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Whatever the rationale, forcing people, particularly children, to take dangerous psychotropic drugs is a totalitarian practice. The use of state-imposed psychiatric treatment–including the forcible administration of mind-altering drugs–was one of the most terrifying practices used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union.

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky spent 12 years in the gulag, including a stint in the psihuska (psychiatric prison). In his memoir To Build a Castle, Bukovsky recalls that the regime “figured that it was impossible for people in a socialist society to have an anti-socialist consciousness.” According to Soviet dogma, socialism satisfied all human needs; thus “criminality was impossible.” By that reasoning, Soviet dissidents were not criminals, but madmen who had to be forcibly “cured” of their dementia. This is why “special psychiatric hospitals began to spring up like mushrooms” under Khrushchev’s reign.

Shortly after being imprisoned in the psihuska, a state psychiatrist “tried to prove to us that we really were crazy: first, because we had come into conflict with society, whereas a normal person adapts to society; and second, because we had risked our freedom for the sake of stupid ideas, neglecting the interests of our families and careers,” wrote Bukovsky. Decreed the state psychiatrist, “This … is called an obsession with self, the first sign of a paranoid development of the personality.” A steady stream of doctors and specialists hectored Bukovsky by repeatedly asking him the same questions: “Why was I in conflict with society and its accepted norms? Why did my beliefs seem of overwhelming importance to me–more important than my liberty, my studies, or my mother’s peace of mind?”

Not surprisingly, many of Bukovsky’s fellow inmates broke down. Others who resisted were treated to regular beatings. In one case, after an inmate was severely beaten, medical personnel listed his wounds as evidence that he had “become violent” and prescribed “injections of sulfazine or aminazine”–despite knowing how his wounds had been inflicted.

Bukovsky’s account–minus the sadistic physical abuse–is somewhat similar to stories of American schoolchildren diagnosed with various behavioral and psychological problems, which supposedly only mind-altering drugs can cure.

A Contrived Epidemic

Granted, it may seem extreme to compare our public school system to the Soviet psychiatric gulag. But the logic used to justify the forcible drugging of ADHD children is reminiscent of the Soviet mind-set, which emphasized making the subject conform to the state’s dictates by any means necessary–including blackmail, kidnapping, and the use of potentially deadly drugs. Furthermore, there is ample reason to believe that ADHD is a political artifice masquerading as a legitimate medical diagnosis.

According to the 1994 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (commonly abbreviated DSMV-IV and often referred to as the bible of psychiatry), “There are no laboratory tests that have been established as diagnostic in the clinical assessment of [ADHD].” Nor are there any “specific physical features associated with” the disorder, which means that in making their diagnoses about the need for Ritalin, physicians must rely largely on the ambiguous criteria enunciated in DSMV-IV, supplemented by subjective reports from various so-called experts.

According to DSMV-IV, a person must display at least six of nine symptoms of “inattention,” or six of nine symptoms of “hyperactivity-impulsivity,” to meet the criteria for ADHD. The 18 symptoms listed in both categories begin with the vague, undefined term “often,” as in “often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities,” “often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly,” “often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat,” or “often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly….” This symptomology seems calibrated to define childhood itself as a form of mental illness requiring medical intervention. That is exactly what is going on here, according to neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman, the coauthor (with Craig Hovey) of The Myth of ADHD.

ADHD is “not like actual, organic diseases of the neural system,” Dr. Baughman explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. “It’s not the product of a definable abnormality, as is the case with Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, or other disorders. There has never been a medical basis for diagnosing anybody with ADHD. In all of medicine, this is the only ‘disease’ that isn’t based on a documentable medical disorder. It’s a construct of the psycho-pharmacology industry.”

In congressional hearings in 1970, the nation was introduced to something called the “Hyperactive Child Syndrome” (HCS), “which we were told was an actual disease based on chemical imbalances,” recalled Dr. Baughman. “Those imbalances, we were told, could be corrected through the use of various psycho-active drugs to ‘balance’ the brain chemistry. But once again, there never has been any medical evidence to support that model.”

In 1970, 150,000 schoolchildren nationwide were diagnosed with HCS and put on Ritalin or amphetamines. Ten years later, the “malady” was relabeled Attention Deficit Disorder” (ADD). In 1987 it was renamed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. And at no time, insisted Dr. Baughman, “was this condition, however it is named, a confirmed disease.”

Despite that fact, the number of children estimated to suffer from HCS/ADD/ADHD has steadily increased–from 150,000 in 1970, to one million in 1990, to 4.4 million in 1998, to as many as 7 million today. This is the most peculiar epidemic in history–a so-called disease that isn’t traceable to any medical malfunction, can’t be cured, and can only be controlled by administering costly, medically invasive drug treatment for which school systems receive lucrative subsidies.

“Just about anyone, child or adult, can be diagnosed with ADHD, and because it’s not based on any physical abnormality, those people can’t be cured,” Dr. Baughman noted to THE NEW AMERICAN. “So now we have this nationwide medical emergency, based on an unproven disease, that is used to justify court-ordered medical intervention–and even the threat of terminating parental rights where parents refuse to drug their kids…. Once a school diagnostic team targets a child, and he’s labeled ADHD, they will call parents at work and at home to pressure them to drug that child. And where they meet resistance they’ll call in the CPS [Child Protective Service].”

“Orchestrated from Above”

“This entire thing has been orchestrated from above,” continued Dr. Baughman, pointing out that the federally funded National Institutes of Mental Health has lent material support and prestige to the anti-ADHD crusade. In addition, “The Office of Special Education in the U.S. Education Department collaborates with CHADD [Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder], the major pro-drugging lobby.” He also pointed out that “school districts actually get grants for every child they designate a ’special needs’ child. So there are financial incentives at work here–both for the psycho-pharmacology industry, and for the school systems.”

Undergirding this corrupt system is the totalitarian concept of patens patriae (the parenthood of the state), under which children belong to the government, and parental rights can be terminated any time the state sees fit. These evil assumptions are prominently featured in Relinquishing Custody: The Tragic Result of Failure to Meet Children’s Mental Health Needs, published by the New York-based Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in 2000. The logic of that report–such as it is–dictates that parents who resist the drugging of their ADHD-diagnosed children have effectively relinquished the right to raise their own children.

“Parents should never be asked to choose between getting mental health treatment for their child and retaining legal custody of their child,” begins the report. “Yet for at least 20 years they have been asked to do just that. Today, in half of the states almost one in four families seeking mental health care for a child faces such an inhumane choice.” But as Dr. Baughman observed, “The term ‘relinquishment’ implies a voluntary decision, not the product of deception or coercion, rather the product of informed consent.” But with children diagnosed with ADHD, “it all starts and ends with the lie that the child is abnormal or diseased.” Once they are on the drug regimen, these normal children become permanent patients–”patients who were normal when targeted, but become distinctly abnormal or intoxicated once drugged…. This is like an evil combination of the nightmare scenarios from 1984 and Brave New World.”

Author: Grigg, William Norman
Date: Aug 25, 2003
Publication: The New American

Totalitarian medicine. The invention of the ADHD epidemic and the forced drugging of schoolchildren summon memories of the Soviet Union.