

ADHD: A Disease called childhood - imperio59
http://time.com/3822755/adhd-disease-called-childhood/

======
geoelectric
No question that ADHD is overdiagnosed. It's probably also underdiagnosed.
Some people who aren't are called ADHD; some people who are never get help. It
also most certainly exists--I wasn't diagnosed until middle adulthood, but the
pattern of chaos back to childhood was pretty obvious, especially in
hindsight. My life would be far different, and probably better in many ways,
had I gotten the help I needed then. Problem was, this same sort of pop
psychology diagnosis denial existed in the 70s and 80s, and my parents wrote
the teacher referral off. Wish they hadn't.

This whole article talks about the concept of ADHD stigmatizing normal
behavior, but the diagnostic guidelines include A) that the subject isn't
behaving in an age-appropriate way and B) that the issues are causing
significant real-life problems in at least two settings. There are multiple
checkpoints that the behavior isn't normal, not transitory, not limited to
problems with one place or person, and not easily addressed or tolerated by
the individual showing it.

I'm absolutely certain that some parents, teachers, GPs, even psychiatrists
err on these, that the kid is just showing a minor developmental lag or a
contextual issue. But at the same time, the people it helps, it helps a _lot_
, and at a really crucial time. School is a terrible, terrible place to not be
able to get shit done and to establish bad life habits, which is ultimately
what ADHD will do. Doesn't take much at that stage to ruin high school,
college, chances at a career.

So yeah, skepticism, sure. ADHD needs even more tried and tested diagnostic
criteria. And ADHD is largely an umbrella diagnosis with treatments mitigating
secondary symptoms of unknown primaries, so we should keep looking for primary
causes and address those.

But to write off the whole thing...I don't know. I think that kind of
overreaction is irresponsible. Marilyn Wedge has more or less built her
current career on this position, but my own experience, however anecdotal, and
any number of peer-reviewed studies don't really back her story very well. And
really, those of us who suffer from ADHD already face enough stigma and
baggage without having pop psych articles in Time Magazine trying to
invalidate the one pathway that actually has led to some degree of relief and
success.

~~~
pc2g4d
But what you've said doesn't mean you have a disease---it could just mean that
what society expects of you is unreasonable given your temperament.

~~~
geoelectric
It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other
(edited) is a collection of symptoms with unclear origin, but which happen
together enough to be their own thing. It's pretty likely different people
acquire dysfunction from different circumstances, whether traumatic,
epigenetic, genetic, or whatever else interacts with brain development.

But to your point, and without going into a bunch of personal info, I doubt
it. There were plenty of issues and deficits that I can't imagine being
appropriate in any setting.

Moreover, ADHD has been acknowledged for a long, long time. The term is
modern, but the disorder is not. It was minimal brain damage, IIRC, prior to
ADHD, and had a bunch of increasingly archaic terms as you go back.

You have to understand, the popular view of ADHD--stereotypical hyperactivity
and scatterbrained behavior--yeah, those are part of it, but they're not the
whole. The cluster of symptoms mimics prefrontal cortex damage. Executive
function is responsible for a whole lot of stuff.

If you're willing to acknowledge that mental disability exists in general, and
that there's a line where we say, OK, that person is impaired, then it's not a
huge jump to understand that it can exist in specific physical areas too. When
it affects executive function to whatever degree you're going to draw that
line, that's ADHD.

~~~
supercanuck
>It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the
other is a collection of symptoms that are frequently observed together, and
which cause an issue.

I'm not able to tell the difference about which one you are talking about even
after reading your definition. Maybe there isn't much of a difference after
all?

~~~
geoelectric
Disease is a root cause, disorder is a manifestation that either comes from an
unknown root cause or from several root causes with the same effect.

Alternately, Google it. I'm not a doctor, and I'm sure it's explained better
elsewhere.

------
nickysielicki
Via /r/adhd:

>"In her book she advocates a "gluten free diet" and makes the repeated claims
that "big pharma" are pushing these drugs on kids, who are simply a bit
"different""

I don't know about you, but IMO if a person is advocating against gluten to
cure ADHD, they probably aren't worth listening to on anything.

If you want to have an informed opinion on ADHD, watch this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-
rkIfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo)

------
cafebeen
"If psychiatry aspires to be scientific, on a par with other branches of
medicine, how can it be content with this peculiar practice of delineating the
outlines of a disease by a drug treatment?"

Sigh, there is plenty of scientific evidence of a biological basis of ADHD,
i.e. genetic and neuroimaging studies:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22306277](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22306277)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyDliT0GZpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyDliT0GZpE)

Of course, we don't know what is causing these differences, and false
positives are a real problem, but the misinformation in this article is very
irresponsible

------
yellowapple
As someone who was once upon a time diagnosed with ADD (I didn't quite cross
the threshold into ADHD according to my pediatrician at the time), I can
relate to this, at least a little bit, and I agree with most of what's
discussed.

That said:

    
    
        According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease
        Control and Prevention, 14 percent of schoolchildren
        are currently diagnosed with ADHD in Arkansas and
        Louisiana. In Nevada, the number is less than 5
        percent. If ADHD were truly a genetically based
        biological disease, wouldn’t the percentage of children
        diagnosed with it be more or less equal across
        geographical areas?
    

Probably not. Genetic diversity, at least in nature, tends to correspond to
geographic separation of populations. I'd be surprised if this was
significantly different for humans, particularly those on almost-opposite
sides of the U.S.

