Hyperactive by Matthew Smith

Author:Matthew Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

FIVE

Alternative Approaches

Biological explanations and pharmaceutical treatments for hyperactivity might have become predominant by the 1970s, but that did not mean that every parent – or physician – was satisfied with such approaches to the disorder. In 1978, an article in Utah Holiday, for example, told the story of a five-year-old girl whose hyperactivity was ‘calmed … slightly’ by a stimulant drug, but only at the expense of ‘hallucinations, nightmares, insomnia, headaches, and less appetite’.1 Another family described in the article had adopted three hyperactive children, one of whom was ‘bent on pyromania’. Ritalin was prescribed for their children, but it ‘would wear off in two hours and then the children would be even wilder’.2 For these Utah parents, Ritalin was not the answer. Other parents had different reasons for questioning the conventional biological approach to hyperactivity. While some had read reports critical of hyperactivity medication and did not feel comfortable giving drugs to their child, others simply wanted to try some other options before resorting to stimulant medication.

Fortunately for these parents, as well as their sympathetic physicians, there were a number of alternative therapies from which to choose by the mid-1970s. Possible explanations for hyperactivity attributed its rising rates to everything from fluorescent lighting and food additives to television and lack of exercise in the great outdoors. One apparently serious letter writer to American Psychologist attributed some cases of hyperactivity to tight and itchy underwear, stating that a college student of his went from being a c to an a student once he began changing his underwear every day, rather than every two weeks.3

Even more alternative approaches to hyperactivity have emerged in the medical literature in the last couple of decades, reflecting both dissatisfaction with the conventional wisdom regarding the disorder and increasing interest in non-traditional medicine more generally. A review article by L. Eugene Arnold in 2001, for example, listed 24 alternative treatments for hyperactivity, including additive-free diets, herbal therapies, vitamin, amino acid and mineral supplementation, massage, meditation, acupuncture and electromyography (EMG) biofeedback.4 While the efficacy of many of these therapies was based on a small number of clinical observations, other alternative approaches to hyperactivity had been studied in depth, some with promising results. But even in cases where a good deal of support was garnered through clinical and trial evidence, most physicians remained highly sceptical of such alternatives and ushered parents with hyperactive children firmly towards stimulant medication.

To a degree, the reluctance to consider alternative measures, especially untested ones, was understandable. For physicians in the 1970s who were intent on helping their hyperactive patients effciently, stimulant therapy was simply seen as the best and most reliable approach to dealing with the disorder. When the countless advertisements for hyperactivity drugs in medical journals, inducements from pharmaceutical companies, positive results from clinical trials, and, most likely, a good number of success stories were taken into consideration by the average general practitioner, paediatrician or psychiatrist, it is not surprising that a prescription for Ritalin was their first port of call. Moreover,

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