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Speed Up and Sit Still: The Controversies of ADHD Diagnosis and Treatment

Martin Whitely, 9781742582498, UWA Publishing, August 2010, 170pp, PB , 235x155mm

Availability: In stock.
Price: AUD$24.95, plus $7 postage and handling within Australia or $15 outside Australia.

Speed Up and Sit Still is the first book that outlines the science, marketing and politics of ADHD written by a politician.

It follows the money trail and outlines how pharmaceutical companies, the American Psychiatric Association and their allies in the ADHD industry have convinced so many doctors, parents and teachers that amphetamines are good for inattentive children.

Speed Up and Sit Still also details the history of ADHD in Perth; the world’s only ADHD child drugging hotspot to have experienced a massive (60%+) decline in child prescribing rates (and a simultaneous halving in the rates of amphetamine abuse amongst teenagers).

Unfortunately while Perth’s child prescribing rates have fallen dramatically they are skyrocketing elsewhere. Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart now vie for the dubious honour of being Australia’s ADHD child drugging capital.

Nationwide approximately 60,000 children are on ADHD ‘medications’ with the Federal Government recently claiming more than 350,000 (one in nine) Australian children have the ‘condition’.

Clearly, in the minds of many ADHD has got so big that it must be real. But like the fabled adulation of the emperor’s new clothes the growth of and enthusiasm for ADHD ignores the blindingly obvious.

In plain readable language Speed Up and Sit Still reveals the truth about the forces that have determined that ‘fidgeting’, ‘playing too loudly’ and ‘losing things’ are evidence of a disease, and in doing so massively expanded the market for amphetamines and pharmaceutical company profits.

All of the authors profits will be donated to Drug Free Attention Difficulties Support (WA), a non profit, support group based in Western Australia committed to helping parents of children with behavioural and learning difficulties.

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