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.

Love this view. Great article and something anyone with children should be looking at. My wife, for one, was prescribed ADHD medicine before her teenage years and they never had an end date on that prescription. The amount that a person changes in their teens and twenties is huge. Instead of a child learning to deal with their circumstances, their social context, and their body, we dull it with medicine. A bandaid, if you may. My wife came off her meds a couple years ago and has been doing great ever since.

Think before you take meds to solve a problem, as it may just be fixing a symptom of a greater problem.