From The Appeal.
This story was produced in partnership with MindSite News, the only national news outlet focused solely on mental health. You can sign up for the MindSite News newsletter here.
As far back as elementary school, Kurt Myers was always a class clown. “I was a performer,” he says, “trying to get a reaction out of people all the time. I would do things on impulse and pull the whole classroom off track. My grades suffered for it. I was a bright kid, I just didn’t have the control or the attention span.”
He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 8 or 9 and briefly took Ritalin to control it, but he quit taking it because of the side effects. His junior high placed him in a special ADHD classroom. Myers calls that program “probably the worst idea in the history of public education. We just fed off each other. The whole day was outburst after outburst. No work got done and they didn’t expect us to do any. The point was to separate us from the good kids.”
By the time he entered high school, his chronically disruptive behavior had evolved into full-blown delinquency. He was in and out of juvenile hall for car theft and shoplifting and was drinking and using drugs. At 16, he dropped out. Continue reading >>>
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