ADD article

Dr. Dodson said he used the 10 percent figure because, despite several studies estimating adult rates as far lower, “once a child has A.D.H.D., he does for life. It doesn’t go away with age.”
Seems the line the FAA take comes from a drug company marketing hack. The article also says this:
'not supported by science, as studies then and now have shown that perhaps half of A.D.H.D. children are not impaired as adults.'
 
ClimbnSink said:
Dr. Dodson said he used the 10 percent figure because, despite several studies estimating adult rates as far lower, “once a child has A.D.H.D., he does for life. It doesn’t go away with age.”
Seems the line the FAA take comes from a drug company marketing hack. The article also says this:
'not supported by science, as studies then and now have shown that perhaps half of A.D.H.D. children are not impaired as adults.'
Click to expand...

Dunno where FAAs take on it comes from, I'm not a doc.
 
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Interesting article, but not much new in my opinion. I've always believed that ADD/ADHD were opportunistic scams. I'd be surprised if even 10 percent of those diagnosed actually have the disorders.

The U.S. pharma industry gets about as much respect from me as a streetcorner drug pusher, because that's basically what it's become. That the U.S. and state governments encourage the scam by providing subsides for kids who are successfully diagnosed and drugged just makes it worse.

You want to see this stop? Make schools ineligible for subsidies for kids who are being medicated. After all, if they're drugged, they should be doing fine in school, right? Why subsidize them?

-Rich
 
Any scams are just that.

From the FAA perspective, they are pretty much stuck. Even a fraudulent diagnosis is still a diagnosis and FAA puts the responsibility on the patient/pilot/student-pilot to deal with their own messes. Maybe it's legit (I'm sure a small percentage are) but more likely it's not. Pilots have to prove that it isn't - the tough part is when kids are dosed and then many years later have to deal with the consequences. I can't find a whole lot of fault with the way FAA deals with it, generally it's the parent's doing. Yeah, maybe FAA can be a little more clear on its medical form by asking specifically about ADD/ADHD diagnoses and medications instead of having a general heading of "mental illnesses". Maybe FAA can be a little more easy to work with, but... it all boils down to it's still a recognized mental illness and a diagnosis is grounding.
 
Right. However the FAA's position is that ADD is a lifetime affliction the article states there is scientific evidence to the contrary. The lifetime affliction bit comes from a drug company rep.
Matthew said:
Any scams are just that.

From the FAA perspective, they are pretty much stuck. Even a fraudulent diagnosis is still a diagnosis and FAA puts the responsibility on the patient/pilot/student-pilot to deal with their own messes. Maybe it's legit (I'm sure a small percentage are) but more likely it's not. Pilots have to prove that it isn't - the tough part is when kids are dosed and then many years later have to deal with the consequences. I can't find a whole lot of fault with the way FAA deals with it, generally it's the parent's doing. Yeah, maybe FAA can be a little more clear on its medical form by asking specifically about ADD/ADHD diagnoses and medications instead of having a general heading of "mental illnesses". Maybe FAA can be a little more easy to work with, but... it all boils down to it's still a recognized mental illness and a diagnosis is grounding.
Click to expand...
 
ClimbnSink said:
Right. However the FAA's position is that ADD is a lifetime affliction the article states there is scientific evidence to the contrary. The lifetime affliction bit comes from a drug company rep.
Click to expand...

I know what FAAs position is, but I am pretty sure it's based on the DSM (or whatever it's called).

I did see this paragraph, I think it's the one you referenced:
>>
Dr. William W. Dodson, a psychiatrist from Denver, stood before 70 doctors at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, Calif., and clicked through slides that encouraged them to “educate the patient on the lifelong nature of the disorder and the benefits of lifelong treatment.” But that assertion was not supported by science, as studies then and now have shown that perhaps half of A.D.H.D. children are not impaired as adults, and that little is known about the risks or efficacy of long-term medication use.
<<

I don't know anything about the "studies" (maybe there's a psychiatrist out there that knows.) What I have heard, from the FAA point of view, is that kids never outgrow it but they do learn to cope with it (and again, I think FAAs point if view is from the DSM). Whatever coping strategies there are that hide or overcome the symptoms are great, until stress or other high-multitasking environments overload it, and that's why FAA wants to keep it out of the cockpit.

Realistically, it seems that very few people actually have it - parents need to know that and not try to dope up their kids and cause them problems later in life.

If there was some way to separate the meds from the diagnosis, would that be any different for FAA? Possibly. Without an ADD diagnosis, there is no disease - just a prescription for less than optimum behavior.
 
Direct personal experience with individual whose behavior, EEG and medical evaluation clearly showed brain activity confirming ADHD.

Medication for five years. Individual decided to stop taking medication and did so.

Individual proceeded to earn a degree in a medical field, earns a living by it, and now is pursuing a medical degree. Grades are stellar and have been all along, with no medications at all. Wants to be an ER doc. Because it will "never be boring."

Other ADHD diagnosed people I have known shared one common factor: If something interested them, they could focus just fine.
 
Matthew said:
Whatever coping strategies there are that hide or overcome the symptoms are great, until stress or other high-multitasking environments overload it, and that's why FAA wants to keep it out of the cockpit.
Click to expand...

All we ever know about how *any* pilot copes/deals with stress is how they handle their training and practical tests. This is why I believe that any formerly-"diagnosed ADHD" person who is demonstrably drug-free during their training and testing, and maintains a drug-free state as a certificated pilot, should be handled no differently than any other pilot by FAA Aeromedical. We all have "coping" mechanisms to deal with life stress, and none of us know how good those coping mechanisms will be in real life until we are actually called upon to use them.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
All we ever know about how *any* pilot copes/deals with stress is how they handle their training and practical tests. This is why I believe that any formerly-"diagnosed ADHD" person who is demonstrably drug-free during their training and testing, and maintains a drug-free state as a certificated pilot, should be handled no differently than any other pilot by FAA Aeromedical. We all have "coping" mechanisms to deal with life stress, and none of us know how good those coping mechanisms will be in real life until we are actually called upon to use them.
Click to expand...

Good points - even a non-ADD can panic and may be in a worse way than an ADD who doesn't panic.

I don't think there are any easy answers. I would like to think that if someone is off meds long enough to learn how to cope, and then can pass the PTS, they've proven themselves. But FAA medical doesn't want to be the group called in front of a Senate committee to explain why they thought it was a good idea to certify the ADD that just crashed into a schoolbus full of lawyer's kids. Maybe that's a bad reason to handle it the way FAA has, but that may be all the reason they need.
 
And plenty of pilots with OCD have met their demise from focusing on the wrong thing for too long. But OCD has no stigma and no fun drugs so we let those guys play.
Becky said:
Direct personal experience with individual whose behavior, EEG and medical evaluation clearly showed brain activity confirming ADHD.

Medication for five years. Individual decided to stop taking medication and did so.

Individual proceeded to earn a degree in a medical field, earns a living by it, and now is pursuing a medical degree. Grades are stellar and have been all along, with no medications at all. Wants to be an ER doc. Because it will "never be boring."

Other ADHD diagnosed people I have known shared one common factor: If something interested them, they could focus just fine.
Click to expand...
 
Matthew said:
Any scams are just that.

From the FAA perspective, they are pretty much stuck. Even a fraudulent diagnosis is still a diagnosis and FAA puts the responsibility on the patient/pilot/student-pilot to deal with their own messes. Maybe it's legit (I'm sure a small percentage are) but more likely it's not. Pilots have to prove that it isn't - the tough part is when kids are dosed and then many years later have to deal with the consequences. I can't find a whole lot of fault with the way FAA deals with it, generally it's the parent's doing. Yeah, maybe FAA can be a little more clear on its medical form by asking specifically about ADD/ADHD diagnoses and medications instead of having a general heading of "mental illnesses". Maybe FAA can be a little more easy to work with, but... it all boils down to it's still a recognized mental illness and a diagnosis is grounding.
Click to expand...

I also agree that FAA is not the bad guy here -- and for me to defend a government agency causes me physical pain.

The thing is that if a person is one of the maybe 1 or 2 percent of people diagnosed with ADD/ADHD who actually have the condition, then that person probably would be well-advised to stay on the ground. All FAA is really insisting upon is that in order to debunk the diagnosis and be able to fly, the individual undergo the proper battery of tests that should have been performed before they were diagnosed and drugged in the first place.

The article mentions that as many as half of ADD/ADHD patients seem to have no deficit as adults. The shrinks will tell you that this is because they learned coping strategies, because the shrinks also believe that these are lifetime conditions that you can't grow out of. Of course, there is little evidence to support that assertion, but this is psychology we're talking about. To say it's an inexact science is generous.

My personal belief is that the reason why so many adults who were diagnosed with ADD/ADHD as children have no deficits is because the vast majority of the diagnoses were bull**** to begin with. Normal kids are hyper, fidgety, and rambunctious at times. It's part of being a kid. It's in the manual.

Kids also tend to get bored in school because, well, school can be boring. Really, truly, painfully boring. I've had some teachers who were so hopelelessly boring that if they were to teach the detainees at GTMO, they'd be charged with war crimes for torture. I'm talking about hopelessly, painfully, mind-numbingly, clock-stoppingly boring.

Back then, we dealt with it; and we thanked God and all the saints when the bell rang for recess and we discovered we were still alive -- that the teacher hadn't literally bored us to death. And then we went out and ran around the schoolyard to shake off the boredom and get the endorphins flowing again.

Nowadays, not so much. They expect these kids to sit in their seats all day like good little puppets -- with no fidgeting, farting, or fooling around -- while their teachers drone on ad somnum about stuff that the kids don't really care about, anyway. So they drug them. It's easier all around.

-Rich
 
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My daughter is a brand-new high school teacher and I "had the talk" with her a couple weeks ago. She said, "you can outrgrow ADD". I don't know where she got that info, but I explained the FAA take on it. So there is at least one teacher out there that understands. Her philosophy is that whatever happens in the classroom is between the kid and teacher - and whatever happens in the doctor's office is between the parents and the doctor and is none of her business.

As Rich said - if you can "outgrow" it, then you probably never had it. Or, you've learned how to cope and cover it up.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
All we ever know about how *any* pilot copes/deals with stress is how they handle their training and practical tests. This is why I believe that any formerly-"diagnosed ADHD" person who is demonstrably drug-free during their training and testing, and maintains a drug-free state as a certificated pilot, should be handled no differently than any other pilot by FAA Aeromedical. We all have "coping" mechanisms to deal with life stress, and none of us know how good those coping mechanisms will be in real life until we are actually called upon to use them.
Click to expand...

I see it kind of SODA like. There's plenty of stress during training.
They let people with all kind of disabilities fly as long as they can show they learned to cope with them.
 
I was diagnosed with ADD as a child. i remember the test clearly. First a psychologist gave me a test on the computer. He graded it. The next day he medicated me and gave me the test. i performed better when I was on speed than when I wasn't medicated. i dind't do bad when I wasnt medicated, I just did better when I was on the speed. His diagnosis was "look at these results, of course he has ADD" a bunch of bull **** if you ask me.
 
Unregistered said:
I was diagnosed with ADD as a child. i remember the test clearly. First a psychologist gave me a test on the computer. He graded it. The next day he medicated me and gave me the test. i performed better when I was on speed than when I wasn't medicated. i dind't do bad when I wasnt medicated, I just did better when I was on the speed. His diagnosis was "look at these results, of course he has ADD" a bunch of bull **** if you ask me.
Click to expand...

That sucks. It's stuff like that that makes FAA tell you that you need a psychiatrist and not a psychologist to overturn the initial diagnosis.
 
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