Ritalin: An Escape Route for Lazy Parents or a Miracle Drug?
             Try to think back to the days of sitting in elementary school for hours on end. Now try to imagine yourself fidgeting and unable to concentrate. You hear everything that is being said to you, but none of it seems to make sense. Your legs start to bounce up and down and your eyes wander around the room in search of something more fun and exciting. You continue to fidget and daze off and you are often told you are unmotivated. You become very frustrated and nervous all the time. These are just a few things people with ADHD have to deal with on a daily basis.
             Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or better known as ADHD, is the most common psychiatric disorder among children. It can be defined as a pattern of thought and behavior associated with distress and impairment of functioning resulting from some dysfunction within the individual (Livingston 3). Yet, it is mishandled in every conceivable way, with thousands of children, adolescents, and adults incorrectly diagnosed and thus denied the benefits of correct treatment (Taylor 9). Although this is a hard disorder to diagnose, the number of diagnoses has actually risen throughout the past decade. The reason for this rise is because it is becoming more known about worldwide.
             The most common drug prescribed to control ADHD is called Methylphenidate, more commonly known as Ritalin. Ritalin is a stimulant structurally similar to naturally occurring dopamine; it seems to work by increasing dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain (Taylor 440). Because the number of ADHD diagnoses has risen, so have the number of Ritalin prescriptions. The number of two-to-four-year-olds on psychiatric drugs, including Ritalin, has soared by 300 percent over the past few years (Lyon 10). In fact, in Ken Livingston's article "Ritalin: Miracle Drug or Cop-out", Livingston points out that the United Nations released a report i...