First of all, I appreciate your sharing of personal anecdotal experience (I mean that sincerely), and I am open to more infomation. But you should be also willing to educate yourself on what your country and system are doing. What I am about to share with you below — if you click the links, will probably shock you and make you question whether the issue is really your personal medical issue. At the very least, you have probably never seen it before.
First of all, no one is saying that it’s “all in your head” or you can snap yourself out of it. Any more than diabetes is in people’s heads. What I’ve been saying is that you are downstream of a fixable problem, that most of society doesn’t realize — or even have the desire to fix - with its current priorities.
I certainly understand how you feel you have a genetic disorder or clinical disease that can only be “managed” by medical intervention.
It’s not your fault. You are an individual who has been told by your country’s system that things are the way they are, because it is always easier to externalize the cost to the individual and make them believe a story than to fix the problems of industry. Here is just a sample list that goes well beyond ADHD or obesity, and into factory farms, plastic pollution, and more… it is always the same pattern:
When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
But I will go even further. Even effective cures to major diseases that are not approved by the bureaucracy, are shut down by the USA. All the way up to and including cures for diseases that you would think you’d know about. You as an individual probably NEVER heard of this:
This is a video showing actual footage from all the congressional hearings, the actual results of multiple scientific inquiries at the highest level — the text of the actual letters from the CDC, and actual medical journal reportings that you have never heard about.
It is like “progress and poverty” by Henri George, a bestselling economic book totally forgotten today… similarly this kind of stuff has been systematically buried by your government.
I know I got really deep with this comment but who on HN has seen for example the video I linked to above, and how deep the rabbithole goes?
I got diagnosed in middle age after a very long assessment that cost me a lot of money, because I wanted accuracy. If it was depression, neglect or trauma I would've been fine with that assessment too. I had no idea going in that I was anything close to ADHD, just extremely frustrated at my career & life stagnation. If I known years ago I'd would've been about 7 or 8 years ahead in my career.
Yes ADHD is a different mind structure, it's also being called neurodiverse. But just watch a kiddo or a completely dysfunctional adult a with severe ADHD / autism and you quickly dissuade yourself that it isn't a problem and isn't a dysfunctional disability, and to expect a society to totally reconfigure itself beyond the equivalent of a few wheelchair ramps to match a forever minority with a lack of various mental abilities is economically naive.
Just like how we don't mandate zero-flicker lightbulbs for autstic people with sensory issues for the entire country because they consume more power with a higher power factor.
But it doesn't matter much either way in the end, and seeing how conspiratorial you are, I don't think I'd get much of anywhere trying to convince you otherwise. Sadly or happily, reality is way more mundane than you think it is.
Also many freak out about stimulants, but they really are not that big of a deal IMO. If ADHD didn't involve stimulants, one of the most effective mental health medications for any mental condition out there BTW, I don't think you'd get this denial of treatment for the condition so much.
1) He shows how an actual physiological cause of some cases of severe ADHD have persistent behavioral implications, such as a split between the knowledge and executive parts of the brain illustrated (crudely) in his diagram.
2) Around 2:211 "now you might be able to train up some of these executive functions, we don't know that yet." Indeed, even for many actually problematic cases, we don't know yet how far non-medical interventions can go.
3) My main question is this: What is the proportion of people diagnosed with ADHD that actually have such a pronounced physiological divergence? My point is that it is small, and the DSM-5 criteria are applied by simply choosing M of N symptoms to be present. The same is true for autism spectrum, and for gender dysphoria, and all have been on a tear in terms of diagnoses, in countries around the world where governments and schools specifically instituted related top-down policies about it:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7011a1.htm to quote the Introduction:
ASD prevalence estimates have increased from 6.7 (one in 150) per 1,000 children aged 8 years at ADDM Network sites in surveillance years 2000 and 2002 to 18.5 (one in 54) in surveillance year 2016 (3–10). Over time, the proportion of children with ASD who also have intellectual disability has decreased from approximately one half in 2000 and 2002 to one third in 2016 (3,4,10).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95421-9 (Sweden) to quote the abstract:
The incidence of GD, defined as ≥ 4 diagnoses increased significantly during the study period and mostly in the age categories 10–17 and 18–30 years, even after adjusting for register coverage. We concluded that the validity of a single ICD code denoting clinical GD in the Swedish NPR can be questioned.
and so on.
4) Even in cases of e.g. gender dysphoria, we simply don't know enough about how many cases are due to social media and peer groups, and there are many activists who are looking to silence inconvenient studies such as the 2018 study of "Rapid-Onset-Gender-Dysphoria" for teens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...
Humans are social animals. If we were as diligent in looking at the social and dietary causes for children, as we are for adults, we would probably find a lot better solutions than just medicating people. For example:
As for conspiracies, look, how crazy do you want to get? What if you knew that the FDA tried for 40 years to bury certain effective treatments that cure cancer. Even though tons of people were getting cured, they tried harder than they ever have to shut it down for years. It sounds like some hyperbolic nonsense, but tell me after you look this video (flip through it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmxUsAI29fw ... it has all the studies, texts results from medical journals, double-blind studies, TV footage of multiple congressional inquiries, repeated admissions from the CDC directors themselves on video, etc.
Once you start looking for this stuff, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that our society isn't exactly set up for anything other than "medication".
Reading many different viewpoints is not a virtue if it is done with such credulity as to buy into such nonsense as this:
> The Burzynski Clinic is a clinic offering an unproven cancer treatment, which has been characterized as harmful quackery. It was founded in 1976 and is located in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It offers a form of chemotherapy called "antineoplaston therapy" devised by the clinic's founder Stanislaw Burzynski in the 1970s. Antineoplaston is Burzynski's term for a group of urine-derived peptides, peptide derivatives, and mixtures. There is no accepted scientific evidence of benefit from antineoplaston combinations for various diseases.
> The clinic has been the focus of criticism primarily due to the way its antineoplaston therapy is promoted, the costs for people with cancer participating in trials of antineoplastons and problems with the way these trials are run. Legal cases have been brought as a result of the sale of the therapy without regulatory approval.
> Burzynski is also the president and founder of a pharmaceutical company, the Burzynski Research Institute, which manufacturers his antineoplaston drugs.
> When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
That is only one possible explanation.
For example an underdeveloped country might appear to have lower prevalence of dementia than a more developed country. Perhaps because the former lacks effective nationwide medical diagnostic abilities, or perhaps because fewer in their population make it to old age where the disease shows up, or perhaps because they have a religious belief that conflates it with devilry so it goes unreported. In all of those situations the ground truth prevalence could be exactly the same in both countries, yet the developed country would report higher rates of the disease than the underdeveloped country.
If your society has you working on a small farm as a child instead of going to school and doing knowledge work, of course ADHD will be underreported. That doesn't mean it's not present.
There may be some causation from ADHD to obesity, I can't say, but otherwise they are categorically different issues.
Well, there can be various explanations, but France is not an underdeveloped country, neither is Finland. Their medical systems do report ADHD, although they might not so zealously overdiagnose it. French parents are more involved with their children, have far lower divorce rates, and work shorter hours than USA. Having "no time" is a point of national pride in the USA and there are even crass commercials that dial up the capitalism memes to an 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
Here are possible reasons why kids have ADHD:
1) The world is far more fast-paced. ADULTS haven't fared much better, and you'd hardly argue that everyone is genetically predisposed to having the attention span of a goldfish... it's clearly a societal thing: https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span
2) Technology affects society. Corporations are incentivized to put ever more ads in front of you, and now we all have cell phones in our pocket, connected to the internet at all times. Being distracted at dinner, notifications you have to check to make sure it's not important, etc.
3) Now that people can be reached anytime by their phone, any SMS or email causes anxiety that maybe it's from your boss, etc.
4) Even the tools that HN loves so much are often detrimental. Real-time is a gimmick, and studies show that Slack, etc. is actually worse for mental well-being and productivity overall. Here is a recent NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/23/magazine/cal-...
Again, ALL THESE THINGS are related to how capitalism and technology affects society and all of us. The very things that we are Hacker News are involved in, and we can do something to make a better world. Instead of saying that people deserve to be medicated. 1 in 4 middle aged women is on antidepressants ... what's more compassionate -- finding out the underlying reasons and building a better dating site for instance, or just assuming that's the new norm and selling as many pills as they will buy?
First of all, I appreciate your sharing of personal anecdotal experience (I mean that sincerely), and I am open to more infomation. But you should be also willing to educate yourself on what your country and system are doing. What I am about to share with you below — if you click the links, will probably shock you and make you question whether the issue is really your personal medical issue. At the very least, you have probably never seen it before.
First of all, no one is saying that it’s “all in your head” or you can snap yourself out of it. Any more than diabetes is in people’s heads. What I’ve been saying is that you are downstream of a fixable problem, that most of society doesn’t realize — or even have the desire to fix - with its current priorities.
I certainly understand how you feel you have a genetic disorder or clinical disease that can only be “managed” by medical intervention.
It’s not your fault. You are an individual who has been told by your country’s system that things are the way they are, because it is always easier to externalize the cost to the individual and make them believe a story than to fix the problems of industry. Here is just a sample list that goes well beyond ADHD or obesity, and into factory farms, plastic pollution, and more… it is always the same pattern:
https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
But I will go even further. Even effective cures to major diseases that are not approved by the bureaucracy, are shut down by the USA. All the way up to and including cures for diseases that you would think you’d know about. You as an individual probably NEVER heard of this:
https://youtu.be/rmxUsAI29fw
This is a video showing actual footage from all the congressional hearings, the actual results of multiple scientific inquiries at the highest level — the text of the actual letters from the CDC, and actual medical journal reportings that you have never heard about.
It is like “progress and poverty” by Henri George, a bestselling economic book totally forgotten today… similarly this kind of stuff has been systematically buried by your government.
I know I got really deep with this comment but who on HN has seen for example the video I linked to above, and how deep the rabbithole goes?