Article On Why French Children Do Not Have ADHD But American Children Do

While this article is not written from a Christian perspective, it contains some valuable insights that we can learn from.

I always had my suspicions when I hear someone saying that their child or some child they know has ADHD and is being treated for it. Is it a heart problem, or does the child really have some kind of difficulty with being able to focus on something?

The article, written by a therapist, discusses the difference between the social life, and family environment that exists in France with the social life and family environment we have in America. Sadly, it seems that America has fallen into the trap of not disciplining their children properly and not providing their children with boundaries, which make the child feel secure. American parents are too preoccupied with their own lives to invest anything in the children, generally speaking.

Here is the url to the article:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd

Also notice, that in America, there seems to be a pressure to be meshed in with the pharmaceutical companies. They do not have this pressure in France. Although the article does not talk about heart issues, the French are closer in their way of thinking and treating this problem than we in America are. Could this be a result of so many churches and preachers preaching a weak, self-serving Gospel?

Notice how, in America, we take issues like ADHD and diagnose them as a biological problem. Why can't we go deeper into the issues and look at underlying causes for such diseases?

(I am not saying that every single time a child has ADHD, that it is caused by something wrong in the family.)

Excerpts from the article written by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D

In the United States, at least 9 percent of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5 percent. How has the epidemic of ADHD—firmly established in the U.S.—almost completely passed over children in France?

Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the U.S. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological—psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain.