Having grown up in post collapse USSR where every one of the issues you listed was 10X worse, it's genuinely disheartening to see so many people adopt an external locus of control and let it dictate their life.
But it's important to recognize people have different challenges and live different lives than you.
I'm likely much younger than you. My parents were able to afford to raise me in a house they owned, at my current age. I am not and nowhere near that buying power. My parents can look forward to a retirement fund. I cannot. My parents were able to work through the summer to pay for their graduate degrees. Graduate degrees are too expensive for me to attain, now. My parents could afford to take me to the emergency room when I had fevers as a child. I cannot afford a single emergency room visit for anything.
My solution: Recenter your life around your family unit, do more physical activity, get off social media. Build a life worth living.
The solution we went with: Take some pills so you can manage the horror of your disconnected life devoid of meaning and purpose.
Problem: Energetic young boys are having trouble sitting in school for hours on end.
My solution: Focus more on hands on activities, bring back woodshop and metalshop, include more breaks for physical activity during the day.
The solution we went with: Get the boys so high on stimulants they can sit still like the girls.
It's easier (and more profitable) to feed people pills than to build a society that people are happy in so that's what we do, but hey the line went up!
This is a bit inaccurate. ADHD is diagnosed more in boys than girls, but is way, way more debilitating than being energetic to the point where they may be incredibly dangerous in a woodshop or metalshop. It's not being able to keep track of each tool being used, or the order in which to use them. It's forgetting to turn machines off, and forgetting to unplug dangerous equipment. It's turning around to grab something and forgetting what you turned around for, and then forgetting the task you were doing before you realized you were missing a part.
I would argue against treating ADHD like it's not a legitimate disability that requires accommodation. In the past, people with ADHD were just told they were stupid, lazy, or absentminded, when in reality they had a neurological disorder that had no diagnosis and no treatment at the time.
That being said I overall agree with the fact that society doesn't allow for breathing room for people to be people and form human relationships that doesn't have a financial or economic angle. This is horrendous, and no amount of therapy or medication will resolve this fundamental, societal-level problem. But ADHD is real, acting like ADHD treatment is just societal feminization of men is a completely incorrect depiction of the disorder. We can simultaneously argue that the medical system is completely fucked and also acknowledge that sometimes you really do need a surgeon to repair broken legs!
ADHD is described as having difficulty with:
* paying attention
* listening closely
* following instructions
* organizing tasks in the workplace
* keeping track of physical objects
These are all things you need to do in a metal and woodshop!
Have you never sat down and talked to someone with ADHD describe their basic experiences? I know people with ADHD who literally need all of their things hung up on display on a wall or else they lose them. There is an extremely popular guide for organizing with ADHD that recommends tearing cabinet doors off cabinets because it's impossible to remember where things are once put away.
Here's a popular podcaster talking about having ADHD and needing accommodations, and goes deeply into his experiences with having ADHD and struggling to, for example, go to work on time because there are too many tasks to keep track of to go to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBxaBauF4M
Perhaps the most respected clinical researchers/professors on the subject Dr. Russel A Barkley, devotes a sizable chunk of his book to the many contradictory definitions that exist in scientific lit.
https://www.guilford.com/books/Executive-Functions/Russell-B...
I bring this up to let space for discussion back into the topic. We shouldn't pretend like we have a full definition of ADHD or Executive Function Disorder. There are some aspects that receive wide agreement, a lot of pet theory unproven hypothesis being pushed around, and even more folklore disguised through scientific jargon.
My answer to this is the same as 99% of peoples answer: no.
I have been in the company of people with ADHD at various stages throughout my life and this depiction doesn't fully align with my personal observations. From what I've experienced, individuals with ADHD do face challenges, but they are not universally incompetent or dangerous. They may struggle in some areas but excel in others. My ask for a source was to understand if this portrayal was based on a study or evidence, or if it was a personal observation.
I also am shocked that you have apparently been in company of people with ADHD and you've never considered asking them how they experience their disorder. I mean, at minimum, it's important to ask how to accommodate them or if they'd like you to be considerate of anything in particular with respect to their disability. Can you explain how do you handle people who are in your circle and clearly have different positions than you do-- do you never ask them questions?
I can't continue this conversation as you are not commenting in good faith. You're "shocked" that I've never asked someone with ADHD to describe their condition? As I have already said, that puts me in the Most People camp.
People have different comfort levels with discussing their conditions and I have no reason to ask them. Just like I have never asked a wheelchair user any questions about them using a wheelchair.
edited to add: I'm genuinely asking and have continued to behave in good faith. I have no idea what makes you think I'm not. You seem to be repeatedly misunderstanding my position which is weird: I'm shocked you have 1) interacted with disabled people in your life; 2) apparently never ask about their experiences or accommodations! I don't think that's at all in a "most people" camp.
I didn't take my meds yesterday because I'm not currently home so they're not in the same place they normally are and I forgot. I was going to go for a run, but by 8 am it was so hot I couldn't do it and just walked outside for a little while. I don't like taking my meds too late, and I wasn't working or really doing anything all day so I figured it was fine.
My partner did have to work yesterday, and she asked me to feed her mice. Their cage has four (maybe three? several) levels, each one with its own door. I opened the second door from the top to feed them, but they were on the top level so I ended up opening that door to feed them instead. I then happily went and fixed myself dinner.
I didn't notice I left the other door open until she came back an hour later. I'm just glad none of the mice escaped.
love to be a woman with ADHD-PH and read this shit
That's not the problem
> My solution: Focus more on hands on activities, bring back woodshop and metalshop, include more breaks for physical activity during the day.
Schools today seem to have more hands on activities and breaks for physical activities then they did when I was a kid in the 1980s; at least my kids' school certainly does.
While it helps some for ADHD (not its main purpose), it doesn't actually stop ADHD from being an issue for kids (not just boys) that have it. Individualized support helps more, and, where appropriate, medication helps even more.
> The solution we went with: Get the boys so high on stimulants they can sit still like the girls.
Getting high on stimulants doesn't make people more able to sit still.
Its true that some stimulants have a paradoxical effect that is the exact opposite of getting high in certain doses for people with ADHD, and this is leveraged therapeutically (not just boys), but, well, that's not the same thing.
ADHD isn’t the same as being energetic. Clinical depression isn't sadness.
Easier said than done. You need money and a job fore that. A job which makes many people miserable.
I don't think you need all that much money to build a life worth living, at least in my experience.
Then legislation got passed to make work not awful, and two World Wars happened that killed huge swathes of the prime working demographic -- 18-40 year old men -- and opened up the market for those who were left. That world doesn't exist anymore, and labor legislation is being peeled back.
The message for the last decade has been very much don't-feel-guilt-or-shame about anything, just blame those who came before you. Doesn't matter if your parents divorced, stayed together, were overattentive, were underattentive, were poor or were rich. It's their fault you're miserable.
In reality, it's learned helplessness reinforced by social media and ongoing tech developments. Let me drive for you. Let me cook for you. Let me entertain you. Let me tell you what to believe. Let me write "your" speech for you and create "your" art for you.
It's life in captivity. Animals in cages at the zoo are always miserable.
This is the way things need to be though. You're not Elon Musk's rich uncle. If changing the fate of the entire world is your goal, you will die unaccomplished, frustrated and be miserable the entire time. It's beyond your control, even collectively, and obsessing about ambitions beyond your capabilities only leads to madness.
Tend your own lot in life. Fix the things you can. "Climate is heating up" should not mean "design, launch and deploy a functional solar shield;" to you, it should mean "migrate somewhere cooler." Once you're capable of achieving small goals like saving your own ass, then you can afford to be more ambitious and worry about everyone else's.
Sure, but that's not what I was advocating at all. I was very particular with my words in suggesting tending your own lot first, then helping others instead of the other way around. (People that only look out for themselves generally don't need to be told to do so!)
It's the plane-oxygen-mask situation. You can't fix global warming for everyone without securing money and influence for yourself. So focus on securing those first. Empathy unchecked by logic is just hysteria.
I am from a country where the median income is less than $10k, the gini coefficient is higher than the US, and where the six-day workweek is the norm. I literally don't know anyone on an SSRI. Sure, it's very possible someone is suffering in silence, but it's a far cry from when I studied in the United States and more than half of my classmates were medicated for mental disorders or went to therapists.
Psychiatry is only really significant in wealthy societies. It requires a lot of resources- Look at the psychiatrist themselves: Need a medical education, and then need to choose a field that helps people with more subtle diseases. Most poor countries don't have an abundance of doctors, and the doctors they have focus on illnesses that are going to physically hurt people.
Then look at the patients. They need to have enough money to pay the psychologist, and then they need to have enough time to schedule the appointments, stick with them, and afford the pills.
Looking at the basic resources and constraints of a society, it'd be very surprising if poor countries had as many diagnoses of psychiatric conditions as wealthy countries.
And please note: I'm not making a value judgement on psychiatry here! Only saying that it requires a certain level of prosperity to become an element of society.
World Health Organisation does a bunch of work on safer pesticides because it's so commonly used as a method in lower income countries.
https://www.who.int/news/item/17-12-2020-new-study-highlight...
(Reducing access to means and methods is part of a package of measures that can be used to reduce deaths by suicide, and suicidality. It's important to remember that it's not the only thing being done).
The discussion around depression and anxiety is also relatively new in Japan, but at the same time the evidence of those issues is not, look at NEETs and Hikikomori, a high suicide rate, and the aforementioned Jōhatsu! The thing is that in Japan there's a very strong tendency to keep that sort of thing in the family, keep it away from prying eyes. Your point about how shame works in different cultures is right on the mark IMO.