponding to a decrease of social behavioral interventions for behavior, as professionals seem to be racing to diagnose younger and younger age groups instead. Also fueling this apparent medical industrial complex is the suspicious discovery of more and more mental diseases to diagnose. For example, certain forms of childhood temperament (a natural genetic variation) have been seemingly upgraded and retermed "[childhood onset] Bipolar Disorder" in recent years, for which children as young as two have been suspect. At least ADHD has the benefit of being proven to exist in childhood. The various lithium experiments of children "diagnosed" with Bipolar Disorder (one not proven to exist in childhood yet) have left developing children scarred for life with tics and other neurological side effects.
In any case, over and over again we see parents rendered arbitrary and helpless to stop the escalation of these disorders. Over and over we see parents, who are obviously not deaf to the salesmen-lingo of the professionals, feeling pressured into action at the behest of desperation. That reasoning does not proceed inevitably to the conclusion that the cure for their child's behavior comes in the form of a morning pill, but what other option is there? Parents don't want to become little but prescription trees for which the child can pick from, but when preyed upon by practitioners at the behest of drug companies and perhaps even scared into action by schools threatening to take the issue to the state, they're caught having to choose the lesser of two evils--much to the industry's unabashed gain.
Often the diagnoses of these otherwise rare disorders are made at such a young age that conventional therapy becomes useless because the child hasn't even reached the developmental milestones to be order to gain from it. Sometimes the child can't even talk yet. That is a prime time for medication-only treatments to be handed out with a built-in justification. Sure children can always be disciplined at any age--to have good behavior rewarded and bad behavior punished--but if they can't sit still to enjoy the rewards, constant punishment is only going to get them so far. And at that young of an age, the benefits of "talk therapy" would be expected negligible at best. What's a parent to do? The answer lies in multi-modal therapy (MMT), the most effective intervention in the long term, and conspicuously the only treatment you never see "advertised."
The incidence of childhood disorders is at such an alarming rate, it has no doubt provoked the scientific community itself to theorize about its possible cause, with everything from diet to technology getting another look, as well as the increased awareness of the disorder and the sensitivity of the measurements now, and even evolutionary reasons for the increase from one generation to another have been suggested. The only question not being asked seriously within the research (though professionals throughout academia have been suggesting it off the record for decades), is if the rapid increase in diagnosis is simply by in large an over-reaction on to part of a paranoid society to naturally occurring and totally manageable behavioral phenomena.
Due to this scientific oversight, much criticism has circulated regarding this trend, to the point where individuals with no industry ties have pointed out these flaws to the external validity of the research. Still, medicinal treatment for behavior concerns is often seen as the only effective way simply because it's the most advertised way and the most effective in the short term. Parents see the sedative effects in their own children, that is, and they convince themselves these treatments are absolutely fundamental or have even "cured" the child. They no longer have to consider other treatment options because relief is in the bag already. In this way, the parent and society become medicated--as divorced from their own reality as the child is from his or her own affective responses. Society becomes medicated when it paints over its social ills with such broad brushstrokes in desperation. Symptoms will come back in the long term, even if they disappear now.
But who can be blamed? Everyone's doing their part in the web to keep this structure supported, even those speaking out against it--and especially those who seem to believe categorically that no child should ever need to take a psychoactive medication. It's no sin to medicinally sedate an unruly child, but doing so without behavioral interventions is. The inclusion of any behavior modifying medicine in the household should call on parents to increase their efforts to reward and punish behavior as necessary, not take a backseat at the first sign of "relief." Luckily, many parents already do this despite what the field routinely lacks insisting, but many also fall into this trap by accident. Research itself has been suggesting that medicine alone can not parent. The only question is, who are the practitioners listening to?
I'll leave you with this quote from such research:
"Multimodal approaches to intervention have been found to be most effective in terms of lasting change...treament with psychostimulants has beneficial effects, provided that it is accompanied by remedial tuition, counselling, and behavior management by parents/teachers as required (van Kraayenoord, Rice, Carroll, Fritz, Dillon, & Hill. 2001, p. 7)."
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