Comments like this really make me angry. As if the stigma surrounding getting help with your mental health weren’t enough, people feel the need to specifically

Comments like this really make me angry. As if the stigma surrounding getting help with your mental health weren’t enough, people feel the need to specifically attack parents seeking help for their children as lazy and uninterested in “truly helping” them. The slipperiness of an attack like this is that anyone can cite anecdotes (real or imagined) with an air of superiority, when you haven’t actually shown any credentials except cynicism and doubt. As a bonus, these comments tend to keep people who truly need help from seeking it, to avoid also being seen as weak or uncaring. One thing in particular I’d like to call out: > there is no known diagnostic test that can physically detect the presence of ADHD in the brain or some other organ, diagnosing ADHD is merely a matter of observing and interviewing the subject Yes, the diagnostic for ADHD is based on observation. But why wouldn’t it be? The most obvious symptom is _behavior_, which doesn’t require probing your brain or blood vessels to test for. By the way, this is also true for many other maladies, from paranoia to the common cold. But if you’ve ever seen someone suffer from paranoia, you would instantly recognize it. A trained professional can diagnose non-obvious symptoms over time, with help from the patient. Dismissing the use of our strongest tools as “mere observation” is an oversimplification of the problem.