Claim: Dr. Leon Eisenberg, the ‘father’ of ADHD, said just before his death that ADHD ‘is a prime example of a fictitious disease.’
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Leon Eisenberg
text: timely, and concerned working scientists. A 2012 article in the German weekly publication "Der Spiegel" gives an account of an interview Eisenberg gave in 2009, seven months before his death. It quotes him as saying, "ADHD is a prime example of a fabricated disease. ... The genetic predisposition to ADHD is completely overrated." Instead of prescribing a 'pill', Eisenberg said, psychiatrists should determine whether there are psychosocial reasons that could lead to behavioral problems. Many of Leon Eisenberg's books and papers have been translated into both European and non-European languages and have been widely cited. Kleinman A, Eisenberg L, Desjarlais

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: in Boston during formative periods in psychiatry for each institution. The reasons Leon Eisenberg is listed as a famous figure in world and American psychiatry are numerous; here are eight select reasons. Leon Eisenberg identified rapid return to school as the key to treatment in the management of the separation anxiety underlying school phobia. He completed the first outcome study of autistic children in adolescence and recognized patterns of language use as the best predictor of prognosis. Of the two first studies of the outcome of infantile autism, he reported the American study in the "American Journal of Psychiatry" in

title: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies
text: who had coined the term ADDD in the 1950s, said "ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease". Snopes, a popular fact checking website found this to be mostly true. The pathophysiology of ADHD is unclear and there are a number of competing theories. Frequently observed differences in the brain between ADHD and non-ADHD patients have been discovered, but it is uncertain if or how these differences give rise to the symptoms of ADHD. Results from various types of neuroimaging techniques suggest there are differences in the brain, such as thinner regions of the cortex, between individuals with and

title: Bruce D. Perry
text: of a variety of professional awards. Perry's Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics is currently the working model used by Youthville's Trauma Recovery Center in Wichita, Kansas. Perry contends that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not "a real disease... It is best thought of as a description. If you look at how you end up with that label, it is remarkable because any one of us at any given time would fit at least a couple of those criteria." Perry's first wife, Arlis Perry, was murdered in Stanford Memorial Church on the grounds of Stanford University in California on October 12,

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: R (Eds) (1995), World Mental Health: Priorities and Problems in Low-Income Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. Several late-in-life and posthumous awards were developed to continue the historic legacy of Leon Eisenberg. Leon Eisenberg Leon Eisenberg, (August 8, 1922 – September 15, 2009) was an American child psychiatrist, social psychiatrist and medical educator who "transformed child psychiatry by advocating research into developmental problems" He is credited with a number of "firsts" in medicine and psychiatry - in child psychiatry, autism, and the controversies around autism, randomized clinical trials (RCTs), social medicine, global health, affirmative action, and evidence-based psychiatry. Having retired

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: RCTs in child psychopharmacology. From a concern for evidence-based care, well before the phrase was coined, he introduced randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in psychopharmacology and showed that "tranquilizing" drugs were inferior to placebo in the treatment of anxiety disorders, whereas stimulant drugs were effective in controlling hyperactivity. He completed the first RCTs of psychiatric consultation to social agencies and of the utility of brief psychotherapy in anxiety disorders. He published a forceful critique of Konrad Lorenz's instinct theory. He established the usefulness of distinguishing "disease" from "illness". He has highlighted the environmental context as a determinant of the phenotype emerging

title: David Keirsey
text: to the practice of medicating children with ADD as "The Great ADD Hoax". His main claim was that children labeled ADHD or ADD, typically, have an SP, or Artisan temperament, meaning concrete in thought and speech/utilitarian in implementing goals. David Keirsey David West Keirsey (; August 31, 1921 – July 30, 2013) was an American psychologist, a professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of several books. In his most popular publications, "Please Understand Me" (1978, co-authored by Marilyn Bates) and the revised and expanded second volume "Please Understand Me II" (1998), he laid out a self-assessed

title: Keith Conners
text: the condition and hanged himself in November 2011 aged 24, after two years of taking Adderall. He believed the true amounts of childhood ADHD were 2-3%. Conners died on July 5, 2017 in Durham, North Carolina, aged 84. Keith Conners Carmen Keith Conners (March 20, 1933 – July 5, 2017) was an American psychologist, best known for establishing the first standards for the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Carmen Keith Conners was born on March 20, 1933, in Bingham Canyon, Utah, one of three children of Michael Conners, a machinist, and Merle Conners, who worked in a department

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: Leon Eisenberg Leon Eisenberg, (August 8, 1922 – September 15, 2009) was an American child psychiatrist, social psychiatrist and medical educator who "transformed child psychiatry by advocating research into developmental problems" He is credited with a number of "firsts" in medicine and psychiatry - in child psychiatry, autism, and the controversies around autism, randomized clinical trials (RCTs), social medicine, global health, affirmative action, and evidence-based psychiatry. Having retired in 1967 from Johns Hopkins Hospital Department of Child and adolescent psychiatry (he was the chairman of the department after Leo Kanner) and from Harvard Medical School in 1988, he continued as

title: Gabor Maté (physician)
text: in risk. ACEs also exponentially increase the risk of diseases e.g. cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. and also suicide and early death. He argues that patients should therefore be encouraged to explore their childhoods and the impact on their adult behaviors. Overall, he argues people benefit by taking a holistic approach to their own health. For instance, he has seen people survive supposedly terminal diagnoses by seriously considering their "mind-body unity" and "spiritual unity"; going beyond "the medical model of treatment." He has also spoken about how the rise in bullying, ADHD and other mental disorders in American

title: Leonard Sax
text: on CNN's "American Morning" during the same month, discussing recent research suggesting that ADHD is over-diagnosed in American schoolchildren. Leonard Sax Leonard Sax is an American psychologist and a practicing family physician. He is best known as the author of three books for parents: "Boys Adrift", "Girls on the Edge", and "Why Gender Matters". According to his web site, he is currently employed as a physician at a healthcare facility in Chester County Pennsylvania, where he also resides. Sax graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in biology. He completed

title: Peter Breggin
text: sufficient attention from their fathers who are separated from the family, too preoccupied with work and other things, or otherwise impaired in their ability to parent. In many cases the appropriate diagnosis is Dad Attention Deficit Disorder (DADD)". Breggin has written two books specifically on the topic entitled, "Talking Back to Ritalin" and "The Ritalin Factbook". In these books he has made controversial claims, such as "Ritalin 'works' by producing malfunctions in the brain rather than by improving brain function. This is the only way it works". Together with Fred Baughman, Breggin testified about ADHD to the United States Congress.

title: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies
text: has published diagnostic guidelines, has been criticized for his works because he received payment from pharmaceutical companies for speaking and consultancy fees. In 2008, it was revealed that Joseph Biederman of Harvard, a frequently cited ADHD expert, failed to report to Harvard that he had received $1.6 million from pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2007. E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute which finances psychiatric studies, said "In the area of child psychiatry in particular, we know much less than we should, and we desperately need research that is not influenced by industry money." Children and

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: The Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine and Psychiatry Emeritus (and actively serving - lecturing, researching and writing, and mentoring) in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston until a few months before his death in 2009. He received both his BA and MD degrees from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, taught previously at both the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University, and was Chief of Psychiatry at both Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and the Massachusetts General Hospital

title: Leon Eisenberg
text: Ban Landmines. In mid-2009 (June 22, 2009), a Leon Eisenberg Chair in Child Psychiatry was named at Children's Hospital Boston. The first chairholder of the Leon Eisenberg Professorship in Child Psychiatry is David R. DeMaso, MD, HMS Professor of Psychiatry and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Children's Hospital Boston. His brief (~30 pages) autographical memoir (a walk through the history of psychiatry) was published posthumously by Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica - in mid- or late-2010) "Were we asleep at the switch?" [See below] was written from his home. Among his friends and professional colleagues, Leon Eisenberg was known for his humor and friendly wit

title: Benjamin Feingold
text: Benjamin Feingold Benjamin F. Feingold (born June 15, 1899 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; died, March 23, 1982) was a pediatric allergist from California, who proposed in 1973 that salicylates, artificial colors, and artificial flavors cause hyperactivity in children. Hyperactivity is now classified as Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Dr. Feingold received a BS degree in 1921, and an MD in 1924, from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He performed his internship at Passavant Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1924 to 1925. He did a fellowship in Pathology at the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1927. Between 1928 and 1929, he worked

title: Russell Barkley
text: their hazards. Barkley himself edits the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Wikipedia page. Gretchen LeFever Watson, a practising psychologist in south east Virginia began a program of ADHD research that included epidemiologic surveys. This research documented 15% rates of ADHD diagnosis and drug treatment in her community. Diagnosis rates also slammed and attacked by Keith Conners and Allen Frances. Upon hearing of this, Barkley intervened and struck back, asserting that too few people were being diagnosed and medicated for ADHD. In 2004 Barkley claimed that LeFever’s findings from multiple peer-reviewed and published studies were so questionable that they “deserve investigation". Within weeks

title: Adele Diamond
text: is present resonated deeply with patients and clinicians. Many patients felt heard and understood for the first time. The number of websites devoted to ADHD of the inattentive type increased from four before her 2005 paper to several thousand by 2009. In her work with the early childhood school curriculum, "Tools of the Mind", she obtained findings with direct and important implications for education showing that it improves children's EFs and that the better children's EFs the better their performance on standardized measures of academic performance. This was the first study to demonstrate that EFs can be improved even in

title: Peter Breggin
text: In Congress Breggin claimed "that there were no scientific studies validating ADHD", that children diagnosed with ADHD needed "discipline and better instruction" rather than psychiatric drugs, and that therapeutic stimulants "are the most addictive drugs known in medicine today." Baughman and Breggin were also the major critics in a PBS "Frontline" TV series about ADHD entitled 'Medicating Kids'. Breggin has been very critical of psychologist Russell Barkley's work on ADHD, claiming that he exaggerates the benefits of stimulants and minimizes their hazards. In the early 1990s Breggin suggested there were problems with the methodology in the research of SSRI antidepressants.

title: Virginia Douglas
text: Virginia Douglas Virginia I. Douglas (born January 28, 1927) is a Canadian psychologist and emeritus professor at McGill University. In the early 1970s, Douglas contributed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) research by highlighting the presence of marked deficits in sustained attention and impulse control in children with this disorder. Previous to Douglas’ 1972 article "Stop, look and listen: The problem of sustained attention and impulse control in hyperactive and normal children", ADHD was referred to as hyperkinesis. It was widely believed that hyperactivity, not attentional problems, was the main factor underlying this disorder. As a result of Douglas’s research,