There are books like "The Shallows" which make a case that the internet is shortening our attention spans. Could this lead to someone developing ADHD?
Overselling A.D.H.D.
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Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#52I'm generally not fond of this sort of article and this one is no exception. They present a case that drug companies like selling drugs but we knew that. What they don't do is present a good case that ADHD is actually overdiagnosed. The world in general is not very good at accepting psychological conditions. ADHD is commonly regarded as "youth", "laziness", or "lacking discipline". Watching a loved one fight to focus…
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Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a book review, not an article per se. I'd assume the book goes into much more detail. Also, from the review: > Schwarz has no doubt that A.D.H.D. is a valid clinical entity that causes real suffering and deserves real treatment, as he makes clear in the first two sentences of the book: “Attention deficit hyperactivity is real. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” But he believes that those who are disabled b…
But what does "real" mean , exactly? That it's a recognizable pattern of behavior? That doesn't necessarily mean it should be treated as a disease.
Why not? People are suffering and we have safe medications which improve their lives.
Not treating ADHD is far more dangerous. People with unmedicated ADHD are more likely to do poorly in school, abuse drugs/alcohol, suffer from depression etc.
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#54[deleted]
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#55The article briefly mentions "hyperkinetic infants" and doesn't address the well known effects on neonates by the consumption of caffeine by pregnant women (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3420441?dopt=abstractplus) and the way advertisers market sugar and caffeine to children.
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#56I was diagnosed ADHD when I was 7 and the doctors put me on Ritalin. This was the early 1970s when very little was known about how to prescribe the drug to children. The doctors put me on a dose of 20mg 3X per day. It almost killed me. I remember having an overdose in 2nd grade (at least now I know that it was a Ritalin overdose). 60mgs of Ritalin is high even for an adult much less a 7yo. The teacher was required to…
I was diagnosed in grade school, took Ritalin through high school. Maybe it helped, but I'm sure a lot of folks here had similar experiences to me in school. School just sucked in general: I was always bored, and when I wasn't bored I was being tormented by classmates, mercilessly.
Ritalin might have helped my grades. I dunno, though, as I graduated second to last in my class at a super posh boarding school. Ritalin made it VERY hard to sleep, that's for sure. That wasn't helped by typical boarding school hazing bullshit.
All I know is that when I flunked out of college and got really, really depressed, I stopped taking Ritalin and moved to the Bay Area. I've never felt ADD or ADHD here simply because people understood what I was talking about. Computers weren't really a thing where I'd come from, beyond being tools for work.
I'm not convinced I don't have ADHD or what not, but I do know that I had a massive existential crisis when I first got here trying to figure out what aspects of my personality were really me, and which aspects were just me tweaking on Ritalin... Like, did I really enjoy doing X, Y, Z? Or was I just all Ritalin'd up and doing it because of the drugs? Who was I, really?
If I could do it all again, I feel like me being held back 1 year in school would have accomplished the same thing as Ritalin, but I'll never know. Socially, I was just not up to my grade level, even though I was easily grasping and becoming bored by class work. I definitely move and talk fast, but I am able to do long stretches of work when I have to, and when I care. That's the key, here I think.
Maybe that's the whole problem: kids like me just don't have the patience for stupid busy work, like homework, penmanship exercises, or date memorization. When I actually was interested in something, like Philosophy, I geeked way out over it and could concentrate for hours...
But I ramble (imagine that!). Long story short, today, I don't medicate my ADHD with Ritalin. I've just arranged my life so that my job and world are filled with stuff I care about, and not stuff I don't. Compared to some of the other ADHD adults I've met, I think I'm completely calm, frankly.
From the outside, it's probably way fucked up I was put on Ritalin. Inside, meh... it built character I guess.
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#57We don't have to give up modern education to meet the basic biological needs of children any more than we need to give up our jobs to be healthy adults. Initiatives like http://standupkids.org/ demonstrate pretty clearly that there are plenty of obvious, easy ways that we can address these needs. The obvious answer as to why we haven't tried them yet is money. But that seems like a lazy explanation, because American schools are some of the best-funded in the world. I think it's really a reflection on how we in the West view child-rearing in general. I read a really interesting interview a few months back discussing Freud, where the psychologist being interviewed was basically saying that Freud's model was implicitly based on the shame he felt about his childhood self, how the relationship between therapist and subject is derived from the relationship between parent and child, and that every time Freud was speaking to a subject sitting in a chair in front of him, he was talking to his 8-year-old self. Ironically we tend to see the natural reaction of a child as somehow wrong. If a child can't sit in a chair for 3 hours, the child is wrong, rather than the idea of sitting in a chair for 3 hours. So as the article points out, the conversation begins as "How can we modify the children to fit the environments we've built for them" rather than "How can we modify the environments we've built for children to fit their needs?"
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#58As someone in my 5th decade, with lifelong ADHD (though given my age it did not exist in my youth, and was only diagnosed relatively recently), I'm wary of backing away from treatments until we actually do have real viable alternatives.
It took far too long to get ADHD widely recognised, and even now it's often more likely to be received with humour than real recognition. Much more research, especially on other possible treatments and therapies, is needed before we turn too zealously against the only treatment actually shown to work. We have a long history of over diagnosing and overdoing pretty much everything.
I've only ever managed it with limited success. There's little doubt that the drugs can work. Despite some evidence of over-diagnosis and over-prescription there are many people who have had their prospects transformed as a result. I suggest the ADHD label is being significantly over applied because real awareness, even in the medical profession, is still abysmal. Doctors don't have time to look at home circumstances, or parents and other factors that might affect behaviour. Awareness coming from some TV comedy skit however is high.
I don't actually care that we don't yet have full understanding of how the drugs work, or that OMG they're amphetamines. I often wonder how things may have turned out differently for me had I encountered more GP awareness and less ridicule, or even earlier self-awareness or teen diagnosis and treatment.
If we are too successful "exposing big pharma" and overdiagnosis in the minds of GPs and the public, lives will be ruined once again. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here rather than seek wider understanding.
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#59I challenge someone to provide evidence enough to scare me into stopping. Go ahead, save my life
Please don't. Your other comment was fine, and can and should speak for itself. We detached this one from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345023 and marked it off-topic.
Sorry, mean't to be a joke. Way past the point of being saved anyway
Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.
#60I was diagnosed ADHD when I was 7 and the doctors put me on Ritalin. This was the early 1970s when very little was known about how to prescribe the drug to children. The doctors put me on a dose of 20mg 3X per day. It almost killed me. I remember having an overdose in 2nd grade (at least now I know that it was a Ritalin overdose). 60mgs of Ritalin is high even for an adult much less a 7yo. The teacher was required to…
Overall, I am wary of the overconfidence with which mental problems are handled. I don't know if heavy medication for psychological issues is worth it when we know so little of the long term effects. And looking at the history of these medications, I find it difficult to believe that everything is fine at the present moment. Maybe the future will tell how many of the present prescriptions are dangerous.