Lasting Effects Of The Drug example essay topic

ADD Add Reaction Essay 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 McCall on'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, Cy lert 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.