Chapter Thirteen

ADHD is one of the most fascinating mental disorders of this era. Part of this is because there is a lot of controversy as to whether or not this is a real disorder. One line of thinking is that it really is a disorder that has been brought on by the technological era and the ability to do something different every 3 seconds. The other popular opinion is that there really is no disorder, and it is just kids of our generation don't have good attention spans. But, instead of parents teaching their kids patience they want a quick fix, this is usually Ritalin. This is something that I have seen in my everyday life quite a bit. In high school one of my good friends was diagnosed as having ADHD. He got special attention in classes since he couldn't pay attention well enough to get passing grades. I believe this was the right decision, but I also think that they over treated his ADHD. Out of classes he was capable of paying attention to things that interested him, and activities such as video games he had no problem focusing on. They still treated him very heavily with Ritalin though, and I believe it was a mistake. If his parents had focused more on just teaching him to focus, I think it would have really helped him in the long run. My second example is in college. People are able to get prescriptions for Ritalin very easily, and this leads to people who don't need the drug being able to get it. During finals time there are a good number of students who take it without needing to, they just do it because it is the easy way out. In my opinion this is a terrible system, and needs to be fixed because it is leading to the abuse of a drug, as well as a generation of people who will not be able to focus without help.