Pod Academy

Child and family therapist Dr Marilyn Wedge talks to Craig Barfoot about her latest book, A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic.    Over the course of her career as a child and family therapist, Marilyn Wedge has witnessed an 'astronomical rise' in the number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  Until 1995 she had hardly heard of ADHD, but over the following decades the number of children on medication for ADHD grew and grew until now 13% of boys and 5% of girls in the US - 6 million children -  are on prescription drugs (mainly Ritalin and Adderall) with that diagnosis.   But this approach is not shared by other countries,  A child in the US is 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than in France, and 80 times more likely than in Finland!  Dr Wedge says this is because in those countries, when a child is exhibiting difficult behaviour they look at the context - perhaps the child is unhappy at school, or seeing their parents fight