Texans for Safe Education
Court Orders Boy Kept On Ritalin
ASSOCIATED PRESS - JULY 19, 2000

ALBANY, N.Y., July 19 - An Albany couple facing child abuse charges for taking their son off Ritalin must continue medicating him. That's the ruling from a family court judge in the case of Jill and Michael Carroll.

Social Services charges against Jill and Michael Carroll were dropped last week on the condition that they keep 7-year-old Kyle on Ritalin, Jill Carroll said. Social Service workers will visit the family throughout the next year.

The judge also ruled that the couple could seek a second opinion on whether Kyle needs Ritalin. Carroll said a pediatrician and a psychologist agreed that the medication be continued. However, if another pediatrician examines Kyle and disagrees, the Carrolls could appeal.

The controversy began last year when an official from the Berne-Knox-Westerlo School District that the boy attended contacted Albany County's Department of Social Services, complaining that the parents wanted to stop giving Kyle the drug prescribed for hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. The Carrolls argued the Ritalin interfered with their son's appetite and sleep.

Our neurologist ally, Dr. Fred Baughman, comments on the Carroll case: "This is going on in family/divorce courts all over the country, with school-diagnosed, school-coerced, ADHD/Ritalin being the pivotal, divisive issue. In virtually all cases the court sides with the parent believing in ADHD as a Ôdisease,Õ and in Ritalin as proven, essential, medical treatment. The parent resisting is deemed negligent and loses their share of custody.

"Having participated in 15-20 such cases, I can attest that judges almost always rule along the lines of reigning psychiatry mythology the matter. Hopefully, the science of the matter -- that ADHD is not a proven disease, and that the children are NORMAL -- will be aired in the near future."