Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill - Hardcover

Diller, Lawrence H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553106562 ISBN 13: 9780553106565

Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1998

Synopsis

An even-handed, well-informed assessment of the widespread use of Ritalin to young children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder examines the ethical and social implications of the drug and offers advice for those considering using it.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence H. Diller, M.D., attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, and trained at the renowned Child Study Unit of the University of California, San Francisco, and the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto.  In addition to professional publications, he has written for Family Therapy Networker and for the Hastings Center Report, where his 1996 article on Ritalin became national news.  He practices in Walnut Creek, California, and lives nearby with his wife and two young sons.

From the Inside Flap

provocative and newsworthy as Listening to Prozac and Driven to Distraction, a physician speaks out on America's epidemic level of diagnoses for attention deficit disorder, and on the drug that has become almost a symbol of our times: Ritalin.

In 1997 alone, nearly five million people in the United States were prescribed Ritalin--most of them young children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Use of this drug, which is a stimulant related to amphetamine, has increased by 700 percent since 1990. And this phenomenon appears to be uniquely American: 90 percent of the world's Ritalin is used here. Is this a cause for alarm--or simply the case of an effective treatment meeting a newly discovered need? Important medical advance--or drug of abuse, as some critics claim?

Lawrence Diller has written the definitive book about this crucial debate--evenhanded, wide-ranging, and intimate in its knowledge of fam

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553106562
• ISBN 13: 9780553106565
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 386