your bias is showing

I worked in child social services in Vermont, specifically with this population, have you? Many of these kids benefited profoundly from stimulant medication. These kids were victims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, were born premature because their Mom was doing such wonderful things as taking ecstasy and…

Agreed. That comment has ruined the validity of the article for me. I assumed this was a well researched article now i wonder if Scientology has sneaked into Gawker. They did write about it just a few days ago.

I thought you were approaching this from a researcher point of view then you refer to Ritalin as pharmacrack. How exactly is Ritalin like a cocaine derivative?

That's actually the case with many meds! The instruction of my migraine meds says something along the lines of "we think this might be the cause of migraine and that's why the meds work but we're not sure. Anyway the meds work! (Mostly)"

What I am learning in med-school is that there are a few different theories for why anti-depressants work, with the serotonin deficit being the classic explanation, but no one really knows why, but RCTs show they still help.

"it is clear, for example, that tens of millions of people have found antidepressants to be effective."

"Promisingly, SSRIs were about as good at treating depression as their predecessors, but they caused milder side-effects."

"Some psychiatrists vehemently disagree with the way journalists and other psychiatrists havepu…

Spewing coffee all over iPad - thanks for the laugh!

Or other neurological processes, structural malformations, possible hormones, nerve synapses or some combination thereof.

I'm an adult that takes ritalin. Have for years. And yes, I researched it for almost 4 months before I even got the script filled and took the first dose.

On the one hand: "I reached out to individuals who had interesting takes"..."the big shots were quoted in other articles"..."most of the disagreement with my articles stems from justifiable critique of the headline".

That "nuance" is "easily missed" because you do things like actively state that we have to wean people off these drugs even when you accept they're working.

My sense is that it is not the poor who are put on Ritalin, but the middle class. And it's not at all clear that this has caused a lot of problems. There are many people whose ADHD symptoms are alleviated by ritalin, allowing them a happy functional life. Ritalin is a cheap drug by the way, off patent, and the pharma…

i reached out to individuals who had interesting takes on this topic. the big shots were quoted in other articles i cited or linked. most of the disagreement with my article stems from justified critique of the headline (something that is indirectly noted towards the end - "Chemical imbalance theory lite"), and…

While Methylphenidate and other amphetamines are mildly dependence-forming, comparing them crack seems a little disingenuous. At the doses ADHD meds are prescribed the risk of physical addiction is almost nil and the risk of psychological dependence is low, especially with Ritalin and its long acting counterparts (see …

Is there a reason you couldn't get quotes from mainstream US universities/medical experts to reference in your article?

If you're using terms like "PharmaCrack" you shouldn't be covering this because you're clearly got an ideological axe to grind.

Totally agree, but the inverse often pops up in psychology too. I can't tell you how many therapists (actually medical professionals too) I've seen who insisted that I must have been abused as a child because of my borderline personality symptoms, or that I must have been violently raped at gunpoint because of my PTSD…

I think you're right on. What we call depression usually encompasses a combination of symptoms, and most likely has equally varied and interconnected causes. It's well-known that emotional trauma can cause changes in brain chemistry, as can stress, lack of sleep, diet, and a host of other things. Most people I know…

for medicine, that's often all we've got: things that work. biology is one crazy puzzle, let alone human health.