Lawrence Diller, M.D.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) plans to release the newest edition of America's psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Edition V (DSM-V) in 2013. The last version, DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000. The effort to determine what constitutes normal and abnormal behavior in America...

The year was 1971 and the use of marijuana and LSD of San Francisco's "Summer of Love" had metamorphosed into the graffiti messages on the walls of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that read "Speed Kills." That year, the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the Drug Enforcement Administration's predecessor agency)...

In a previous HuffPost blog I detailed America's use of prescription stimulant drugs like Adderall, Concerta and Ritalin as the highest in the world. We are 4 percent of the world's population but produce and use 88 percent of these amphetamine-like drugs primarily for the treatment of children's...

Two weeks ago in a HuffPost article, I wrote of the recent CDC report, which determined that now 9 percent of all children age 5 to 17 in America (about 5 million) have been noted by a health professional to "have" ADHD/ADD (attention deficit disorder with...

I've prescribed Ritalin type drugs to children for 33 years. In the early 1990s I began feeling ethically uneasy about my professional role. I went public with my concerns in a book called "Running on Ritalin." In the process I was involuntarily enlisted into what has been called,...

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released analysis of data revealing a major increase in the incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children in the United States. The number of children between the ages of five and 17 reported by their parents to "have"...