Comment by timeagain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timeagain | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally most of my friends are now quick to attribute their (mostly benign) behaviors to various mental health shortcomings. This is new, the same people ten years ago were not doing this.

My narrative (based entirely on hunches) is that it has become very trendy in social media to assign any “strange” behavior to mental disorders like autism, adhd, bipolar… Conveniently, the same social media that thrives on cultivating these behaviors. Short attention spans, niche interests, and mood swings are all part of the SM addiction machine.

So social media says “you might have ADHD if (insert normal thing)”. People self identify, and now watching videos for 4 hours can be chalked up to the mental deficiency instead of the addictive substance.

Over-all this trend to me is a way of relinquishing responsibility, since it’s “just my brain” it is outside of one’s locus of control.

There is also more pressure now than ever to be a rational economic agent, and compared to that most of us have forgetfulness, procrastination, social shortcomings, moods that are not conducive to being an employee, etc.

I have a hard time believing that modern people are any more mentally challenged than those in the past, we are just much more quick to pathologies normal human experiences. It is convenient that this pathologizing is a boon for TikTok.

30 years ago, my mom explained to me that my cousin was "retarded" and made all sorts of excuses for how she was mistreated and infantilized by her family. Today, she's on the high functioning end of autism. Which my mom doesn't "believe in." My cousin has a greater degree of self-confidence than she did in the past, enabled in some part by a more specific diagnosis and a more accepting culture surrounding mental health variation.

It's more nuanced than that - yes there are people who are self-diagnosing themselves and finding a way to cop out.

And there are charlatans - taking advantage of the situation.

Cerebral comes to mind - https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/cerebral-order-adhd-anx...

But on the flip side - these disorders are getting attention and people who were simply told that they were "dumb" and "retarded" are seeking diagnosis and treatment and becoming productive members of society.

> Over-all this trend to me is a way of relinquishing responsibility, since it’s “just my brain” it is outside of one’s locus of control.

That would only be the case if one didn't seek treatment, perhaps because of stigma due to attitudes like this; if someone pursues a course of treatment they are in fact accepting responsibility.

Doesn't that treatment mean medication they want? Mind altering drugs. Some ADHD medication seems to be a weaker version of Speed

They literally are amphetamines. But they aren't "mind altering" for people with ADHD, like me. They reduce anxiety. I can fall asleep on Adderall.

They don't change me at all, they're kind of like glasses. Suddenly I don't have to work nearly so hard to do things.

That's facile. Those conditions were always underdiagnosed. In the past, people just struggled.

For example, I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s and it explained a lot of things I had always struggled with, and meds were incredibly helpful.

There's no value in making life any more difficult than it already is, and there's no award for who can endure the most.

I did manage without meds or a diagnosis, but with them, it's like dropping a 50lb pack you didn't know was there.

People (especially parents and teachers) espousing opinions like yours make life dramatically harder for people with real challenges. :(

"It's not real, you're fine, probably just lazy" is crazymaking. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.

There's also a pathologizing of human behaviour, or things we could call Personalities. Boys at a certain age can have difficulty sitting in a classroom and focusing on classes for 6 hours like their female counterparts, and can be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Things that they "grow out of". This isn't to say ADHD doesn't exist, just that there is misdiagnosis

Thirty years ago it was also believed that you could just cure gayness.

And 70 years ago woman were not allowed to vote.

It's so common that even today you hear people defending rapists because either it wasn't rape or a family member or it would be shameful to the family to have a dirty person.

While your one sided analysis might also have some merits the past was not known at all to be full of facets.

This is an achievement of modern times thanks to more global and faster communication through the internet and also denser population.

And yes it is a real problem when everyone has a smartphone and uses it constantly. The answer? Time budgeting build into our phones.

> My narrative (based entirely on hunches)

Thankfully, we base our society around science, which looks to hard data, as much as possible, over the gut feelings of the local shaman. It's imperfect, but it's better than the past, when the Sun revolved around the Earth, and explanations (epicycles) and people were tortured.

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