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Overselling A.D.H.D.

nytimes.com

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Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#171

Post by basch »

MichaelGG wrote: post #160
metaphorm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these are children we're talking about. you're endorsing drugging children.

As a parent it's very hard. Our governess mentioned our one daughter was having difficulty focusing. So I did a trial with just 5mg/day Ritalin. Week on, week off. The difference is huge. It's a really hard call. I'm worried about the effects long term, but she does so much better with it. If she was in a school instead of with a private tutor, I'm guessing she'd be way worse off. FWIW I used to think giving meds to…

school is so boring we give children focus drugs and are surprised when they are able to focus? and we dont talk about fixing school, because the short term pragmatic decision is to adapt the brilliant kid to the shitty environment, instead of the inverse.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#172

Post by sevenless »

panglott wrote: post #149
scottmf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have 80 years of data from giving children low doses of stimulants. >In such a case, the medication is actually hampering their development. Again, the actual data say otherwise. Medication tends to help children develop proper coping mechanisms. Not medicating is more likely to result in social rejection, drug abuse, depression, dropping out of school, and so on. Most of this anti-medication sentiment is unscient…

You're conflating "not medicating" with "not treating", which is exactly the sort of thing that feeds the criticism that U.S. overdiagnosis rates are being driven by the pharmaceutical industry. Behavioral therapy is also effective, and avoids some of the negative impacts of medication. There are studies that compare medicated ADHD patients to untreated ADHD patients over the course of adolescence; but people who are…

To which I'd add, the fact 'ADHD' symptoms are stereotypically behaviors of male children. I don't think it might be a total coincidence that we have a trend of drugged-up little boys for behavior deemed unacceptable, at the same time childrens' education is dominated by women.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#173

Post by buttcoinslol »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137
engx wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people on meth enjoy cleaning? There is little difference between meth and Adderall. Taking any type of stimulant even coffee helps people do menial tasks and be more optimistic while doing them. Maybe millions of people are effected by some problem of distraction and lack of focus. But to suggest there's some biochemical reason for this that's cured by amphetamines seems like pseudoscience to me. Drugs do wor…

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, sitting at your desk looking at a freelance work assignment that needs to be done by tomorrow, weeping with frustration because you've been staring at it for eight solid hours, trying and trying to begin, and you can't because focusing on anything important is like trying to grip a handful of water. Because you ran out of your meds. This is what my life is like. If that doe…

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, writhing in pain and occasionally vomiting, weeping in frustration while laying in bed not able to get out.

Because you ran out of heroin.

That is what my life was like. If that doesn't sound like a medical condition to you, then I don't know what you're thinking.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#174

Post by smelterdemon »

leereeves wrote: post #12
hellofunk wrote: post #3

I've always been skeptical of ADHD diagnoses, thinking that it was widely over-diagnosed and a problem in American culture more than anything, and not as commonplace in reality. My googling took me to this article which suggests I am wrong: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525089/

I'm far from an expert on this, but I've always thought that the symptoms (inattention and/or impulsivity and hyperactivity) are only maladaptive in modern culture, where young people are expected to spend long hours sitting quietly at attention in school. Is that a disease, or a flaw in modern culture?

From the point of view of someone with those behaviour/mental patterns, is it easier to treat them as a disease, or restructure society?

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#175

Post by PhasmaFelis »

sseal wrote: post #156
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, sitting at your desk looking at a freelance work assignment that needs to be done by tomorrow, weeping with frustration because you've been staring at it for eight solid hours, trying and trying to begin, and you can't because focusing on anything important is like trying to grip a handful of water. Because you ran out of your meds. This is what my life is like. If that doe…

three things: 1. You do not enjoy your work, and thus have no motivation. 2. Maybe you should not do the work and suffer the consequences. 3. You have built a mental dependency that you must take amphetamines to "focus", and this hinders your real ability to focus. All of those things ^^^ I have experienced at one point or another in my life. You can focus, you have to make yourself. There is no other way. You do not…

> Maybe you should not do the work and suffer the consequences.

I've done that. A lot. It sucks. That's why I take medication.

> You can focus, you have to make yourself. There is no other way. You do not need medication...

I don't understand why people can't quite believe that mental illness is real. You would never tell a diabetic or an asthmatic that they shouldn't have to take medicine every day. But if someone's clinically depressed, or has ADD, or any of a hundred other mental conditions, people just assume you're imagining things or being lazy.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#176

Post by tstrimple »

falcolas wrote: post #118
leereeves wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could ask a question that may sound like a challenge but it is not meant as one: How does ADHD lead to divorce, motor vehicle accidents and injuries, and greater rates of general health conditions? Is this correlation still present after controlling for confounders like education and economic status?

The two biggest factors that I can come up with would be the lack of ability to control attention, and the inability to consider the long term repercussions of actions. If you can't force yourself to keep attention on the road, you're going to crash. If you can't think about how that daily pint of ice cream will affect you beyond "it tastes good now", you're going to gain weight.

And when your eyes continuously glaze over when your wife is talking to you, it can lead to marriage difficulties.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#177

Post by anexprogrammer »

blocktuw wrote: post #159
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, sitting at your desk looking at a freelance work assignment that needs to be done by tomorrow, weeping with frustration because you've been staring at it for eight solid hours, trying and trying to begin, and you can't because focusing on anything important is like trying to grip a handful of water. Because you ran out of your meds. This is what my life is like. If that doe…

I agree that there are people who will benefit from the use of prescription medications to treat different life issues. I too suffer from hours of staring at work, unable to start or finish. I don't think I have a learning disability or a disease that needs treatment. But I think there are many alternatives to help people who cannot start and finish work tasks. I can usually find a quiet and productive work environme…

"Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem."

For someone without the condition, perhaps.

My entire life I've tried to work with managing techniques, such as those you suggest, and a hundred others, none of which made a blind bit of difference. Caffiene does not seem to affect me in the same way as it does most people btw. So I've spent a good part of my career trying to find roles and bosses more suited to my scatty ways - often far from easy - once I realised I was a little unusually wired.

The biggest problem ADD has is that everyone gets distracted, struggles to focus sometimes, so the majority of people exatrapolate that out and presume there's nothing wrong. Then go on to suggest 5 things that help them with their occasional distractions. That's like telling a wheelchair user to just walk. "Well have you tried walking differently?" "Tried a stick?" I spent 50 years trying to just walk and I still can't. My first week on meds however, when I was told I'd probably wouldn't yet notice a difference, was indescribable. Truly I don't have the words. I almost dropped into depression realising I could have been like this my whole life. "Is this what other people have all the time?". I could have achieved so much!

That I achieved some measure of success with the condition, compared to how my mind could have worked surprises and disappoints in equal measure - what might I have achieved?

For many actually with the condition it's highly debilitating. They can't not be distracted. Ever. Often they're being distracted from being distracted from... IT IS NOT "oh look, shiny" on facebook. For some powerful amphetamines will be the best solution of those yet available (in very low doses compared to dietary or recreational uses). You don't get any of the same effects as you would taking amphetamines at a party. It's a neurological imbalance, so a neurological treatment will often be fitting.

Course I probably shouldn't think of it as a learning disability and just adjust the amoutn of tea I drink and look at some ideas for people who cannot start and finish work tasks.

I don't want over diagnosis, or easy diagnosis of very young children, and ideally want some more tools in the box I can choose from.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#178

Post by falcolas »

metaphorm wrote: post #169
dragonwriter wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so what? My son had a bladder infection, and I certainly endorsed the use of drugs to treat that. If there is a real and identifiable condition interfering with a child's quality of life for which there is concrete reason to think that a drug is an effective and remedy for which the risk of other side effects is mild compared to the expected benefit, why shouldn't responsible adults endorse drugging children in…

bladder infection is an infection by a microbial disease. it's a pathogen caused by another organism that shouldn't be present in a healthy body. what exactly is ADHD? what is being treated, anyway? this is medicating for "normality", which is another way of saying our society is defining and enforcing (with mind-altering drugs) a very narrow band of acceptable personalities and behavioral responses to environmental…

> this is medicating for "normality"

No, it really isn't. There's nothing normal about having ADHD. It's debilitating: it makes it very hard to hold a job. It makes it nearly impossible to plan for the future.

Imagine having a horn blowing in your ear at a random interval between a second and an hour, completely disrupting your train of thought, as if you just did a complete mental context switch. How big of a mental stack could you create, knowing that the horn will blow at any moment, completely destroying it.

Your friends get tired of talking to you, because you constantly lose track of what they're saying; you are constantly looking around for the source of that damned horn.

You try and read a book, but then the horn blows and you forget where on the page you were. You struggle on, and find that you can get back on track more quickly if you leave you finger where you were. The horn blows, and you spend a few moments lamenting that damned horn, and have to re-read the last few sentences to pick the context back up. The horn blows.

You try and walk down a hallway and through a door. The horn blows, disorientating you a bit, causing you to hit the doorframe on your way through.

You can't write code. You can't hold deep conversations. You can't read deep, technical books. You can't handle the college workload. You can't put together a plan for your future. All because of that f*cking horn.

But it's OK, everyone who doesn't hear the horn tells you - you're just living in the wrong time in history. You'd make a great hunter.

If someone offered you some earmuffs quiet that horn, would you take them? Would you then advocate them for others who have that same horn blaring in their ears?

I would. I do.

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#179

Post by vainguard »

buttcoinslol wrote: post #173
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, sitting at your desk looking at a freelance work assignment that needs to be done by tomorrow, weeping with frustration because you've been staring at it for eight solid hours, trying and trying to begin, and you can't because focusing on anything important is like trying to grip a handful of water. Because you ran out of your meds. This is what my life is like. If that doe…

Imagine this: you're an adult professional, writhing in pain and occasionally vomiting, weeping in frustration while laying in bed not able to get out. Because you ran out of heroin. That is what my life was like. If that doesn't sound like a medical condition to you, then I don't know what you're thinking.

This medical condition is called withdrawal.

You are right in that discontinuing ADHD medication can lead to withdrawal symptoms.

But you are dead wrong in that ADHD does not disappear after withdrawal. As it would if it were a drug addiction.

ADHD was there before taking medication, and it will persist long after stopping medication. (If we assume the diagnosis was correct.)

Re: Overselling A.D.H.D.

#180

Post by falcolas »

metaphorm wrote: post #141
falcolas wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not done that way - there are more factors than "fidgeting in class" that psychiatrists take into account when diagnosing ADHD. And frankly, if they're put on Ritalin and stop fidgeting and start paying attention, then it's probably a valid diagnosis in the first place. People without ADHD would end up fidgeting more, not less, if given amphetamines.

these are children we're talking about. you're endorsing drugging children.

> you're endorsing drugging children.

Not just any children, I'm endorsing providing drugs to children who need those drugs. Just as I would endorse giving a child with a headache an appropriate amount of acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Or steroids to a child with severe MS. Or opioids to a child with chronic pain.

Just because the defect is in the brain and not the muscles or nerves or elsewhere doesn't make it less of a treatable defect. Or less worthy of treatment.

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