ABOUT 10million US children and young adults aged 2-24 are on medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – and 40 per cent of those are on multiple psychotropic drugs, including antipsychotics, according to Gretchen Watson, a clinical psychologist and researcher.

‘That is just absolutely unconscionable,’ Watson said. ‘It makes no sense. The children aren’t the problem. We are.’

Watson is one of the US’s foremost authorities on the overmedication of children with psychiatric drugs, according to her website.

Last month, she spoke at the MAHA Institute’s Mental Health and Overmedicalisation Summit in Washington DC. She discussed the explosion of US childhood ADHD diagnoses in the late 1990s that snowballed into prescribing an ever-growing list of psychotropic drugs to young children.

It’s now evident with the benefit of hindsight that ADHD is a gateway diagnosis that opened the door to the medicalisation of childhood and to drug cocktails for young children,’ she told the audience.

In an exclusive interview with the Defender, Watson gave a peek at material from her forthcoming book, Prescription Affliction. She calls the book ‘a road map for parents, educators, and clinicians who want to protect children and find better paths forward’.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Watson was studying the prevalence and impact of ADHD diagnoses and drug treatment patterns.

Initially, she worked as a psychologist in a paediatrics department in San Diego, where she saw very few children diagnosed with ADHD.

Read More – ADHD is a racket which hyper-medicalises children for profit