4 ms·

I don't remember ever being afflicted with Alzheimer's, so I can't speak to that case. But what is evident is that ADHD affliction is a broad, very continuous

• DannyBee 13y ago
  I guess I strongly disagree. Just because diagnostic conditions are not always clear, or overdiagnose, does not make it any less of a disease. A lot of things mental disorders are based on subjective factors. Would you disagree that schizophrenia is a disease? At least 3 of the factors (and you only need two) are highly subjective. If you wanted to argue that DSM-IV/DSM-V criteria for a lot of things have a tendency to overdiagnose or not be objective enough, I would heartily agree. That does not make something any less of a disease, it only means our diagnostic criteria suck. Alzheimers had very broad, subjective, diagnostic criteria once as well, right up until they made various breakthroughs in neuropathology. Yet you seem willing to class that as a disease?
• derefr 13y ago
  Here is the way I've come to think about neurotransmitter-affecting medications: they're like glasses. Which is to say, ADHD, depression, and other "diseases" are like near/farsightedness. A lot of people need glasses, and a lot of people always have, because for at least the last few thousand years (since the advent of agriculture), distance-vision hasn't had any particular selective pressure on it one way or another--it didn't increase your chance of successfully reproducing to be able to see farther into your own farmland. We don't really think of near/farsightedness as a "disease", per se; parents don't worry about passing bad vision onto their kids, they just assume they'll get glasses too. But it is useful to be able to see things that are very close up and very far away--and we structure our society assuming that people can do these things. We print relatively small text in books, and expect kids to be able to read a blackboard from the back of a classroom. We have a system of transportation that expects drivers to be able to see, interpret, and react to road signs from a distance. And so forth. In the same way, it is useful to be able to summon focus and motivation and single-mindedness to a possibly-boring task, and we structure our society assuming people can do this, as well. You likely could find a place--a French vinyard, perhaps--where nearsightedness was irrelevant. And you likely could create a little pocket of our own society that permits you to live productively without glasses (live in a city, work as a jazz musician, and take cabs everywhere, for example.) But this is extremely limiting, when the other alternative--just wearing glasses--is freeing. The choice is between letting a quirk of your genetics dictate your path in life, and taking control of your own body and thus taking any path you please. --- Postscript: all this relatively ignores the question of whether a parent should seek treatment their child, who is not yet formed in their own will enough to say what they would like out of life. I think the answer to that is simple: if and when we have the medical equivalent to glasses, something that can be put on and taken off, and doesn't affect the wearer except to allow them to experience what is "standard" (i.e. doesn't give them any extra boost above that "standard", doesn't give them a "rush", etc.) then there is no reason to not supply that item to the child, and allow them to decide for themselves the advantages and disadvantages of it. I, for one, was found to be nearsighted in grade four--and, after getting glasses, never had to be prompted by my parents to put them on. I preferred having them on, for what they allowed me to do. If we do not yet have a drug that works like that, then, to the degree that the child will be "changed" by the drug, that same degree of consideration will have to be given as to any potentially-harmful course of action parents decide for their child (such as, say, sending them to a boarding school.)