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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

Are you also skeptical of obesity in teens because eating a lot is just the general nature of teens, especially boys? Are you appalled that diabetics take insulin every day because you once injected yourself with insulin you didn't need and experienced severe side effects?

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Diabetes is a biological disease which can be objectively proven and diagnosed based on biological tests.

There are no objective biological diagnostic criteria for anything in the DSM.

"psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests" -Allen Frances, The New Crisis of Confidence in Psychiatric Diagnosis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances

That's only because we have no way to measure it, not because it's not also a physical problem.

Also, it's really not the case that non-mental diseases have categorically clearer diagnostic criteria.

>That's only because we have no way to measure it, not because it's not also a physical problem

People say the same thing about God.

Measurability is a fundamental requirement of science for something to be tested or studied systematically.

While it's not commonly used, there are biological markers researched these days. Vitamin levels (https://sci-hub.se/10.1192/bjpo.bp.116.003491) and TRY/KYN/IND ratios (https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.mehy.2013.11.018) - YMMV, but following that thread, supplementing those works great for me.

These comparisons feel like bad faith. This is what they actually said:

> I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects some children ...

They explicitly say that they know it affects some children, but they're concerned that it's overdiagnosed because the symptoms have overlap with normal child development. This isn't some kind of uninformed conspiracy theory, it's a legitimate concern shared by experts in the field [0].

My fear isn't that experts get confused and mix up real ADHD with normal childhood, my fear is that parents expect too much of their kids and convince their family doctor (who isn't an expert) to diagnose the child and prescribe Adderall. That fear is totally compatible with ADHD also being a real thing that actually needs treatment in other children.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8042533/

Wait... Which barbaric country is that where a simple family doctor can prescribe amphetamines like that? Not in my EU country. It's a controlled medication and can only be prescribed by psychiatrists.

Canada is one of them, my family doctor put me on Vyvanse, after seing me for the second time for an unrelated problem, because he noted that I was alternating between hyperfocus and zoning out when he talked to me.

It positively changed my life and I am quite happy that a "simple family doctor" can prescribe amphetamines if he thinks that it's appropriate.

Well, he could instead send you to a specialized doctor, me thinks... But what do I know, anyway.

In the us, any MD can prescribe almost anything.

>These comparisons feel like bad faith. This is what they actually said:

Taking prescription medication without a prescription or the condition it's meant to treat and then using its effects on you to decry its use by those with both seems like bad faith.

He took prescription medication that was not prescribed to him and is now judging the people it is meant for based on his own interaction with the drug. A drug that quite famously has entirely different effects on the target population.

That is either extremely ignorant or bad faith. Either way it's below HN's standards.

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