Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants for Children (Hardcover)

~ Peter R. Breggin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As medical director of D.C. General Hospital, I intend to make this book required reading for all child care providers on my staff." -- Ronald David, M.D., Pediatrician and Medical Director, D.C. Health and Hospitals Public Benefits Corporation

"Every child needs a hero--a champion who will speak truth to power. That hero is Peter Breggin. When he writes on behalf of children and caring parents, the world should stand up and take notice. This book is packed with information needed by anyone who is considering prescribing psychiatric drugs to children." -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D, former projects director of the Freud Archives and author of Dogs Never Lie about Love and When Elephants Weep

"I am a mother first and a doctor second... The principles in this book help us as parents to empower our children to be successful in life." -- Sharon A. Collins, MD, pediatrician

Product Description

Ritalin, Dexedrine, Adderall, Desoxyn, Gradumet, Cylert.... Have you ever wondered whether your child's behavior might be helped by these drugs? Has a teacher or doctor suggested this to you? If so, you need the facts--facts that most doctors can't tell you because even doctors haven't been told the truth about the drugs that they prescribe.

In this compassionate and compelling book. Dr. Breggin shows why our children need education, not medication. TALKING BACK TO RITALIN empowers parents to transform distracted, disenchanted and energetic children into powerful, confident and brilliant members of the family and society.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 401 pages
• Publisher: Common Courage Press (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567511295
• ISBN-13: 978-1567511291
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,250,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let psychiatry rebut this point for point, March 3, 2004

By	Peter C. Dwyer (Baltimore, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD (Paperback)

I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.

It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.

Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.

The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.

Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.

I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.

These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).

But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.

This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".

Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).

If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it first or last-but you must read this important book!, February 25, 1999

By A Customer

Challenging children exist, yes, but we as parents, teachers and others that work with children must step up to the challenge to give them what they need and move away from labeling and drugging--it is not necessary or effective and is in fact extremely detrimental--as this book so convincingly shows. After reading the full gamut of books (20+) on ADD/ADHD including those with conventional and unconventional views and remedies for the associated behaviors, I had doubts about the validity of ADD/ADHD as a distinct disorder. Dr. Breggin's book validates my doubts with pages of scientific documentation and explains how virtually a whole nation--parents, doctors, mental health professionals and teachers--promote and believe in this concept. It's a must read for anyone involved in ADD/ADHD evaluations/treatments. The book focuses on four areas: the fallacy of ADD/ADHD-including the unscientific method of diagnosis and the misuse of studies used by the advocates of the "disorder"; the documented dangers of Ritalin-- what it does to the brain, why it does not help behavioral problems and the damage it can cause; the politics behind the ADHD/Ritalin lobby; and what parents can do to help their children without labels and drugs. This is such an important book. If you've read the others, you must read this!! Another good book is The Myth of the ADD Child by Thomas Armstrong PhD.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth Hurts, January 14, 2004

By	"raustislav" (Grand Rapids, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD (Paperback)

Very informative book and a must read for any parent with a struggling child. The facts are clearly sourced in this book. What I see from most negative reviews is emotion based. Quackwatch has been shown as biased opinion and not scienctific by a California court. As far as 14 years in the Ritalin field, hey Ritalin makes your kid a zombie ( read the book), OF COURSE IT WORKS YOUR CHILD IS NOW ZOMBIE! SEARCH YAHOO NEWS AND SEE THE LASTEST DANGERS ABOUT THIS DRUG!!! Also Ritalin is classified in the same category for addiction as Cocaine by the DEA. Think about it! I've had one step child on Ritalin, now he's off of it and I don't see any behavior that isn't "normal". What he really needed was enforced rules. No matter how hard it hurts you as a parent, keep up the good work.