Comment by scottmf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottmf | Hacker News Reader

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>It's far from clear why having the symptoms of ADHD should be considered a disease, in any objective sense.

We have children facing social rejection, failing/dropping out of school, becoming dependent on drugs, suffering from depression/anxiety and other mental illnesses, committing suicide, etc.

In a perfect world we don't have to change our lives to fit into society at all! Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect. We have an obesity epidemic because people sit in an office working all day. One treatment I'm sure you'll approve of is going to the gym. Unfortunately gyms are pretty unnatural.

Why should obesity be considered a disease in any objective sense? People are suffering because modern life is sedentary. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with them.

—We change our behaviors to make up for the personal problems that come with society. We do unnatural things like go to gyms and take medication to help our bodies (which were made for a world where we live in caves and hunt wild animals) function properly in this society, because we agree its advantages vastly outweigh its disadvantages.

This analogy doesn't really work, because obesity is caused by living a modern sedentary lifestyle, whereas I'm suggesting ADHD is what we're labeling kids with for not living, or rebelling against, that sedentary lifestyle.

Obesity is a disease in an objective sense because it directly causes ill health. There's lots of studies to show that. The symptoms of what we call ADHD seem to simply be caused by unhappiness and boredom with the way we live today. We're demanding kids do something that makes them unhappy, and any reaction to it, is labeled a disease.

> take medication to help our bodies [...] function properly in this society, because we agree its advantages vastly outweigh its disadvantages.

This seems like a problematic kind of statement, because the implication is that people who don't fit into society should somehow be coercively medicated. What about their rights and bodily autonomy?

It's a perfectly fine analogy. They're both problems which are problems because of our society.

You're suggesting physical illness is more "real" than mental illness.

>We're demanding kids do something that makes them unhappy, and any reaction to it, is labeled a disease.

It's far more than kids not being able to pay attention in class. ADHD affects many aspects of a person's life—and adults too. Living independently with unmedicated ADHD can be incredibly difficult. Everything from social life, working, to driving, is harder/riskier.

The argument against treating ADHD is based on unfounded fears of psychiatry and medication. "What if this, what if that". Well this and that isn't happening, peoples lives are being improved, and people are suffering because of dangerous FUD like this.

> It's a perfectly fine analogy. They're both problems which are problems because of our society.

One is a disease caused by conforming with our sedentary society. The other is what we label those who refuse to go along with our expectations for school, work and conformity. Really, they are more like opposites of one another.

> You're suggesting physical illness is more "real" than mental illness.

That's right. It's pretty hard to rigorously define a mental illness outside of the context of a given society. Mental illnesses are not real in the same sense that, say, a broken leg is real. They are socially determined. Other societies outside the West don't have the same kind of mental illnesses we do.

> ADHD affects many aspects of a person's life—and adults too. Living independently with unmedicated ADHD can be incredibly difficult. Everything from social life, working, to driving, is harder/riskier.

Being ugly makes life hard, too. Does that mean being ugly is a disease? Should all of us ugly people get plastic surgery to treat our disease, as a matter of course?

Ultimately, none of this shows ADHD is an objective disease. In the anthropological view of mental illness, it is a disease - because our society claims that it is, and for no other reason. Psychiatrists are not that much different from witch doctors. (https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19710325&id=...)

I seem to find myself recommending Gatto's The Underground History of American Education on a reasonably regular basis, and indeed here I am doing it again. The Internet Archive has it in various formats at https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanE.... While its conclusions are far from incontrovertible, the author does a good job of sourcing and supporting his argument, and I think you might find it worth your while.

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