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

In a book as provocative and newsworthy as Listening to Prozac and Driven to Distraction a physician speaks out on Americas 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 worlds 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 families schools and the pressures of our speeded-up society.  As a pediatrician and family therapist he has evaluated hundreds of children adolescents and adults for ADD and he offers crucial information and treatment options for anyone struggling with this problem.  . Running on Ritalin also throws a spotlight on some of our most fundamental values and goals.  What does Ritalin say about the old conundrums of nature vs.  nurture free will vs.  responsibility? Is ADD a disability that entitles us to special treatment? If our best is not good enough can we find motivation and success in a pill? Is there still a place for childhood in the performance-driven America of the late nineties?