Historically, when students return to school, no matter what the year – from first grade through graduate school and college – there existed great anticipation and excitement about re-bonding with fellow students and engaging in activities such as sports, academics, art, music or socializing. The normal preparation ritual among American schoolchildren would include getting new books and possibly some new clothes and sneakers; whatever was fashionable. Today, however, a new trend is emerging that threatens the physical wellbeing of an entire nation: the over-diagnosing and over drugging of our children.

At no time in American history was any other generation considered genetically determined to have a mental illness. In the past you had those individuals who were fast learners, slow learners, those who paid attention, those who wandered, those who daydreamed, those who liked the classroom and those who disliked it. But this was not a mental health issue; this was a family, societal and personal issue. If you didn’t do well, you were left behind or tutored, and you were not considered special so that the entire grading system would be floated to make sure you passed with a C. Teachers, principals, administrators and families were less interested in how you felt about school than whether or not you were there to learn the critical skills to make informed choices in life. As a result, we had one of the most accomplished generations – if not the most accomplished generation – the Baby Boomers.

Today, the entire system of education has been altered. There are those who would like to privatize it. Bill Gates and others see hundreds of billions of dollars of profit to be made by exploiting the idea that the traditional classroom, curriculum and methods of teaching are archaic. The students who are staying in that system are more often than not the urban poor, and hence the need, in the policymakers’ opinion, for charter schools and private education, all of which cost a lot.

The person entering school today is less likely to learn how to be a critical thinker than how to take a test; the entire system has been skewed towards making everyone seem to be smarter than what they really are. If you happen to be smart, motivated or interested, you’re frequently limited by the other students and by the school policy of “leaving no child behind.” Everyone is made to feel as if they’re special and accordingly, no one is really special. Furthermore, in American academia today, there is no questioning, debate or reason to arguments.

Over 10 million American children (including a staggering 370,000 toddlers and 274,000 0-1 year olds), are taking some form of prescription drug each day, most of which are psychiatric drugs with a proven record of devastating and sometimes deadly side effects (eg suicides). Ninety-five percent of all mass killings in the past 30 years have been committed by individuals who were on various combinations of these psychiatric medications.

In fact, many children today will use their Ritalin and sell it as a drug to get high on. But are these children the first in American history to be classified as having mental disturbances? And if so, where is the hard scientific evidence to prove that they have brain chemical imbalances? No scientific test exists to measure it – none whatsoever!

Nowadays, when Johnny is looking out the window and daydreaming in class, we assume he must have ADD or ADHD. He must see the school psychologist and then a psychiatrist, who prescribes him medication. Of course, the school benefits from this diagnosis, as there is a pay-back loop and reimbursement. But what happens to poor Johnny?

Johnny frequently can’t sleep, becomes highly agitated, goes through severe mood swings, and more often than not, he will be put on another psychiatric medication. It is not uncommon for children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD to end up on two or three other meds.

If you ask one of the leading scientists, Dr. Allan Francis, about this he is going to say, “Don’t use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 as a way of determining a young person’s mental health because it’s not accurate.” He should know as he led the team that wrote the DMS-5’s predecessor DMS-4. According to Vince Ward at The State, why should you care about this? Because, no matter who you are, or how “normal” you think you are, DSM-5 could probably diagnose you with a mental illness. Dr. Frances’ concern about “the medicalization of everyday life” is that it diverts precious resources away from those who truly need them to those who don’t, and can rob the latter of their resilience and independence. DSM-5 could redefine our cultural identity, because more and more of us will be defined by its terms. Dr. Frances’ specific concerns about DSM-5 are serious: It contains errors that went unnoticed or were outright ignored. Quality control was minimal; nobody but the team developing it saw it until it was finished. There were conflicts of interest – e.g. friends of Big Pharma CEOs on the task force, who influenced the development of new diagnoses and changes to old ones. As it replaces the DSM-IV (revised) in the people-helping professions, there will be epidemics and fads of certain new and expanded diagnoses that become applied to smaller and smaller differences from “normal,” until normal disappears and nearly everyone is diagnosable with something.

So what does this really mean? It means that we have an entire profession of pharmaceutical- based psychiatry that has no science to support the brain-chemical imbalance. There is no physical, biochemical or brainimaging that can determine if you have a brain-chemical imbalance. However, Big- Pharma is driving this, because the more teachers who diagnose students as having ADHD or bi-polar, the more drugs they sell. It’s a lucrative and expanding market. They care only about profit. The fact that they could be destroying lives is irrelevant. Big Pharma wields enormous control over editorial content in magazines, newspapers, think tanks and foundations that influence parents, teachers and administrators. There’s no science, and normal behavior can now be defined as abnormal.

Just a few weeks ago I counseled a young man who was diagnosed with ADHD and put on two medications. His father said that he is not hyper but he is depressed a lot, has insomnia, doesn’t eat and has lost weight. I asked the child a simple question, “are there teachers that you like and classes you enjoy going to?” He said, “yes.”

“And how do you do in those classes?” “I do great.”

“Are there teachers and classes that you find boring and don’t like?” “Yes,” he said, “probably around 70 percent.” “And how do you do there?” “I don’t do well.”

“And when you get home, is the environment out of school more exciting and stimulating than in school?” “Yes, I much prefer being out of school than in school.” “In other words, the school itself, inside, cannot compete with your outside activities?” “That’s right.”

“And how do you do outside of school in these activities?” “I love being out of school, I never have any problem there.”

“Who diagnosed you? Was it one of the teachers you like or one of the ones you were bored with?” “It was one of the teachers I was bored with.”

“So at home, you’re normal. When you’re playing with your other friends, you’re normal. In the classes you like, you’re normal. But in the class you don’t like, you’re not normal. Isn’t it interesting that you have ADHD only in specific times, with specific classes and teachers, but otherwise, you’re normal.” He answered, “well, I haven’t thought about it that way.”

“Do you know of any disease that is episodic?” I asked. “Say you have lung cancer on Monday, but on Tuesday when you go dancing you don’t have lung cancer. Then on Wednesday when you have to clean up your room, you have lung cancer. Our bodies don’t work that way. And how many other millions and millions of kids who are completely normal, but don’t fit into the frequently dysfunctional educational system, are simply bored and show no interest?” He then proceeded to tell me that most his friends were also on drugs and medication and that he had never before considered it all that unusual.

Today, normal behavior – especially among our youth – has been pathologized. The trouble is, they’ve gotten away with it. Where are the critical thinkers on the left and right? They’re absent. Because behind both the left and the right is the corporate mothership and they’re the ones who pay the high-priced talking heads on Fox and MSNBC Networks. They’re the ones who get more ad money than anything else on television and in print. They have legions of beautiful young men and women who are drug-detailed people. They have legions of doctors that they’ve hired to fund their research and are chairs of their departments and universities to make sure we all believe their lies. We have a nation filled with bored or frequently hyper children, but they’re not hyper because they have a brain-chemical imbalance. They’re frequently hyper because they didn’t get a good night’s sleep because they were glued to their computers and cell phones, not exercising, not eating good, nutritious meals, which results in blood-sugar imbalances and highs and lows, depending on what they’ve eaten and drank.

We have increasing numbers of children living a toxic lifestyle and feeling the results, yet few people have examined the foodmood connection or the home environment, because if they did, they’d realize that these kids are no different from any other kids throughout history – they’re just going through normal behaviors, which is not a pathology, and they should not be drugged.

But there wouldn’t be any profit in that. So now we commercialize and commodify everything, and exploit people’s ignorance with fear. Psychiatry today acts more like a cult than a legitimate healing profession.

The Medical-Industrial Complex would have us all believe that we are in the midst of a mental illness epidemic, when this surge in diagnoses has much more to do with profit margins than true health.

Before another child is diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, or any other psychiatric condition we must carry out a critical reassessment of the psychiatric establishment and the way America’s youth is being forced to take dangerous and ineffective medications. The wellbeing of our precious children hangs in the balance.

An internationally renowned expert in the field of health and nutrition, Gary Null, Ph.D is the author of over 70 best-selling books on healthy living and the director of over 100 critically acclaimed fullfeature documentary films on natural health, self-empowerment and the environment. He is the host of “The Gary Null Show”, the country’s longest running nationally syndicated health radio talk show, which can be heard daily on ProgressiveRadioNetwork. com. Gary has made hundreds of radio and television broadcasts throughout the country as an environmentalist, consumer advocate, investigative reporter and nutrition educator. More than 28 different Gary Null television specials have appeared on PBS stations throughout the nation, inspiring and motivating millions of viewers. He originated and completed more than one hundred major investigations on health issues resulting in the use of material by 20/20 and 60 Minutes.