ADHD Nation? Why there's 20X more ADHD diagnosis in USA than in France

[uhnope]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd

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.

French child psychiatrists don't use the same system of classification of childhood emotional problems as American psychiatrists. They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L'Enfant et de L'Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000. The focus of CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychosocial causes of children's symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological bandaids with which to mask symptoms.

[KamaAina]

1. Then again, the French still believe that "bad parenting" causes autism

a canard that was debunked in the remainder of the civilized world (save Italy) forty some-odd years ago.

[guillaumeb]

2. But this type of treatment by French doctors

might act to depress the profits of the drug makers. Follow the money generally works in situations like this.

US pharmacy companies and drug makers enjoy enormous profits that far exceed inflation. These price gouging drugs that US doctors overprescribe contribute to the reason that medical care is so expensive in the US.

That and the fact that 18% of US healthcare spending goes to insurance companies that do nothing to provide health care.

[msongs]

3. because in the US schools are expected to fix all the problems caused by society, bad parenting,

poverty and all the rest.