ADHD - interview with Ken Jacobson

Attention Deficit Disordered

An Anthropologist Studying ADHD Reaches Some Surprising Conclusions

The number of people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has skyrocketed over the past few years. While psychologists and educators scramble to figure out what’s behind this seeming epidemic, one thing is clear: America is on a lot of speed.

Nowhere in the world are more kids popping pills for ADHD than here in the U. S. of A. According to Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, author of Running on Ritalin, we consume 80 percent of the world’s stimulants such as Ritalin–ten times more than Europe and industrialized Asia. So either American kids are more hyper and badly behaved than everyone else or something is amiss in the way ADHD is diagnosed.

A 1967 ad for Ritalin (before the discovery of ADHD), when the drug was said to treat "tired mother syndrome."

Ken Jacobson, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, says it’s the latter. Jacobson conducted a cross-cultural study comparing kids in the United States and Britain. Jacobson found that kids in both countries were equal in displaying ADHD behaviors (fidgeting, blurting out, etc.). What’s more, there was no significant difference between kids diagnosed as ADHD and those considered normal. Jacobson’s results–which, incidentally, used techniques typically applied to apes–suggest an inevitable conclusion: All kids have ADHD. | Carrie McLaren

Stay Free: Tell me about your study. What did you find, in a nutshell?
Ken Jacobson: Well, say you’re at a meeting. If you randomly selected one person and studied them, half the time they wouldn’t be paying attention. That’s pretty much what my study found with kids. Since the normal, natural condition for childhood looks a lot like ADHD, it’s really easy to find ADHD wherever you want to. Now, because everyone exhibits this attention deficit behavior some of the time, the psychological fraternity argues that some of the people are more distractable, more hyperactive, more of the time. My study doesn’t show that. I saw children who are doing well academically, who showed ADHD-like behaviors . . .

But if they’re getting good grades it doesn’t count as ADHD.
Right. Which is why after the DSM-IV lists all the symptoms for ADHD (see next page), it adds that there has to be significant impairment in work or academics. ADHD behaviors do not necessarily cause problems. Inattention itself means nothing.

You would expect that if someone had ADHD, it would show up in everything they did. Like if someone is unable to learn grammar, it shows up in the way they speak, the way they read and write. And it would show up not only in schoolwork but in play. But that’s not the case with ADHD. I read about one study of kids who had been diagnosed with severe ADHD yet if were offered money, they could do the task. Some of them can also play video games for hours on end.
The tasks we’re asking kids to perform are politically defined. Standardized tests are what experts decide they need to know. Kids are only considered ADHD when they don’t measure up to those tasks. Another thing my study showed is that girls exhibit ADHD behaviors just as much as boys, but boys are much more likely to be labeled.

How are things different in England?
In England there’s a category called Emotion Behavioral Difficulties–notice it’s "difficulties" and not "disorders." EBD kids include Oppositional Defiant Disorder (which is basically telling authority where to go) and Conduct Disorder (anything from stealing a pencil to grand theft auto). These EBD kids may exhibit ADHD behaviors, but it’s the fact that they’re running around the neighborhood killing pets or defecating in the classroom that is the problem. So in England they handle that with behavioral modification programs, not drugs. . . . Americans are more likely to consider ADHD behaviors genetic. There may be predispositions in the brain, it’s true. But I’ve got a degree in neuroscience and I think most neuroscientists would agree with me that the environment predisposes the brain.

Why do psychiatrists say Ritalin is so much more effective than behavioral modification?
It’s a great American myth. I mean Ritalin is speed. It was used during WWII by the Army for soldiers who had to stay awake to fight... In England they don’t label kids as much. Schools have a looser definition of "normal." Of course, they also use more draconian practices on everyone. If kids get too far out of line, they give up on them. They don’t expect everyone to go to college, whereas in this country expectations are higher. Janie might not be learning because there’s so much pressure on her to succeed.

Kids worry about standardized tests at a younger age. When I took standardized tests in 4th grade I had no idea what they were, I just filled in the bubbles. Now it’s "this determines your life for the next three years."
It may be that extreme stress sets up architecture in the brain that makes it difficult to focus. I could see that. That coincides with what we know about the stress response in mammalian brains.

Are you familiar with Jane Healy? She writes about the effects of television and computers.
I don’t buy the idea that anything is different today. You can go back to the 1900s and find descriptions of ADHD kids . . .

She’s not necessarily saying kids are biologically different, but that their environment has changed. There is less reading, for instance, and more electronic media.
My research doesn’t show that. These kids do read. I tried to do television surveys, they don’t even fill them out.

Have you gotten any feedback from any of the ADHD experts?
No, and I’m not hoping to get in a debate with the ADHD establishment. What concerns me are simply the real reasons kids don’t learn.