Add Reaction Essay Essay, Research Paper

Psychology

ADD Reaction Essay

Mr. Fabrizio

ADD: Who does it effect and what are the treatments?

I chose this topic because being a young person I personally know a good

amount of people who have ADD and are treated with the drug Ritalin, and at one

time or another most people have a hard time focusing and think whether they

have a problem or not. While doing this report at times I found myself looking

away or doing other things but I realized that there is a difference between

getting lazy for a minute or two and not actually being able to do the project

at all which some people with ADD might have to put up with.

There have been many different people effected by ADD since it was first

described medically in 1902. Attention Deficit Disorder effects approximately 10

million Americans including adults and effects around 4% of school-aged children

and once it

was estimated that between 3 and 5 % of all children had it . What’s

interesting about these numbers is that there is an increasing amount of experts

who are examining the possibility that ADD may be genetic. For a long time it

was presumed that diet, like too much sugar, was the main cause of this

disorder, but this was later disproved by the National Institute of Health.

Another assumed cause of the disorder was environment like bad family life,

neglect, and/or divorced parents that caused this. But the more research was

done, the more counterexamples against these premonitions were found. What

experts realized through this research was that the only concrete cause was

genetics. Studies of twins revealed in the article by James Freeman (6th para)

shows that identical twins are more likely to get the disorder than fraternal

twins which suggest that the stronger the genetic relationship with a relative

who has ADD or ADHD, the greater the likelihood of developing one of the

disorders.

Many adults are shown in the articles I chose as having ADD. Showing that

perhaps people don’t grow out of the disorder once they reach puberty and even

when they reach their twenties. What’s even more interesting is that many of

these people who

never grow out of ADD are led to a life of crime. Whether it is impulsive

acts, poor attending, and distractibility many youths participate in criminal

acts before they are adults but even when they are adults, never really grow out

of these things. In T. Dwaine McCallon?s article (1st para), these people can

stop from considering the consequences of their actions putting them at risk of

criminal activity. Further research in this article shows that in Utah prisons,

that 24 percent of male inmates have ADD. After tests and treatments with the

drugs Ritalin, Cylert and other medications the inmates behavior was greatly

changed for the better. In fact, of the 41 prisoners paroled while on these

drugs, only three violated parole and only one had a new criminal charge brought

against them.

Of the drugs used in that experiment, Ritalin is by far the most popular and

widely used. Of the people given this medication about 80 percent of children

and 50 percent of adults improve with medication. Ritalin has been found to

greatly improve behavior,

participation, performance and how the children get along with their peers

and family. Most of the people who have taken the drugs are supporters but there

are some who say that the drug may have certain things that are wrong with it

that haven’t fully been looked into which makes it unsafe. Many critics say that

because there hasn’t been a sufficient amount of research put into the lasting

effects of the drug so that doctors who prescribe it don’t really know whether

it will effect the patient negatively in the long run.

There was many things I found out by doing this project that I didn’t know

before doing this report. Beforehand I had no idea that as many children had it

as there was. I thought that a good amount of them had it but not three to five

percent of all children in the United States. Another thing I didn’t know prior

to doing this was that many adults are effected by this disorder. Before doing

this I thought only children and teenagers got ADD, but after perusing through

some of the articles these experts wrote i found out that adults were indeed

effected by this disorder. After reading all these articles from the journals of

some of the best psychological experts on ADD, I have come to the conclusion

that there needs to be more testing on the effectiveness and long-lasting

effects of Ritalin before doctors should be allowed to give it out as treatment

as much as they do. If there is some bad side effects down the road people

should know about it before they are severely effected negatively.