Day 58: Education Fraud Part 19 – Medicalization of the Education System Part 7 - Professionals involved in the medicalizing process.

This blog is a continuation from: 

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/09/day-52-international-crime-research.html

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/09/day-53-education-fraud-part-14.html

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/10/day-54-education-fraud-part-15.html#

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/10/day-55-education-fraud-part-16.html

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/10/day-56-education-fraud-part-17.html

http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/10/day-57-education-fraud-part-18.html#



If you have a moment I suggest read the following article:

http://www.academia.edu/1531137/Medicalization_Ambivalence_and_Social_Control_Mothers_Descriptions_of_Educators_and_ADD_ADHD


From it I have taken the following points, from which I will be walking Self-Forgiveness:

- ADD/ADHD is medicalized through educators, medical practitioners and members of the
 psy sector, the complex of social work, psychological,psychiatric and helping professionals that handle mental health and psycho-logical issues within a given culture (Donzelot, 1997).

 - Medicalization is not always complete, but occurs in varying degrees, depending on whether competing definitions of the problem exist (as is the case withADD/ADHD), and on the relationship between professionals who are involved in the medicalizing process (Conrad, 1992). With ADD/ADHD,there are gaps in the medicalization process at both the conceptual level and the institutional level.

 - the medicalization of ADD/ADHD was, at the time of the study, far more entrenched in Canada than in the UK in both professional and lay circles.It is not surprising, then, that mothers describe a high preparedness of teachers in Canada to accept the ADD/ADHD label when compared withdescriptions of UK educators.

 - It has been argued that, in the United States, educators have come to embrace ADD/ADHD and drug therapy as a result of decreased access to the useof traditional educational social controls of physical discipline and student expulsion or suspension (Kiger, 1985)

 - As western society has become less tolerant of difference, and as medical,educational and psychiatric professions have developed, the range of behaviors identified or perceived of as pathological has grown (Porter,1987). This decreased tolerance and increased psychiatric surveillance over a broad range of behaviors and signs that once were accepted as part of the continuum of human possibility, but that now have become problems to be resolved through expert practice, has been termed the ‘psychiatriza-tion of difference’ (Castel et al., 1982)

 - the behaviors to be measured by parents and teachers on assessment instruments relate primarily to the classroom, and indeed, most parents in both sites noted that their children’s problems began or escalated once they entered the school system.

 - Researchers have tied ADD/ADHD’s legitimacy to aggressive pharmaceutical marketing strategies and middle-class parent support groups seeking a medical label for their children’s behavioral problems (Conrad and Schneider, 1980). Others relate its rise to reductions in educational funding and restricted classroom discipline policies (Kiger,1985), or as part of a general increase in the psychiatric labeling of children (Armstrong, 1993). Still others note that ADD/ADHD as a diagnostic category is connected to the rise of the relatively new fields of special education and educational psychology, through which an increasingly broad array of assessment tools have been employed in classifying and identifying differences in children (Slee, 1994).

 - Canada, influenced by its proximity to the United States, is strongly immersed in the legacy of developmental and behavioral psychology, where tests, measures and classification systems have emerged to organize and regulate populations (Armstrong, 1983; Rose, 1985, 1990; Burman, 1994). Thus, in Canada, mothers with children who are ‘different’ will typically encounter an educational or developmental psychologist and undergo behavioral and pencil-and-paper testing with an aim to categorizing and 'labeling' the child.

 - The difference in diagnostic tools and psy sector cultures has material effects, resulting in different degrees of medicalization, as evidenced by rates of diagnosis and treatment in the UK and Canada. British Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology figures indicate that in 1995 only 6000 (or 0.03%) UK schoolchildren were being treated with any psycho-stimulant (Kewley, 1998). In 1995 in Alberta, approximately 2.5 percent of school-aged children were prescribed Ritalin alone, representing a four-fold increase since 1987 when record keeping began (Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1999). Thus, we can expect that British mothers’stories reflect a context where ADD/ADHD remains a partially or perhaps even non-medicalized phenomenon, while Canadian mothers’ stories reflect a context where ADD is highly legitimated as a medical diagnosis.

 - There are two stages in the ADD/ADHD labeling process: identification and assessment. In Canada, teachers were the prime identifiers of children who ultimately became labeled as having ADD. Of 17 Canadian children in the study, only two children had already been identified and tentatively diagnosed prior to attending primary school. Mothers of the remaining 15 reported that, although their child had always been in many ways ‘different’during infancy and early childhood, it was really only once the child went to school that these differences came to be identified as problematic enough that the child was identified for formal intervention. Canadian teachers who identified these children as problematic were often quite directive in their suggestions, in many cases going so far as to tell mothers that they should consider ADD as a diagnosis and Ritalin as a treatment.

 - even when evidence of classroom abuse was not present, the constant pressure of phone calls, meetings and questions about medication left the parents feeling they should at least give medication a trial. Thus, although Canadian teachers were not qualified to perform a diagnosis or prescribe treatment legitimately, they were able to exercise considerable influence in having mothers push physicians and psychologists for a label and medicalization.

 - Additionally, the reported demands teachers made of Canadian mothers to consider drug therapy for their children may reflect the relative lack of alternative forms of social control that Canadian educators have availableto them in managing disruptive classroom behavior.

 - Again and again, mothers described working through oneavenue of treatment after another, never having a name for what they andtheir children were struggling with, because the name itself was problem-atic to educators and helping professions.

 - In 2000, the British government estimated the average initial assessment for any child in Britain would cost the school approximately £480 (NICE, 2000: 10) and often, once a child is assessed,schools risk losing any transfer moneys into their budgets because the Statemented child (to be diagnosed) is often moved to a specialized setting. Thus, the initiating school bears the cost, while the receiving school enjoys the benefits.

 - Canadian mothers rarely described teachers who seemed willing or able to implement appropriate educational strategies for the ADD identified children in their classroom. Again and again, mothers described providing medical and psy sector information to teachers about their child specifically, and about ADD children in general, only to be ignored.


 Self-Forgiveness to follow...





 Source:

 Malacrida C, "Medicalization, Ambivalence and Social Control: Mothers’ Descriptions of Educators and ADD/ADHD." Academia.edu. Publication Date: Jan 1, 2004. Accessed on 8 Oct 2012.

Day 54: Education Fraud Part 15 – Medicalization of the Education System Part 3 - Parents abusing Ritalin.

This blog is a continuation from: http://crimesjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/09/day-53-education-fraud-part-14.html

This blog's self-forgiveness will focus on the following content:

Parents give children Ritalin at exam time

Think Ritalin Is Safe? - Read What Novartis Says About Its Own Product!

How Ritalin Saved My Child

Parents abusing Ritalin:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing the belief to exist within me as parent that I have a duty to God to establish a presence on earth, as the human race, equal to and one with a functional component of society, one that submits to the rules of how to be human and one that becomes a fully functional man or woman, with certain intelectual and behavioral abilities which allows the young adult to get a career, get married, contribute to the economy and behave according to how other humans behave.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to prescribe a drug to a child, when the child acts according to behaviors and patterns, that are seen negatively within society, opposite to the positive behaviors that contribute to one becoming the person referred to in the statement above.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself as parent to look towards drug addiction as a solution, rather than have a child be educated and supported in an effective way, taking into consideration the child's home environment, parental influence, diet and mental capacity/ability to process information. The reason why parents will rush and push ahead - using drugs as a quick fix means, instead of establishing effective training and education establishments to support the child and the child's parents through the behavioral difficulties - is always about money, where the parents have to comply with how fast a child has to develop, so that it may go through its schooling process fairly effectively, so that it may obtain higher education or go get a job requiring specific skills and abilities - so that the young adult can go and survive in the system, contributing to the economy - which basically means - make money for those with money as a worker and slave.

therefore:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself as adult to give permission to this rat race described above and for labeling this together with everybody else as 'Life' and together agreeing to this race - where we race towards money and either spends our lives fighting for more money or just enough to survive - either way anything a parent does -any decision made is always to get the child to be able to function in an effective manner to be able to provide for itself within the system.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that if my child does not develop the way other children do, that he/she will get left behind and will not be able to take care of themselves within the system, and will thus be left to starve or become and outcasts of society, which have the following ramifications:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that if my child does not develop effectively, into a functional adult, that he/she will starve, and be thrown to the streets, without care or a roof over his/her head,

and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing this, as I realize that I have allowed this for generation after generation to happen to other people's children as I am wel aware that the system in its fuel for money, has created class such as lower class, middle class and upper class and that anything below lower class is 'those' people we see living in trailer parks and sleeping on the side of the street - which I walk/drive by each day, not even considering that this is a 'somebody' - but instead create in that moment an unconscious fear of what might happen to me if I stop surviving in the system and what could happen to my child if they do not 'fit in' and 'function' as they should

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imprint the picture from early in my life of homeless, hungry, scared people, whom society rejects as being lazy and 'not worth societies attention' and therefore by imprinting the value fo worthlessness to the picture of poor people - I create a fear towards not surviving and now that I am 'an adult' living and working in the system, I make automated decisions to survive as best I am able to

therefore;

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself when I realized my child has ADHD or some form of behavioral dysfunction or behavioral difference to other children - to access all the pictures and fears accumulated over the years as I accepted myself as having to survive in the system to be able to eat and have a roof over my head - and as I access the fear linked to the 'what will happen' memories -i immediately go to the solution for my child which will ensure they 'recover/overcome/adjust' as quickly and painlessly as possible - because each parent knows that medication takes over the body and the mind and will direct the 'issue' on behalf of the parent and child - so that no responsibility has to be taken by anyone for anything - and instead the chemical can 'take control' our behalf - leaving our children lives, minds and bodies up to the possessive control of a chemical.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be brainwashed from young in religious settings, into believing the CONcept of a holy spirit which invades/enters the body and resides inside the religious, to direct the religious according to the devine beings will - this in itself imprinted into the mind of the perceiver as knowledge and information, ensures that the parent when it comes down to the control of their children, will entrust the chemical designed and patented by the scientists to 'act on behalf' of the child's mind and body
- due to our acceptance of this magical, devine force, which 'invades/enters' the body and takes over control of mind and body according to the will of the chemical, which was designed by the scientist gods with the child's best interest at heart, which is the white lie, sold to the parents to make it alright that we subject out children to drugs, instead of supporting the child to become the living directive principle of themselves.

To be continued.