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Information For Adults With Add/Adhd

ADD/ADHD In The News:

CBS News 48 Hours, 9/6/02

OUT OF CONTROL

Part 1: "A Controversial Drug"

On March 18, 2000, Dawn Branson was behind the wheel of a car in a psychotic state. Her 3-year-old son, Nathaniel, was in the backseat.

She describes her state of mind that day as “hell, hell inside of my mind. That’s all I can say and I couldn’t stop myself.”

She tells 48 Hours Correspondent Susan Spencer that voices in her head were convincing her that Nathaniel was cursed, that he would die if she didn’t get him to a Catholic church.

“I couldn’t stop running from trying to get him somewhere that I thought was going to save his life, break this curse,” Branson says.

“I heard and felt that I was supposed to let go of the wheel of the car. Let go of the wheel and the gas. And then I was just, like. ‘I can’t do that. I can’t.’ It’s, like, ‘Don’t you trust God?’”

Did Branson let go? “I must have,” she says.

The result was a head-on collision in which Branson lost her only child.

“I know what it is like now to have been insane,” she says.

Branson had no idea at the time, but she believes today her psychosis was a reaction to the drug Adderall, which had been prescribed for her attention deficit disorder.

“That person that was in that car that day was not Dawn Marie,” says her father, Tony Frushon. “The bottom line is, if she wasn’t on this medication, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Branson had previously been hospitalized for depression but had no history of psychosis. She had started taking Adderall three months earlier, when her doctor suggested the drug might help her concentration. She said he didn’t tell her about any possible side effects.

Recently divorced, Branson had planned to go back to graduate school. Because she had struggled in college, she wanted to make sure this time she’d be able to focus.

“If I heard someone next to me rustling paper or kind of tapping the pencil,” she says, “that’s what I’d be focusing on.”

At first, she says, Adderall did wonders, helping her to concentrate and focus. But two and a half months later, she began to turn on her family, and she started hearing voices.

“We thought she was having a nervous breakdown,” recalls her mother, Marge Frushon.

Tony adds, “The night before the accident, we could see that the baby was even disturbed, uncomfortable. And this is when we looked at each other and said, ‘Something is wrong with Dawn Marie.’”

They had no idea what that something might be. Branson had never told them she was taking Adderall.

“I said, ‘Dawn, please do it for dad tomorrow. I want you to go to a doctor. I’ll go with you’ and she says OK,” Tony says.

But the next day, Branson got up early, grabbed Nathaniel and took that fateful drive.

“I never got a chance to hear him say ‘I love you. I love you, mom,’” Branson says. “I miss my baby. I miss Nathaniel more than words could ever say.”

What happened to Dawn Branson is tragic, but to the millions of Americans who take Adderall with no side effects, her experience also seems unimaginable. In fact, many of them call Adderall a miracle cure for attention deficit disorders.

“It was the single most extraordinary experience of my life,” says Eileen Lagrotta of the drug that changed her life. She describes ADHD as having 10 radios playing in your head all at once, but says she noticed a difference within a half an hour of taking her first dose of Adderall.

“All those radios were quiet for the first time,” says Lagrotta, who lives in St. Louis. “It gave me an opportunity to turn my life around, really. It’s phenomenal. I mean, just to have my head so noisy and so cluttered with negativity for 40-something years and then to have it quiet.”

Adderall not only turned around her own life, Lagrotta says, but also the lives of her two children, Matt and Tony. It was through her children’s diagnoses that Lagrotta came to realize she, too, had ADHD.

“If I didn’t have my pills, I couldn’t sort these,” Matt says, pointing to a pile of baseball cards. “I would have to jump up and do something else. I just couldn’t do it, but the pills made a big difference for me and I think it made a good change in my life.”

But Dawn Branson is convinced that Adderall cost her her only child. She is angry at the makers of Adderall, Shire Pharmaceuticals, for not adequately warning her that psychosis is a possible side effect. The company, she says, “had the responsibility to inform me through my doctor that this drug is capable of doing this.”

How did the company respond to this charge?

Part 2: "Enough Warning?"

Dawn Branson’s experience with Adderall was tragic -- a psychotic reaction to the drug, she says, that caused the terrible car accident in which her only child, Nathaniel, was killed.

“The guilt that I have for ever having taken that medication in the first place, that to me, right now, is my biggest cross,” she tells 48 Hours correspondent Susan Spencer.

What made matters even worse, she says, was finding out from her mother that there had been a similar incident a year earlier.

“I read, ‘Man acquitted of murder, sues drug company.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, could this be Adderall?’” says Marge Frushon, Branson’s mother.

The newspaper article she was reading described how in January 1999, 27-year-old Ryan Ehlis of Grand Forks, ND, took a shotgun and killed his 5-week-old daughter. He then turned the gun on himself. Ten days before, he had started taking Adderall.

“I had no inkling or ability to say ‘What’s the matter with me?’ or ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ That was not there at all," Ehlis says.

He was charged with murder. Although he later admitted taking much more Adderall than prescribed, the two doctors who evaluated him at the time both concluded that he was not criminally responsible because he was suffering a substance-induced mental illness.

“I don’t look back at that and say, ‘I did that.’ It’s like that was a totally different person, Ehlis says. “That is somebody who is completely insane.”

Both Branson, who was also cleared of any criminal responsibility for her child’s death, and Ehlis say they were completely unaware that psychosis was even a possible side effect of Adderall.

The package insert, considered adequate by the Food and Drug Administration, lists psychotic episodes as a side effect, followed by the word “rare” in parenthesis. The insert is one inch wide and two feet long. But that insert goes to the treating physician and the pharmacy, generally not to patients. Ehlis and Branson say their doctors didn't tell them psychotic episodes could be a side effect. And both of them
are suing Shire Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Adderall, to force the company to beef up its warnings, to highlight potential problems.

“The doctor didn’t tell me about that and I didn’t get that with the printout with the prescription,” Ehlis says of the package insert.

Dr. Alex Michaels, medical director of Shire Pharmaceuticals, says the chances of a psychotic reaction are three in a million. “When we look at the overall picture of benefit and risk associated with it, these are very, very infrequent events,” he says.

In legal proceedings since last November, Shire now says even if Adderall caused psychosis in Branson and Ehlis, its warnings were adequate. And they say it is the doctors' decision how to advise the patient.

Still, Branson and her parents are convinced that Adderall cost them Nathaniel's life.

“The gift of a child is the greatest blessing that we could have on this earth,” Branson says, “and I was entitled to that gift.” She and her family are determined that their experience never be repeated.

“I don’t want to have see another father have to tell his daughter that her little boy is dead,” her father says. “I don’t want anybody else to have to do that.”

Copyright 2002 CBS News
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AD/HD GROUP FILES FCC COMPLAINT AGAINST CBS

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Association (ADDA) President Michele Novotni, PhD, filed a formal complaint with the FCC regarding the CBS report "Out of Control" which appeared on the program 48 Hours on Friday, September 6, 2002.

In the complaint, ADDA charges CBS with "knowingly and willfully misrepresenting the facts about AD/HD." Novotni was especially critical of the producer's decision to leave out interviews with nationally recognized experts in the AD/HD field and any of the millions of people who are successful in the treatment of AD/HD.

"The exclusion of AD/HD experts and research in the AD/HD field is unconscionable," Novotni stated.

According to Novotni, the 48 Hours story has an emphasis on isolated, sensational, abnormal situations leaving viewers to make generalizations without providing balanced information. For example, an individual's reaction to an AD/HD medication (Adderall) left viewers with the impression that medication for treatment of AD/HD is unsafe and ineffective, while the research points to the contrary. The National Institute of Mental Health had recently completed a large scale study indicating the effectiveness of medication management for the treatment of AD/HD and a multitude of studies exist on the safety of medications used to treat AD/HD in the overwhelming majority of situations.

ADDA, the nation's leading organization for providing information and resources for adults with AD/HD, has contacted CBS and demanded that the network produce and present a report that includes credible experts in the field.

"ADDA is more that willing to provide nationally recognized experts in the AD/HD field as well as adults who live with AD/HD," said Novotni, "but they don't have to come to us. The National Institute of Health and the Office of The Surgeon General of the United States are both on record as recognizing the validity and seriousness of AD/HD.

"The research from the AD/HD field needs to be represented," Novotni stated in the complaint.

"We're not asking CBS to present ADDA's opinion," Novotni said. "We are demanding that CBS practice responsible journalism by not excluding valid scientific research."

The complaint comes on the heels of efforts of CHADD (Children and Adults with AD/HD) and ADDitude Magazine, who initiated a massive letter writing campaign to CBS in an effort to have the network re-examine factual errors in the report. Parents of children with AD/HD and adults who have the disorder have joined doctors and medical experts in requesting that CBS pull or amend the story.