400,000 UK children are given 'good behaviour' drug
Pastor Dale Morgan
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400,000 UK children are given 'good behaviour' drug*
By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 23/09/2006)
Zac Goldsmith, one of David Cameron's key policy advisers, yesterday
backed the Hold on to Childhood coverage in The Daily Telegraph and said
he was worried at the ease with which doctors prescribed pills to tackle
children's emotional upsets.
Almost 400,000 children were prescribed Ritalin last year
The multi-millionaire environmental campaigner said that a proper
investigation would "almost certainly" reveal a link between pollutants
in children's food and the surge in childhood depression and behavioural
problems.
Mr Goldsmith, who is deputy chairman of the Conservatives' quality of
life policy group and editor of the Ecologist, said it was up to the
medical profession to find out why there had been a huge increase in the
diagnosis of psychological disorders in children in recent years, and
not just to "patch it up with drugs".
On Monday his magazine will publish a detailed report into the crisis of
British childhood, echoing many of the themes of Hold on to Childhood,
which was itself sparked by a letter from 110 children's experts,
authors and doctors.
The Ecologist article, written by Rachel Ragg, a former Leeds University
lecturer and mother of two, points out that almost 400,000 children were
last year prescribed Ritalin, a drug almost unknown in Britain in the
early 1990s.
It argues that this is symptomatic of a sudden and dangerous crisis
facing our next generation. Mrs Ragg said: "Childhood is no longer
childhood for the vast majority of children and I think this Government
has been absolutely appalling to children.
"They have provided financial incentives to parents to go back to work,
and pressurised them to send children to nurseries by implying that
their children will be economically, academically and culturally
disadvantaged if they aren't in a nursery by the age of two. In fact,
all evidence suggests this is the reverse of the truth.
"It may very well be that ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder] stems from a culture in which young children are stuck in
nurseries listening to lectures about diversity when they should be out
splashing in puddles and climbing trees."
Mr Goldsmith said yesterday: "The Telegraph's campaign to reclaim
childhood for the next generation is one I wholly support.
"We've arrived at a point where childhood, and all things that go with
it, are inconvenient, with the natural impulses of children increasingly
diagnosed as inappropriate once they enter a nursery or school environment."
He added that he thought the NHS should stop relying on the diagnosis of
conditions such as ADHD, which usually led to the prescription of drugs
such as Ritalin.
"It's worrying that the medical establishment's default response to
behavioural difficulties is to reach for pills. Something is obviously
triggering an increase in their use and the first role of the health
service should be to identify what that is.
"If a real investigation took place we'd almost certainly discover
problems with the food children are eating. But we'd also have to
confront the fact that despite unprecedented material wealth, children
aren't thriving."