ADHD Again
Jul. 17th, 2006 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeksOk, there's so much to reply to in the last post that I'm not going to bother with comments -- I'll just make a new post! I can do that 'cause it's my journal. You guys will have to stick to comments (unless you'd like to take pot-shots at me from your own journals. ;-p ).
So, speaking firstly to Nick but also to everyone else, I actually didn't think much at all when I posted that. For the first time in a very long while I have an actual office job, and I've already gotten into the habit of reading news headlines at msn.com and the like when I login in the morning. And for the last three or so (work)days, MSN has had an new article about ADHD in their medical section. And this really just got under my skin because, as might be guessed, I'm biased. My brother was mis-diagnosed with ADD and the schools wanted to drug him; my cousin was (mis)diagnosed with ADD and has since been marked as a 'problem-child' in the "oh, we know how to handle his sort" kind of way -- and the way they treat him causes him to act in ways that reinforce what they already think of him! And when I was in middle school, I had friends who were diagnosed and subsequently became drug-bound zombies. So I read the articles and it occurred to me that I don't really believe that ADHD exists*.
(* What I mean by this is in dispute as noted by Nick, and I hope to at least try to unpack that a bit in this post.)
I think I was misread a bit, though. To Chris, I can see that this could hit rather close to home for you, and it is not my intention to offend you (or anyone) or to imply that your struggles are of no account, or fictional, or anything like that. That being said, though, I make no apologies for my stand and though I acknowledge your difficulties and the benefit you've found in medication and therepy, that doesn't mean i'm ready to accept that it is what people say it is. That's all I'm saying.
The tricky bit, of course, is that I used to word 'believe,' and consciously so -- belief is not often based in fact (some may argue you can't 'believe' something that you 'know'), but it doesn't necessarily contradict fact, either. I openly admit that I don't know, but I suspect certain things and I'm interested to learn more to see if I can't clear this up a bit.
Jason and Meg bring up and interesting point, saying that ADD/ADHD may be a 'new' phenomenon because of the information glut we find ourselves in these days. And I'll say that it's certainly something to think about -- it's a fact that our brains filter out the vast majority of physical stimuli we encounter in a day (sight, sound, touch, etc), and I don't think our brains are designed to readily contain vast amounts of information, let alone try and analyze it. But modern life bombards us with information of the quality and quantity that past people (probably) didn't have. (I say probably just because it seems every time I turn around the Greeks were more technologically advanced than we thought, and we still don't know how the pyramids were built if I recall).
So that may be a factor.
I hesitate to call it a 'disorder', though, and I think that's what I mean by 'exist', to answer Nick. That is, I don't think that ADD/ADHD is the disorder, the disease, the precise thing (that's a technical term) that it's made out to be. Maybe the symptoms are indicative of something else entirely. There could be any number of causes; I tend to want to say it's a neurochemical phenomenon, but I'm not sure I can just based on the fact that drugs 'relieve' the symptoms. Drugs affect the mind, yes, but so do a great many things; just because drugs still affect the mind here doesn't mean that it's chemestry that's the root cause, either.
I'm getting off on tangents... Nick said the most, I'll try to organize myself on his comments.
There's nothin' wrong with these youngin's that a good whippin' couldn't fix.
Nick didn't technically say this in his comments, but he wanted to. :-p The fact is, I don't agree with this statement, and I think this is a bit of where I got misread. I don't think that kids diagnosed with ADHD are simply bad kids, the end result of bad parenting much like any other spoiled brat. I do think that a spoiled child could show ADHD-like symptoms, but "all oranges are fruits" is not "all fruits are oranges." as a point of fact I do believe there's value in spankings and other corporeal punishments for children of an appropriate age, but I generally think that engaging them in a rational way has a better, more-lasting outcome. (So spank the kid and then explain, rationally, why what he did was wrong...) I'm tangenting again. The subject is not really 'how one ought to parent.'
Nick says a lot here, and i'm not really sure how to approach it. I really think that ADHD is a child-based phenomenon, that even if there is an actual chemical imbalance possible to cause distinctive cognitive difficulties it has lost itself in the social tide wanting to drug unwieldy children. I blame schools because they find the most benefit in drugging students who can't or won't sit still; and frankly, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with a kid who finds the school environment stifling and non-conducive to learning. My brother (the one who ought to have been diagnosed if any of us were, and he wasn't) is MUCH more of a hands-on learner than I am, and I like more structure (or at least significantly different structure) in my life than he does. There's nothing wrong with that, just different, but he has all the marks that'd get him tagged as ADD if he were in school (we homeschool, for those who don't know, but only started some six years ago).
Something that gets me about it is this: ADD means you have trouble concentrating, which is a cognitive skill. It's an arguably-vital skill in society, and definitely necessary for traditional schools to function, but a skill nonetheless. Mathematical computation is a cognitive skill, too, and I'd say it's fairly useful in society, too. But there are LOADS of people who don't like math, who can't even calculate a 20% tip on their dinner bill, but there's not "mathematical deficiency disorder." No one cares enough to try drugging people who can't add. And maybe we don't have any drugs that 'fix' math problems, but I don't think the fact that we have drugs that 'fix' attention problems make it any more valid. We've had mind-altering drugs, barbiturates and methamphetamines and whatever else you'd like, for hundreds of years. It's convenient that they fix this problem.
Again, not to say no one had difficulties with this. And not to say there aren't people who benefit from treatment. But I do think it's highly overdiagnosed, a lazy solution for an already-overmedicated society. And I think the value of medicines, of drugging the body and mind, is overblown. As Nick noted, "self-control and discipline" are just primitive forms of behavioral therepy. I agree. A lot of the therepy I've read for ADHD just sounds like common sense to me.
What I take issue with is the overmedication and the labeling it as a disorder; that last bit I can't really expand upon by myself, though. The term is just loaded with meanings I don't feel comfortable with, meanings that would condone or midigate the "we know how to handle his sort" kind of mind set. And that I don't like.
So, speaking firstly to Nick but also to everyone else, I actually didn't think much at all when I posted that. For the first time in a very long while I have an actual office job, and I've already gotten into the habit of reading news headlines at msn.com and the like when I login in the morning. And for the last three or so (work)days, MSN has had an new article about ADHD in their medical section. And this really just got under my skin because, as might be guessed, I'm biased. My brother was mis-diagnosed with ADD and the schools wanted to drug him; my cousin was (mis)diagnosed with ADD and has since been marked as a 'problem-child' in the "oh, we know how to handle his sort" kind of way -- and the way they treat him causes him to act in ways that reinforce what they already think of him! And when I was in middle school, I had friends who were diagnosed and subsequently became drug-bound zombies. So I read the articles and it occurred to me that I don't really believe that ADHD exists*.
(* What I mean by this is in dispute as noted by Nick, and I hope to at least try to unpack that a bit in this post.)
I think I was misread a bit, though. To Chris, I can see that this could hit rather close to home for you, and it is not my intention to offend you (or anyone) or to imply that your struggles are of no account, or fictional, or anything like that. That being said, though, I make no apologies for my stand and though I acknowledge your difficulties and the benefit you've found in medication and therepy, that doesn't mean i'm ready to accept that it is what people say it is. That's all I'm saying.
The tricky bit, of course, is that I used to word 'believe,' and consciously so -- belief is not often based in fact (some may argue you can't 'believe' something that you 'know'), but it doesn't necessarily contradict fact, either. I openly admit that I don't know, but I suspect certain things and I'm interested to learn more to see if I can't clear this up a bit.
Jason and Meg bring up and interesting point, saying that ADD/ADHD may be a 'new' phenomenon because of the information glut we find ourselves in these days. And I'll say that it's certainly something to think about -- it's a fact that our brains filter out the vast majority of physical stimuli we encounter in a day (sight, sound, touch, etc), and I don't think our brains are designed to readily contain vast amounts of information, let alone try and analyze it. But modern life bombards us with information of the quality and quantity that past people (probably) didn't have. (I say probably just because it seems every time I turn around the Greeks were more technologically advanced than we thought, and we still don't know how the pyramids were built if I recall).
So that may be a factor.
I hesitate to call it a 'disorder', though, and I think that's what I mean by 'exist', to answer Nick. That is, I don't think that ADD/ADHD is the disorder, the disease, the precise thing (that's a technical term) that it's made out to be. Maybe the symptoms are indicative of something else entirely. There could be any number of causes; I tend to want to say it's a neurochemical phenomenon, but I'm not sure I can just based on the fact that drugs 'relieve' the symptoms. Drugs affect the mind, yes, but so do a great many things; just because drugs still affect the mind here doesn't mean that it's chemestry that's the root cause, either.
I'm getting off on tangents... Nick said the most, I'll try to organize myself on his comments.
There's nothin' wrong with these youngin's that a good whippin' couldn't fix.
Nick didn't technically say this in his comments, but he wanted to. :-p The fact is, I don't agree with this statement, and I think this is a bit of where I got misread. I don't think that kids diagnosed with ADHD are simply bad kids, the end result of bad parenting much like any other spoiled brat. I do think that a spoiled child could show ADHD-like symptoms, but "all oranges are fruits" is not "all fruits are oranges." as a point of fact I do believe there's value in spankings and other corporeal punishments for children of an appropriate age, but I generally think that engaging them in a rational way has a better, more-lasting outcome. (So spank the kid and then explain, rationally, why what he did was wrong...) I'm tangenting again. The subject is not really 'how one ought to parent.'
Nick says a lot here, and i'm not really sure how to approach it. I really think that ADHD is a child-based phenomenon, that even if there is an actual chemical imbalance possible to cause distinctive cognitive difficulties it has lost itself in the social tide wanting to drug unwieldy children. I blame schools because they find the most benefit in drugging students who can't or won't sit still; and frankly, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with a kid who finds the school environment stifling and non-conducive to learning. My brother (the one who ought to have been diagnosed if any of us were, and he wasn't) is MUCH more of a hands-on learner than I am, and I like more structure (or at least significantly different structure) in my life than he does. There's nothing wrong with that, just different, but he has all the marks that'd get him tagged as ADD if he were in school (we homeschool, for those who don't know, but only started some six years ago).
Something that gets me about it is this: ADD means you have trouble concentrating, which is a cognitive skill. It's an arguably-vital skill in society, and definitely necessary for traditional schools to function, but a skill nonetheless. Mathematical computation is a cognitive skill, too, and I'd say it's fairly useful in society, too. But there are LOADS of people who don't like math, who can't even calculate a 20% tip on their dinner bill, but there's not "mathematical deficiency disorder." No one cares enough to try drugging people who can't add. And maybe we don't have any drugs that 'fix' math problems, but I don't think the fact that we have drugs that 'fix' attention problems make it any more valid. We've had mind-altering drugs, barbiturates and methamphetamines and whatever else you'd like, for hundreds of years. It's convenient that they fix this problem.
Again, not to say no one had difficulties with this. And not to say there aren't people who benefit from treatment. But I do think it's highly overdiagnosed, a lazy solution for an already-overmedicated society. And I think the value of medicines, of drugging the body and mind, is overblown. As Nick noted, "self-control and discipline" are just primitive forms of behavioral therepy. I agree. A lot of the therepy I've read for ADHD just sounds like common sense to me.
What I take issue with is the overmedication and the labeling it as a disorder; that last bit I can't really expand upon by myself, though. The term is just loaded with meanings I don't feel comfortable with, meanings that would condone or midigate the "we know how to handle his sort" kind of mind set. And that I don't like.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 01:42 am (UTC)I keep wondering if this is conflicting with the views I posted in my last comment, but I don’t really think so. I don’t think it’s so much of a disorder as just a condition some people are forced to deal with.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 02:19 am (UTC)If he is not medicated he cannot function to save his life. Without that diagnosis at an early age and years of dedicated parents and doctors to find the right treatment and drug regime, my brother would never have graduated high school, college, and probably would be a dropout if not worse.
I could go on on this topic but it's a little sensitive to me.
But for some it's not a "his sort" issue, it's a legitimate medical condition caused by chemical imbalance that needs understanding and treatment.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 05:30 pm (UTC)One of the easiest things I can point out to show some proof of the chemical imbalance is caffiene and other stimulants. For someone with ADD or ADHD, most often they do not have the "hyping-up" effect that they do with other people. Most people who are ADD/ADHD that use a stimulant end up just being more calm and/or focused. I, for example, never get hyper or jittery over caffiene like others I see. I get focused. I don't really "calm" per se, but I do maintain a more attentive state than without. It doesn't work like medication, but the effect is somewhat noticable. It still makes my body work faster though, so it is still hard to sleep.
Honestly speaking, the efforts of doctors to placate parents of "problem children" are really the primary issue here. The fact that the diagnosis is overused and misused so that a parent struggling with their kid doesn't have to deal with it is abhorrent even to those of us in the psychological field. But, that does not negate it's validity as a psychological disorder. The DSM-IV is a constantly changing manual. And just like homosexuality was removed because it is no longer viewed as a disorder, ADD & ADHD have been added because they have realized that they are.
Do some research and you'll find plenty of materials supporting either side of the story that you want to support. If you go to the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org) or the American Psychiatric Association (http://www.psych.org) websites, I'm sure you can find links to lots and lots of info.