November 17, 1998 

I am Peter Breggin. I am a psychiatrist and international director of ICSPP. The viewpoint I represent is shared by many other professionals who were denied the opportunity to present at this conference.

The ICSPP membership, for example, includes more than 500 professionals committed to psychosocial and educational approaches for children and adults. ICSPP is also dedicated to speaking truthfully about the hazards and limits of biopsychiatry. In regard to children, we believe in identifying and meeting their genuine needs for improved family and school life, and for providing them ethical human services. The ICSPP board of directors and advisory council includes more than thirty psychiatrists, as well as a broad range of other physicians, psychologists, counselors, social workers, educators and related professionals. Many are department chairs, editors-in-chief of journals, professors, and researchers. ICSPP holds a national conference and has begun to sponsor a peer reviewed journal.

Many of our members, as well as hundreds of other professionals, could have transformed this conference from a celebration of psychopharmacology to an examination of the needs of individual children and how to meet them. When we drug millions of children to make them more compliant and easier to manage at home and in school, it says more about our society's distorted values than about our children.

The MTA data show-cased yesterday exemplifies the shortcomings of the biomedical approach. Overblown claims were trumpeted in the press one week prior to the conference by Drs. Swanson and Jensen as if to sway the media and the panel in advance. As unpublished data, it could not be subjected to independent analysis before or during the conference. The claims should not be accepted on faith. The panel should not base any of its conclusions on such highly promotional, unpublished analyses.

The MTA studies once again focus on the child's biomedical diagnosis rather than on the conditions that shape the child's conflicts, attitudes, and behaviors. We are encouraged to take no responsibility for the outcome of raising or educating our children. There were no serious family therapy or school interventions aimed at helping adults to meet the needs of the children for improved discipline, unconditional love, and more engaging, individualized education.

Once again, the children themselves were betrayed. The researchers never asked the children how the drug affects them or how they feel about taking it.

The direction of the consensus conference was heavily influenced by CH.A.D.D. starting with its presence on the planning committee and culminating in it status as the final presenter. CH.A.D.D. has previously honored many of the presenters. CH.A.D.D. has accepted large cash donations from the manufacturer of Ritalin, reaching a peak of $448,000 for fiscal 1994-1995. CH.A.D.D. lobbied to remove Ritalin from Schedule II to avoid DEA controls.

In closing, I want to remind the panel that you have a great moral opportunity to stand up for children and their genuine human needs. And I want to invite anyone here today who shares our concern for the well-being of children and adults to contact ICSPP here in Bethesda, Maryland.