Can the same be said for medications that treat diabetes, hypertension, seizurea, etc…
As well, if something helps you function, does that make it addictive? Take for instance eye glasses, hearing aids, medication for a wide range of illnesses.
It us not ncommon for people to confuse addictive substances with addiction from using these substances. If this was the case, would all be adictive to opiates.
What I have struggled with as a pychiatric provider is the disparity between how people look at mental health and physical health. Imagine if you well, you are being treated for allergies. Prior to your allergy treatment you had asthma attacks which limited your time outside exercising. Since treatment you feel better and you have more freedom to be outside. Is this an addiction or are we just using medications to achieve a normal state.
There is a heritary basis to most things, but it is possible to reduce the occurence of an illness, mental or physical by minimizing stressors/insults to the body. There was an adopted twins study done in Scandanvia, they were looking at the emergence of schizophrenia in twins raised in different households. They found that the children raised in a higher energy/higher stress environment were more likely to become schizophrenic.
Stress is a tigger for many illnesses, stress can be a result of social interactions, abuse, lifestyle, etc…
In general, people who have mental illnees that is treatable with medications are less likely to seek treatment or accept tratment when it available, in part due to the stigma of mental health, which tells us that we aren’t normal if we take medication in order to be normal.
This is no more evident than in two populations I see: schizophrenics and hyperactive teens, both populations avoid medicataion because they don’t want to have to take them “in order to be normal”. I had this conversation with a schizophrenic and his case manager, the case manager didn’t understand why the patient didn’t take his medications. To me it makes perfect sense, but it is sad nonethless that society criticizes a person for taking psychiatirc medications, even if the medications help.
All I can say is don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. If medications help, then they help, take em. If medications don’t help, then you need to look elsewhere, ie behaviral change.
One of my favorite things 
to talk with parents about is how they manage attention deficit. Even when treated, attention deficit people are still attention deficit, so what about a parent who is punishing a child for not paying attention?I find it bizarre that, even though the parent is aware of the child’s problems with attention, they cont to insist the child pay attention. Well how about this: if Sally only has one leg, is it fair to expect Sally to run as fast as the kids with two legs? Sure you should encourage the child to be as good as they can be, but their is a limit to what each person can achieve, why punish a child for not being as good as you want them to be?
Most of my clients have problems with impusle control, which cause inattention, hyperativity, and poor decision making. I write a lot of scripts for stimulants, yup. I also have a lot of conversations with parents about their own impulse control issues which their children inherited, but they insist they can manage…as long as Johny gets his adderal 
