Attention what?

[jackofallgeeks]

I don't think I believe that ADHD exists. I don't know anything, mind, I'm hardly a qualified professional and I've only done the barest amount of reading on the subject. But what I have found makes me think it's another case of self-overmedication that our society is so fond of. The 'symptoms' don't seem to be anything more than a lack of self-control or discipline, which most kids have naturally and will retain unless self-control and discipline are instilled in them by adults. That being the case, it wouldn't surprise me if more kids lacked necessary self-control because many parents can not or will not discipline their children, and 'finding' a new disease lets us medicate our children into a docile, managable state.

That's the theory i'm working on at the moment? any of you out there want to help do some of the foot work and point me toward articles et cetera that might support or contradict such a theory?

Comments

Re: more personal stuff

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think we're definitely on the same page, if that's what you mean by "it doesn't exist." ADHD as this diagnostic category of "you have this; take this to fix it" is kind of faddish, yeah. I thought Jason had a good thought on that, myself.

I suspect that it's one of those "culturally linked syndromes" like anorexia or, um, koro (aka "that delusional Micronesian testicle-shrinking disease"). I suspect what those are is basically the "operating system" of a culture not working so well with the "hardware" of a given set of human brains. Some people have the structure to organize huge amounts of sensory overstimulus without going bonkers mentally and physically, and some of us just don't.

(I wonder how much success people would have with ADHD kids if they tried to teach them in ways that weren't prone to trigger that kind of overload? But I don't know if I'd trust our social instutitions to be that bright. They'd probably end up doing something really DUMB with it, like using it as an excuse to indulge the kids and let 'em learn nothing at all...)