Parents who medicate their children for ADHD and OCD are turning their children into potential drug addicts and criminals, John MacArthur warned earlier this month.
MacArthur, a highly influential Calvinist pastor and author in Los Angeles, spoke on a panel at Grace Church of the Valley in Kingsbury, Calif., located south of Fresno. The young church received help from MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in its formation.
MacArthur, 84, was one of four pastors on the panel that covered a wide range of issues. The panel was one segment of the church’s “For the Valley” conference April 4-5.
“There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD,” MacArthur said in a segment of questions on parenting. His comments directly defy the consensus of modern medical science.
He made the comment after declaring “this culture” is “targeting children” and “the homosexual says, ‘We’re coming after your kids.’” This “moral and spiritual destruction” is related to psychiatry and psychology, he asserted.
“The major noble lie is there’s such a thing as mental illness.”
“Psychiatry and psychology is finally admitting the noble lies they’ve been telling the last 100 years,” he asserted. “The major noble lie is there’s such a thing as mental illness.”
MacArthur made waves in February by declaring Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Christian. The California pastor led his church to defy public health restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19 and then sued the county and the state when they tried to enforce the ban on large public gatherings in the heat of the pandemic.
His comments about OCD and ADHD came right after he warned parents of the “sin nature” of kids and the “inherited sin culture” they possess.
He said: “There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD. Those are noble lies to basically give the excuse in the end of the day to medicate people. And Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that.”
PTSD, he said, is not a mental illness but is merely grief. “You were fighting a war, you lost your buddies, you have a certain amount of survival guilt because you made it back and they didn’t. How do you deal with the grief?”
Those diagnosed with PTSD may be given a pill but “end up in LA homeless on the sidewalk,” he said.
“In regard to children, it’s the thing. It’s the most deadly thing that’s been unleashed on children, medication. We make clear to parents that behavior essentially is the result of choices that kids make and if you parent them properly they’ll make right choices.”
But parents who medicate their children, “you literally are turning your child into a potential, not only a potential drug addict but maybe a potential criminal because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way.”
Although MacArthur often makes declarations such as these that have no credible scientific support, he continues to enjoy an enormous following through his sermons, books and radio broadcast called “Grace to You.”
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