Ritalin in Israel: Yoav Kisch Calls for a Review of Prescriptions for Children
Israel’s Minister of Education, Yoav Kisch, has expressed serious concern over the growing trend of the widespread prescription of Ritalin and its analogs to students. Speaking on the *Sari and Schlesinger* program, the head of the ministry described the current situation as a grave mistake. According to him, the practice of mass and often unjustified issuance of prescriptions for attention-deficit medications to children must be immediately reviewed and stopped.
In his interview, the minister emphasized that Israeli society tends to swing from one extreme to another. He recalled times when children with truly severe attention deficit disorder did not receive proper help, leading to their exclusion from the mainstream educational process. However, the current reality, in Kisch’s opinion, demonstrates the opposite imbalance: today, the system tries to manage any, even the most minor behavioral difficulties, with medication. The head of the Education Ministry is firmly convinced that a significant portion of schoolchildren today take such drugs without objective medical indications.
It is expected that such a categorical statement by the minister will provoke heated debates and a sharp reaction within the professional community. Representatives of the medical community traditionally defend the existing protocol, emphasizing that psychostimulants are prescribed exclusively following a thorough professional diagnosis. Doctors continue to insist that for a large number of young patients, properly selected medical support is not a whim, but the only effective tool for successful socialization and full integration into the educational process.
