Millions of kids are labeled “ADHD,” then drugged.
Around 12% of kids in the US—over seven million of them—have been diagnosed as ADHD. Over 3 million of them are on ADHD medication. This is a big problem, as ADHD drugs have a host of harmful side effects. Some physicians believe, based on firsthand observation, that these drugs cause long-term brain damage.
Fortunately, there’s abundant evidence that kids’ attention problems can be easily resolved through a better diet and more exercise. Sadly, this evidence has been ignored. Why? Mostly because medicalizing kids’ attention problems generates big money: ADHD medication is a $30 billion market in the US.
The Teska Type System™ can help solve this problem.
The first step toward getting kids off unnecessary ADHD drugs is to show that the kids are normal. That’s where the Teska Type System™ comes in. It describes the types of people most likely to be labeled “ADHD:” Fighting Bear, Fighting Hawk, Hunting Bear, Hunting Hawk, Hunting Fox, Dancing Bear, Dancing Fox.
Kids of these normal, common personality types have high innate needs for physical activity, socialization, and agency. Given their core character, it’s not surprising that they find it difficult to pay attention in today’s low-activity, low-interaction learning environments.
It comes down to this: the vast majority of kids being diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD are perfectly normal. It’s their school environments, when viewed in the light of humanity’s evolutionary history, that are revealed to be grossly abnormal.
New research based on this system can help kids.
The company that developed the Teska Type System™, Dyadic, is proposing a new research study to test a hypothesis: most adolescents’ medication for ADHD results from either a failure to consider their life conditions, or the pathologization of their normal personality traits.
If the National Institutes of Health fund the study, and the study proves the hypothesis, it could be the first step toward ending the medicalization of attention problems. Subsequent steps could include:
- The introduction of training programs to help teachers identify students of highly-energetic personality types.
- Providing students of these types with adequate activity and socialization, so they don’t become disruptive in class.
In the best-case scenario, schools across the nation will stop trying to pharmaceutically change kids to fit learning environments, and start fundamentally changing learning environments to fit kids.