Ganked from
Ritalin is safe—and it works
Research dispels fears that drug hurts kids, and finds that it actually helps brains grow
By Detroit News staff and wire reports
NORTHVILLE—For more than a generation, we’ve been “drugging” our unruly children to calm them down. And in doing so, we have risked damaging their young brains and setting them up for long-term drug addiction—or so we have been warned.
But now, that mantra is being turned inside-out. The first long-term results of what some have called a huge drug experiment on our children shows what almost no one expected:
Not only do the stimulant drugs used to treat “attention-deficit-hyperactive disorder”—or ADHD as it is known—not damage the brain, they appear to enhance brain growth, helping afflicted children catch up in brain size to their more “normal” peers.
That blockbuster finding, printed recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is finally easing the fears of parents afraid of these drugs and is sending experts on a mission to get the word out.
It’s from December 2002, but I hadn’t seen it before.
