According to the NHS 18.0% of children aged 7 to 16 years have a mental health issue. Just let that number sink in for a moment. The National Health Service believe that nearly 1 in 5 children are mentally defective in some way.
That is approximately 1.8 Million children categorised as having a mental ‘illness’. Even more shockingly the NHS claim that 1 in 4 (25.7%) of teenagers between 17 and 19 have a mental health condition. These are illnesses that cannot be cured, only managed, and will probably involve the use of psychoactive drugs. Now, nearly half a million prescriptions for anti-depressants are given to children each year in England.
The biggest part of this explosion in mental health diseases is ADHD and ADD. ADHD was the second most viewed health condition on the NHS website in 2023, after Covid-19, according to figures compiled by NHS England, with 4.3m page views over the course of the year. ADHD is also all over social media, with #ADHD getting tens of billions of views on TikTok alone.
If this wasn't worrying enough, the NHS, encouraged by the drugs companies, now routinely search for other children they can 'diagnose'. The NHS claim that thousands of children may have ‘undiagnosed mental health issues', and together with Mental Health Charities, hold a mental health ‘awareness’ week that looks increasingly like a fundraising campaign every year. The media don't question any of this of course, dutifully promoting the theory, with articles and adverts encouraging parents to go and get their children checked.
Astonishingly, if a child is thought to have ADHD that child is almost guaranteed to have a confirming diagnosis. Less than 1% of those tested are said NOT to have the disease.
There is no blood test for ADHD. No scan, x-ray or lab test. A CT scan won't show anything, and ADHD can't be seen under a microscope. In all lab tests the brain shows up as perfectly normal. Traditional intelligence tests won't show ADHD either. Patients supposedly suffering from this new disease score exactly the same as patients without the disease, their results indistinguishable in distribution charts with the rest of the population.
But the lack of either a blood or cognitive test isn't a problem for the ADHD industry, if anything it's a bonus, it means that the theory can't be disproved. Once a child is put on the ADHD pathway, it is impossible to get them off.
The drugs company get another lifelong customer, the NHS another patient, and the school gets another disruptive child back in-line using a cocktail of drugs that act as a chemical cosh to subdue the child.
In the late 1990s the the US FDA began allowing Pharmaceutical companies to advertise on television. A mass of slick and expensive adverts for ADHD medication followed. The glossy adverts were aimed squarely at parents' playing on their anxieties and insecurities. The adverts implied that seeking an ADHD diagnosis was what good parents did, and would help their child achieve his/her full potential. As soon as the adverts were shown parents seeking an ADHD diagnosis quadrupled. Something else happened as a consequence of this mass marketing, other countries, the UK included began to believe that must have thousands of undiagnosed cases of ADHD. This was flawed thinking, the 'epidemic' of ADHD in the US was entirely down to the mass-marketing of a dubious 'cure' to an illness that didn't exist.
What parents often don't consider is; once that 'diagnosis' is made. Everything for that child changes. His/her entire life will revolve around their supposed 'mental illness'.
Their entire education will be tainted by that diagnosis. The child's life will rapidly become all about the ADHD, it'll go down on their school record as well as their health record, and it'll be the first, last and only thing that any Adult in that child's life talks about.
In Britain a teacher wanting his or her life made easier is likely to be where it all starts. A lively boy will all too often be seen as disruptive in modern classrooms, even a single outburst can change a child's life, with the teacher not afraid to seek ways to get the child to behave better, even if it does mean ruining that child's life in the process. They'd rather believe that these children have some sort of terrible mental impairment than believe they are merely wilful and obstinate, driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers.
ADHD appears to be any type of normal behaviour displayed by children, particularly boys. Being energetic, boisterous, inquisitive, and pushing boundaries were once seen as normal boyhood behaviour but now are 'sure signs' of some type of deep and troubling psychopathy that needs to be treated with powerful anti-psychotic drugs.
The NHS, ever eager to go along with the latest fad, has a list of these 'symptoms'. Here is part of it: having a short attention span and being easily distracted; making careless mistakes — for example, in schoolwork; appearing forgetful or losing things; being unable to stick to tasks that are tedious or time-consuming; appearing to be unable to listen to or carry out instruction; being unable to sit still, especially in calm or quiet surroundings; constantly fidgeting; excessive talking; being unable to wait their turn; acting without thinking; interrupting conversation.
Around twenty years ago Psychologists in Sweden and the US began viewing boys as 'defective girls' which slotted ADHD in nicely with the whole gender ideology emerging at the time. Boys could no longer just be boys, naughty or otherwise, they had to behave more like girls, any masculine behaviour wasn't just frowned upon now, it was seen as a symptom of a severe mental illness. In 2019 when 'toxic masculinity' became a thing, parents seeking an ADHD Diagnosis for their son shot up again.
The NHS are more than happy to prescribe powerful mind-altering drugs that the patient will probably be on for the rest of their lives. Hooking in another life long customer for the drugs company.
The drugs themselves act like a chemical cosh, subduing the child and making him/her more controllable. Ritalin, Adderall and Methylphenidate are all prescribed for ADHD, similar to amphetamines, drugs companies admit that adverse effects from these drugs are tachycardia (a fast heart rate), palpitations, headache, nausea, insomnia and anxiety. Not to mention weight loss and abdominal pain. again, these are routinely prescribed to children as young as six years of age.
The makers of these drugs, who helped drum up the 'crisis' aren't in it to make your child well either. They created the entire epidemic to sell more product. In 2012, the pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was fined almost £2 billion after admitting bribing doctors and encouraging the prescription of unsuitable antidepressants to children (there has — as yet — been no such case actually involving ADHD drugs). GSK showered hospitality and kickbacks, including trips to resorts in Bermuda, Jamaica and California, on doctors who agreed to write extra prescriptions.
But more ferocious than all of this power and wealth are the parents (and often the teachers) of the children diagnosed. They want the child’s problems to have a medical cause, rather than to be linked to anything they have done or haven't done of course, but it's more than that. They are often the most vitriolic group of all, adamant that the illness is a real thing (they have the diagnosis to prove it after all) and won't entertain the idea that they've fallen for the slick marketing and pseudoscience of a multi-billion dollar industry that has convinced them their child is sick when they're just being a boy.