12 ms·

The author really does not do a great job, here, at least in saying something sensible as a response to DeBoer's piece. The core premise seems to be that: > I

The author really does not do a great job, here, at least in saying something sensible as a response to DeBoer's piece. The core premise seems to be that: > I find it so very irritating that there is no term for my so-called ⸢attention deficit disorder⸣ that does not have the word “disorder” baked into it. I know what a disorder is, and this isn't one. But the author then argues against a strawman: > Why does any deviation from the standard have to be a disorder? Why do we medicalize human variation? It doesn't, and in fact, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life. What the author really seems to be criticizing is that he learned and began identifying with the medical term for a disorder ("the ADD really is a part of my identity") and now he'd like a different way to describe his experience. Fair! But get the cause-and-effect the right way around: we don't need to "stop labeling every difference as a disorder," we need to not adopt diagnostic terms and apply them to ourselves inappropriately. That's a part of what DeBoer is criticizing—that people self-diagnose and then "perform their various personalities." To be clear, I agree with the author that it would help to have terminology for people who don't feel negatively impacted by their brains being different in a way that we can label, not just for those who do. Maybe the author could get started with that by dropping the "disorder" bit and just identifying himself as someone with an attention deficit.

thevagrant 4y ago
That's right, the point of being diagnosed is that there is a range of symptoms, which left untreated amount to significant negative life outcomes.
Mandatum 4y ago
I think the main gripe sits with how we label it and the way we associate with the label. Yes, in a medical context we can use words like retard, but it's not acceptable to use this word in front of a patient because often the medical definition isn't known. To the same degree disorder may be an acceptable label by a clinician, but we need a different word for regular everyday use - because if I come into work and tell everyone I have a disorder, they're going to make assumptions. And then back into the closet that information goes. I'd say a lot of people don't share information about their neurodiversity for this very reason. The fact the top comment here argues about the linguistics rather than the content or spirit of the article, tells me we're not ready for that yet. Which is surprising given the readership of this website likely caters to more neuro atypicals than average.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  I don't think it's just a linguistic point. The non-stigmatizing alternative is to not label things, and to just speak in conversational language about the ways our minds are diverse. In particular, I think it's important to recognize that most people do share information about their neurodiversity, and really this is the key point of neurodiversity as a term. When there's no "disorder" framework lurking in the background, people are happy to talk about how they're cranky in the morning or terrible at public speaking or spent the last 30 minutes anxiously editing their 5 line email. It's only when people worry about falling under some particular label that letting others know becomes an issue.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  >"...And then back into the closet that information goes." Or used against you. Happened several times in my life, no thank you. The iron thing is. Most of them are working in care.
- robocat 4y ago
  > Yes, in a medical context we can use words like retard Not applied to intelligence in the USA[2]. Personally I think retard is a fine word, so long as it is not applied to anyone with a low IQ, which most people wouldn’t do. Idiot, imbecile, and moron[1] are also fabulous words, which have lost their technical meaning from last century, because they were repurposed for “vernacular” use. Then again, I like using “special” or “speshul” too, so perhaps I am just bigoted. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376300800513 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376300800... (1963) [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150627145120/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704865104575588273153838564 https://web.archive.org/web/20150627145120/http://www.wsj.co... (2010) The concern, by some, is that eventually new terms will become a new pejorative. " 'Intellectual disabilities' carries less baggage with it at this moment," said Douglas Biklen, dean of the School of Special Education at Syracuse University. "Twenty years from now, it can become the new epithet."
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
If the authors life is not being impacted by his ADHD then he does not have ADHD. The clinical diagnosis for a mental illness is that it impacts your life in a negative way. His attention deficit does not impact his life in a negative way, therefore it’s not a disorder. The author frankly does not know what he’s talking about. And, clinically, he does not have ADHD. I have a mood disorder (NPSLE). I am on permanent disability and I have been hospitalized several times. Even though I know my disorder comes with a gift, and rather unappreciated gift because I do consider myself neurodivergent, I also know at times I want to die at my own hands. And I also know it makes me unable to work. I think the threshold for where we think some Neurotype is affecting our life has been lowered dramatically.
- dang 4y ago
  Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack. That's always important, but especially when the topic is as sensitive and emotional as this. Certainly you're welcome to share your own experience—that's important, and what you've said about it here is important. We just need it to come without swipes and putdowns towards others. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you before about breaking the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570715). If you wouldn't mind reviewing them and sticking to the intended spirit of the site, we'd appreciate it.
- chrischen 4y ago
  > If the authors life is not being impacted by his ADHD then he does not have ADHD. I’m not sure this is correct. If someone is managing their ADHD it doesn’t mean they don’t have it.
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    The expression of a disease or disorder is all that really matters. If he went into a doctors office today, instead of say 10 years ago, they would not diagnosed him with ADHD.
drewcoo 4y ago
That's not a straw man. He's just stating the same thing you are when you say: > disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder That is medicalizing diversity. Creating "disorders" where no one is bothered by them. This is not uncommon in psychology. In the 1970s, homosexuality was also a "disorder."
- djur 4y ago
  I think the underlying tension here comes from the fact that people are currently prescribed drugs for ADHD on the basis that it is a disorder that needs to be treated, and a lot of those people would like to still have access to that medication while also being less stigmatized. The analogy to homosexuality is problematic because in that same analogy Adderall is equivalent to conversion therapy.
- ekanes 4y ago
  Right, a disorder is something that interferes materially with your life.
- GavinMcG 4y ago
  No, he isn't: he supposes that "any deviation from the standard" is called a disorder. That's false: we call something a disorder when it disrupts people's lives, not just when there's diversity. "Disorder" only applies when someone is bothered—and addressing the bother isn't "medicalization" any more than cleft palate repair or prescribing eyeglasses. He seems committed to using the term "disorder" about himself, even though he says he doesn't have one. But it's a problem of his own making: he could stop saying he has ADD and start saying he has an attention deficit.
djur 4y ago
The "neurodiversity" viewpoint here is that what we call "ADHD" is part of the natural variation in how human brains work, and that it's a category error to think of it as a malfunction to be repaired, but rather as a difference to be accommodated. That accommodation may or may not be via medication and therapy, but that shouldn't necessarily mean that the underlying neurological state is a diseased one. A good analogy would be height: a person who is several standard deviations from the mean will face challenges in life that require various forms of intervention, but we don't generally think of them as having a _disorder_ unless there's an identifiable biological cause that usually has other effects. Another good point of comparison is vision. We can accurately measure vision and create medical devices to correct unwanted variation. As someone with myopia, I find it to be only slightly medicalized -- going to get an eye exam doesn't feel much like visiting a doctor, and people don't tend to talk about it as one does a medical condition. I imagine that if we were able to make a similar kind of standardized assessment of whatever neurological basis there is for ADHD, we would consider medication for it more akin to a stepladder or a pair of glasses (or even an antihistamine) than a treatment for a mental illness.
- girvo 4y ago
  > and people don't tend to talk about it as one does a medical condition While I basically entirely agree with your comment, my partner (who is an optometrist here in Australia) would often point out to me that myopia is a big risk factor for retinal degeneration and detachment, open angle glaucoma, and cataracts at a young age. So while we definitely shouldn't treat mild myopia (like I, and likely you have) as some horrific medical condition, she also gets a bit frustrated by general practitioners and retail optoms who don't treat a lot of the eye diseases she handles with the gravity some of them actually should bear. Anyway this is a massive tangent, just was something interesting I wanted to share!
  - photojosh 4y ago
    Fascinating. Seems to me that it would be a comorbidity with a common cause though, rather than the myopia being the causative factor? My (somewhat loosely informed) intuition suggests to me that in the same way that not spending enough time exposing the eye to light outdoors increases the severity of myopia, it would likely be causative in those other degenerations. Use it or lose it! Not that I know anyone who spent all of their childhood with nose in a book then graduated to a computer, cough... I say this having quite mild myopia, although I wear glasses still, can't stand a blurry world.
jeffheard 4y ago
I find ADHD to be an "occasional" disorder. I feel very much like the author much of the time, but honestly I want it to continue to be researched as a disorder, because I want strategies and medications that are better than post-it notes and Adderall (and yes, I've tried lots and no, none of them are better for me than the occasional 5mg of Adderall). Most of the time, ADD works in my favor. But sometimes, (and NOT always due to "societal expectations") I need my brain to work differently than it does, and for those occasions the meds do wonders. But I truly hate the after-effects, thus I rarely take them.
- porknubbins 4y ago
  I have family members with similar issues. If you could could elaborate, what are the common situations when ADD works in your favor, and what are the times when you find you need your brain to work differently?
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    Not the GP, but times I find it helpful: 1. When high levels of energy or reaction are required e.g. sports and games where reaction speed and/or impulsivity is advantageous. I have been told on multiple occasions when I have been in emergency situations with others, that I do not tend to "Freeze up" like many others do. 2. High stress environments -- When it gets down to "Fire and Brimstone" time, I can develop a "hyperfocus" in which I can focus for an exceptionally and unhealthy long amount of time. However, too much of this without recharging, and I burnout. In fact, I think there is a joke that ADHD medical school students all become ER doctors. 3. Environments where divergent and abstract thinking is beneficial over convergent thinking. I often think I can come up with good ideas, but I personally find my mind falling short of being able implement them. 4. Social situations. I know this somewhat ironic, since we tend to have trouble listening and pay attention to conversations, but I seriously have done extremely well in any role dealing with customer service, talking to unfamiliar people, etc.. I imagine a part of this is possible due to my personality, but I have heard anecdotes from other people with ADHD having similar experiences.
    - 4y ago
michaelbrave 4y ago
My main grip with having ADHD is why it's so damn hard to do simple things like open the mail or make a phone call, it's almost like needing a secretary to survive. Second gripe is how hard it is to get an appointment to get medication sorted. I've never felt judged or victimized for it, though I have felt personally lacking due to my struggles to get things done.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  > I've never felt judged or victimized for it I wish I could say the same. Were you diagnosed as child or an adult? I was diagnosed as an adult, and the school system I grew up in was rather... unwilling... to accommodate my "personality" differences.
  - photojosh 4y ago
    There's probably a nuance to be found here between the 2 parent posts... when a person is "judged or victimized"; is that for: - the behaviour they've been exhibiting, or - the actual label/diagnosis of ADHD I feel like hirvi is talking about the former, in childhood years, whereas michael perhaps is about adult life and the latter?
escapedmoose 4y ago
I’ve often thought that I could be diagnosed with ADHD if I wanted, but I don’t feel the need to label myself with a “disorder” and its possible stigma for something that I feel helps me more than it hurts (now that I’ve learned strategies to work with it). Then again, it might have been easier/faster to find my coping strategies if I was diagnosed early. For these reasons, I think it would be helpful to drop the “disorder” bit culturally.
d0mine 4y ago
Imagine your skin has a different from your neighbors color. Would it be sensible to consider it a disorder? Even if it may happen that it negatively affects your every day life, and it may be maladaptation in the region where you live but it may be a considerable advantage if you had lived on different latitude. Or consider a game where different character classes exist e.g., Necromancer (can raise an army with no resource, quickly) and Wizard (requires lots of resources, slow to develop though some units are exceptionally strong). Would it make sense to consider being a Wizard to be a disorder in such a game?
- haswell 4y ago
  Does someone with dementia have a disorder? Does someone with congenital heart failure have a disorder? I'm not suggesting that ADHD is on par with congenital heart failure, but neither are skin color or one's propensity towards wizardry on par with ADHD.
  - d0mine 4y ago
    The point is that we shouldn't consider screwdrivers to be demented hammers even If you are a hammer like most in your surroundings. If a game map is small (there is not much time for development before you are destroyed) and/or resource-poor then being Wizard is certainly a disadvantage compared to Necromancer (it is a "disorder", wizards are "demented" from the Necromancer's point of you).
    - haswell 4y ago
      Except humans are not primitive tools, and the brain is not a piece on a game board. Perhaps a concept like CPU/GPU binning would be a bit more helpful to consider, but even then, it reduces one’s entire experience into manufacturing terms. The worst CPUs are thrown in the trash. So are the broken hammers, and eventually the screwdriver misused as a hammer.
      - d0mine 4y ago
        You are trying to reduce human mind to one bit: broken/working. Humans have strong general intelligence and therefore are capable of solving many different tasks. There are many different tasks in the world where different characteristics may be useful in addition to pounding nails (though if you are a hammer, it may be hard to imagine) The existence of screwdrivers shouldn't be considered a disorder.
aahortwwy 4y ago
> the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life. > interfering with someone's life The specific phrase used in the DSM-V is: "symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning". Schooling started to become compulsory in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century, and really only became universal in the early 20th century. By the late 20th century we had decided that children whose normal behavior "interfered with or reduced [...] academic [...] functioning" had a disorder. We created a system that does not accommodate everyone, then turned around and said that those who are not accommodated are definitionally disordered. The logic is clearly backwards. Similar story with labor.
- GavinMcG 4y ago
  That's a convenient explanation, but it doesn't account for the emotional dysregulation that accompanies ADHD. And it's historically dead wrong: symptom clusters associated with ADHD were described as early as 1798, and were identified in the 1800s outside the school context. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/
- kqr 4y ago
  I am very close to someone who suffers from this disorder. Their inability to function in terms of personal care, family, social life, occupationally, etc. goes way beyond "normal behaviour in a system that does not accommodate everyone". Try imagining a literal five-year old in a grown-up body. That's what this person is like when it comes to anything that does not have immediate (< 5 minutes) consequences. I say this with love, to be clear. They are the most wonderful person. But I could not live with them without support. Any system that accommodate this type of problem needs an external support structure to offload the burden on many other people. In our society, we call it mental healthcare, and we use diagnoses to help triage.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    There are extremes to any condition. By far most people with ADHD manage to survive just fine. That survival could be changed into thriving for a big number of them if only society would get their collective head out of their collective arses and not tilt at the slightest sign of "different."

thevagrant 4y ago

That's right, the point of being diagnosed is that there is a range of symptoms, which left untreated amount to significant negative life outcomes.

Mandatum 4y ago

I think the main gripe sits with how we label it and the way we associate with the label. Yes, in a medical context we can use words like retard, but it's not acceptable to use this word in front of a patient because often the medical definition isn't known. To the same degree disorder may be an acceptable label by a clinician, but we need a different word for regular everyday use - because if I come into work and tell everyone I have a disorder, they're going to make assumptions. And then back into the closet that information goes. I'd say a lot of people don't share information about their neurodiversity for this very reason. The fact the top comment here argues about the linguistics rather than the content or spirit of the article, tells me we're not ready for that yet. Which is surprising given the readership of this website likely caters to more neuro atypicals than average.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
I don't think it's just a linguistic point. The non-stigmatizing alternative is to not label things, and to just speak in conversational language about the ways our minds are diverse. In particular, I think it's important to recognize that most people do share information about their neurodiversity, and really this is the key point of neurodiversity as a term. When there's no "disorder" framework lurking in the background, people are happy to talk about how they're cranky in the morning or terrible at public speaking or spent the last 30 minutes anxiously editing their 5 line email. It's only when people worry about falling under some particular label that letting others know becomes an issue.
MonaroVXR 4y ago
>"...And then back into the closet that information goes." Or used against you. Happened several times in my life, no thank you. The iron thing is. Most of them are working in care.
robocat 4y ago
> Yes, in a medical context we can use words like retard Not applied to intelligence in the USA[2]. Personally I think retard is a fine word, so long as it is not applied to anyone with a low IQ, which most people wouldn’t do. Idiot, imbecile, and moron[1] are also fabulous words, which have lost their technical meaning from last century, because they were repurposed for “vernacular” use. Then again, I like using “special” or “speshul” too, so perhaps I am just bigoted. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376300800513 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376300800... (1963) [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150627145120/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704865104575588273153838564 https://web.archive.org/web/20150627145120/http://www.wsj.co... (2010) The concern, by some, is that eventually new terms will become a new pejorative. " 'Intellectual disabilities' carries less baggage with it at this moment," said Douglas Biklen, dean of the School of Special Education at Syracuse University. "Twenty years from now, it can become the new epithet."

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

If the authors life is not being impacted by his ADHD then he does not have ADHD. The clinical diagnosis for a mental illness is that it impacts your life in a negative way. His attention deficit does not impact his life in a negative way, therefore it’s not a disorder. The author frankly does not know what he’s talking about. And, clinically, he does not have ADHD. I have a mood disorder (NPSLE). I am on permanent disability and I have been hospitalized several times. Even though I know my disorder comes with a gift, and rather unappreciated gift because I do consider myself neurodivergent, I also know at times I want to die at my own hands. And I also know it makes me unable to work. I think the threshold for where we think some Neurotype is affecting our life has been lowered dramatically.

dang 4y ago
Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack. That's always important, but especially when the topic is as sensitive and emotional as this. Certainly you're welcome to share your own experience—that's important, and what you've said about it here is important. We just need it to come without swipes and putdowns towards others. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you before about breaking the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570715). If you wouldn't mind reviewing them and sticking to the intended spirit of the site, we'd appreciate it.
chrischen 4y ago
> If the authors life is not being impacted by his ADHD then he does not have ADHD. I’m not sure this is correct. If someone is managing their ADHD it doesn’t mean they don’t have it.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  The expression of a disease or disorder is all that really matters. If he went into a doctors office today, instead of say 10 years ago, they would not diagnosed him with ADHD.

drewcoo 4y ago

That's not a straw man. He's just stating the same thing you are when you say: > disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder That is medicalizing diversity. Creating "disorders" where no one is bothered by them. This is not uncommon in psychology. In the 1970s, homosexuality was also a "disorder."

djur 4y ago
I think the underlying tension here comes from the fact that people are currently prescribed drugs for ADHD on the basis that it is a disorder that needs to be treated, and a lot of those people would like to still have access to that medication while also being less stigmatized. The analogy to homosexuality is problematic because in that same analogy Adderall is equivalent to conversion therapy.
ekanes 4y ago
Right, a disorder is something that interferes materially with your life.
GavinMcG 4y ago
No, he isn't: he supposes that "any deviation from the standard" is called a disorder. That's false: we call something a disorder when it disrupts people's lives, not just when there's diversity. "Disorder" only applies when someone is bothered—and addressing the bother isn't "medicalization" any more than cleft palate repair or prescribing eyeglasses. He seems committed to using the term "disorder" about himself, even though he says he doesn't have one. But it's a problem of his own making: he could stop saying he has ADD and start saying he has an attention deficit.

djur 4y ago

The "neurodiversity" viewpoint here is that what we call "ADHD" is part of the natural variation in how human brains work, and that it's a category error to think of it as a malfunction to be repaired, but rather as a difference to be accommodated. That accommodation may or may not be via medication and therapy, but that shouldn't necessarily mean that the underlying neurological state is a diseased one. A good analogy would be height: a person who is several standard deviations from the mean will face challenges in life that require various forms of intervention, but we don't generally think of them as having a _disorder_ unless there's an identifiable biological cause that usually has other effects. Another good point of comparison is vision. We can accurately measure vision and create medical devices to correct unwanted variation. As someone with myopia, I find it to be only slightly medicalized -- going to get an eye exam doesn't feel much like visiting a doctor, and people don't tend to talk about it as one does a medical condition. I imagine that if we were able to make a similar kind of standardized assessment of whatever neurological basis there is for ADHD, we would consider medication for it more akin to a stepladder or a pair of glasses (or even an antihistamine) than a treatment for a mental illness.

girvo 4y ago
> and people don't tend to talk about it as one does a medical condition While I basically entirely agree with your comment, my partner (who is an optometrist here in Australia) would often point out to me that myopia is a big risk factor for retinal degeneration and detachment, open angle glaucoma, and cataracts at a young age. So while we definitely shouldn't treat mild myopia (like I, and likely you have) as some horrific medical condition, she also gets a bit frustrated by general practitioners and retail optoms who don't treat a lot of the eye diseases she handles with the gravity some of them actually should bear. Anyway this is a massive tangent, just was something interesting I wanted to share!
- photojosh 4y ago
  Fascinating. Seems to me that it would be a comorbidity with a common cause though, rather than the myopia being the causative factor? My (somewhat loosely informed) intuition suggests to me that in the same way that not spending enough time exposing the eye to light outdoors increases the severity of myopia, it would likely be causative in those other degenerations. Use it or lose it! Not that I know anyone who spent all of their childhood with nose in a book then graduated to a computer, cough... I say this having quite mild myopia, although I wear glasses still, can't stand a blurry world.

jeffheard 4y ago

I find ADHD to be an "occasional" disorder. I feel very much like the author much of the time, but honestly I want it to continue to be researched as a disorder, because I want strategies and medications that are better than post-it notes and Adderall (and yes, I've tried lots and no, none of them are better for me than the occasional 5mg of Adderall). Most of the time, ADD works in my favor. But sometimes, (and NOT always due to "societal expectations") I need my brain to work differently than it does, and for those occasions the meds do wonders. But I truly hate the after-effects, thus I rarely take them.

porknubbins 4y ago
I have family members with similar issues. If you could could elaborate, what are the common situations when ADD works in your favor, and what are the times when you find you need your brain to work differently?
- hirvi74 4y ago
  Not the GP, but times I find it helpful: 1. When high levels of energy or reaction are required e.g. sports and games where reaction speed and/or impulsivity is advantageous. I have been told on multiple occasions when I have been in emergency situations with others, that I do not tend to "Freeze up" like many others do. 2. High stress environments -- When it gets down to "Fire and Brimstone" time, I can develop a "hyperfocus" in which I can focus for an exceptionally and unhealthy long amount of time. However, too much of this without recharging, and I burnout. In fact, I think there is a joke that ADHD medical school students all become ER doctors. 3. Environments where divergent and abstract thinking is beneficial over convergent thinking. I often think I can come up with good ideas, but I personally find my mind falling short of being able implement them. 4. Social situations. I know this somewhat ironic, since we tend to have trouble listening and pay attention to conversations, but I seriously have done extremely well in any role dealing with customer service, talking to unfamiliar people, etc.. I imagine a part of this is possible due to my personality, but I have heard anecdotes from other people with ADHD having similar experiences.
  - 4y ago

michaelbrave 4y ago

My main grip with having ADHD is why it's so damn hard to do simple things like open the mail or make a phone call, it's almost like needing a secretary to survive. Second gripe is how hard it is to get an appointment to get medication sorted. I've never felt judged or victimized for it, though I have felt personally lacking due to my struggles to get things done.

hirvi74 4y ago
> I've never felt judged or victimized for it I wish I could say the same. Were you diagnosed as child or an adult? I was diagnosed as an adult, and the school system I grew up in was rather... unwilling... to accommodate my "personality" differences.
- photojosh 4y ago
  There's probably a nuance to be found here between the 2 parent posts... when a person is "judged or victimized"; is that for: - the behaviour they've been exhibiting, or - the actual label/diagnosis of ADHD I feel like hirvi is talking about the former, in childhood years, whereas michael perhaps is about adult life and the latter?

escapedmoose 4y ago

I’ve often thought that I could be diagnosed with ADHD if I wanted, but I don’t feel the need to label myself with a “disorder” and its possible stigma for something that I feel helps me more than it hurts (now that I’ve learned strategies to work with it). Then again, it might have been easier/faster to find my coping strategies if I was diagnosed early. For these reasons, I think it would be helpful to drop the “disorder” bit culturally.

d0mine 4y ago

Imagine your skin has a different from your neighbors color. Would it be sensible to consider it a disorder? Even if it may happen that it negatively affects your every day life, and it may be maladaptation in the region where you live but it may be a considerable advantage if you had lived on different latitude. Or consider a game where different character classes exist e.g., Necromancer (can raise an army with no resource, quickly) and Wizard (requires lots of resources, slow to develop though some units are exceptionally strong). Would it make sense to consider being a Wizard to be a disorder in such a game?

haswell 4y ago
Does someone with dementia have a disorder? Does someone with congenital heart failure have a disorder? I'm not suggesting that ADHD is on par with congenital heart failure, but neither are skin color or one's propensity towards wizardry on par with ADHD.
- d0mine 4y ago
  The point is that we shouldn't consider screwdrivers to be demented hammers even If you are a hammer like most in your surroundings. If a game map is small (there is not much time for development before you are destroyed) and/or resource-poor then being Wizard is certainly a disadvantage compared to Necromancer (it is a "disorder", wizards are "demented" from the Necromancer's point of you).
  - haswell 4y ago
    Except humans are not primitive tools, and the brain is not a piece on a game board. Perhaps a concept like CPU/GPU binning would be a bit more helpful to consider, but even then, it reduces one’s entire experience into manufacturing terms. The worst CPUs are thrown in the trash. So are the broken hammers, and eventually the screwdriver misused as a hammer.
    - d0mine 4y ago
      You are trying to reduce human mind to one bit: broken/working. Humans have strong general intelligence and therefore are capable of solving many different tasks. There are many different tasks in the world where different characteristics may be useful in addition to pounding nails (though if you are a hammer, it may be hard to imagine) The existence of screwdrivers shouldn't be considered a disorder.

aahortwwy 4y ago

> the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life. > interfering with someone's life The specific phrase used in the DSM-V is: "symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning". Schooling started to become compulsory in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century, and really only became universal in the early 20th century. By the late 20th century we had decided that children whose normal behavior "interfered with or reduced [...] academic [...] functioning" had a disorder. We created a system that does not accommodate everyone, then turned around and said that those who are not accommodated are definitionally disordered. The logic is clearly backwards. Similar story with labor.

GavinMcG 4y ago
That's a convenient explanation, but it doesn't account for the emotional dysregulation that accompanies ADHD. And it's historically dead wrong: symptom clusters associated with ADHD were described as early as 1798, and were identified in the 1800s outside the school context. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/
kqr 4y ago
I am very close to someone who suffers from this disorder. Their inability to function in terms of personal care, family, social life, occupationally, etc. goes way beyond "normal behaviour in a system that does not accommodate everyone". Try imagining a literal five-year old in a grown-up body. That's what this person is like when it comes to anything that does not have immediate (< 5 minutes) consequences. I say this with love, to be clear. They are the most wonderful person. But I could not live with them without support. Any system that accommodate this type of problem needs an external support structure to offload the burden on many other people. In our society, we call it mental healthcare, and we use diagnoses to help triage.
- Doxin 4y ago
  There are extremes to any condition. By far most people with ADHD manage to survive just fine. That survival could be changed into thriving for a big number of them if only society would get their collective head out of their collective arses and not tilt at the slightest sign of "different."