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.
>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.
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.
> 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/