Audra McDonald, in accepting her Tony award for her performance in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill thanked her parents. This is not an uncommon thing for an award-winning actor to do.
But the impact of Audra’s “thank you” flew in the face of psychiatry’s medication of gifted children everywhere. She bravely thanked them for NOT putting her on ADD medication, and encouraging her to perform instead.
One of the many tragedies linked to psychiatrists and their medications is the targeting of children least able to sit still in a class room setting. Many of these are children who are dreamers, children who question the status quo – boys and girls who would rather be sketching or writing a story than memorizing multiplication tables.
The so-called symptoms of ADD and the “symptoms” of being gifted are amazingly similar.
ADD Symptoms:

• Gets bored with a task before it is finished
• Doesn’t pay attention to details
• Trouble adhering to rules
• Is distracted easily
• More active than most children
• Hard time delaying gratification

Whereas a gifted child often experiences:

• Boredom and impatience
• Low tolerance for tasks that seem to have no purpose
• Frustration and upset when his or her goals are not reached
• Has trouble watching for “boundaries” and difficulty channeling their energy
• May be very strong willed and question authority, rules and regulations
• Often more active than most children, may even need less sleep

Separating the gifted from the ADD afflicted children is not the solution.  Labeling any child as having ADD or ADHD is not only uncalled for, but a hazard to that child’s ability and to his future.
A psychiatrist, with his faulty diagnostic skills and unreliable Bible of symptoms and treatments (DSM 5) should be the last person a parent would want to steer his child to for help.
But compelling advertising and huge government subsidies (not to mention pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington) have made dangerous inroads into the schools and preschools of our country.
How many future Einsteins and Pablo Picassos have already drowned under the inexorable wave of dulling psychiatric drugs?
These are some of the brutal side effects listed for Adderall, just one of the many drugs used to treat ADD:

• Fast, pounding, uneven heartbeats
• Lightheaded; may even faint
• Blood pressure increase, leading to severe headache, vision blurring, chest pain, numbness and seizure
• Tremor and restlessness
• Hallucinations and unusual behavior
• Motor tics
• Insomnia
• Loss of appetite
• Sudden Death
• Tourette’s syndrome
• Stroke

Of course most parents have their children’s best interests at heart. But a mother or father’s innate protective sense has been undermined by the “unquestioning authority” of psychiatrists.  It is up to us as parents and grandparents to question that authority, and to find ways to encourage our children so they may blossom into adulthood without the chemical disabilities of psychiatric drugs destroying their future.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/audra-mcdonald-thanks-parents-for-no-add-meds-24055356