5 ms·

Why not "drug it out of them"? If the disease is caused by a chemical imbalance, why not try to fix the chemical imbalance? Some people (myself included) are no

Why not "drug it out of them"? If the disease is caused by a chemical imbalance, why not try to fix the chemical imbalance? Some people (myself included) are not functional without medication.

wpietri 13y ago
Personally, I'm pretty skeptical that most of the people diagnosed with it have a disease. I think it's a perfectly normal human variation that just doesn't match well with our Industrial Age approach to education. The way I think of it is like height. There's a normal range of tall and short. There are also diseases that make people unusually tall or short. But mere shortness doesn't prove disease. And just because short people have trouble reaching cabinets built for average people doesn't mean we must give short kids extra hormones to make them be average in height. I think it's reasonable to say, "Hey, in the world we want to create, it's better if many or all people take drugs to shape behaviors so that they match the system they should fit into." Why I don't like is the medicalization of variation.
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  I think it is perfectly reasonable to take that viewpoint. It certainly might be over-diagnosed. However, as with all neurological disorders, there is often quite a bit of mutability in the actual diagnosis; It isn't uncommon for people to be initially diagnosed with ADHD, only to be later diagnosed with something else. There are a lot of overlapping symptoms with other disorders, varying from OCD to Bi-Polar to Asperger.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Sure. And that's a sign to me that we don't really understand what's going on yet. Those are interesting to mention in this context. It's a commonplace among hackers that a little OCD or a little Asperger can be beneficial in some circumstances. Indeed, Temple Grandin, perhaps the world's best-known high-functioning autistic, recommends computer programming as a career for people like her. Among artists, the same is true about Bipolar (the book Touched with Fire is an interesting study of why and how that's true). I think it's relevant that Asperger was a valid diagnosis for a few decades, but it no longer is. (As of DSM-5, people are just placed somewhere on a spectrum of autism.) That's a great sign that we still have a lot to learn. I'm sure you get this, but I worry that others will misunderstand me, so let me be clear here: I'm not saying that any of these things aren't a problem for people in today's society. With attention span, for example, high-end classroom-style education and many high-end jobs require a great deal of focus. But that doesn't imply that people with lower-than-average levels of focus are diseased. Indeed, more than half of Americans consume stimulants daily, and many workplaces provide their staff with free stimulants (coffee, Coke) so they can keep up. Many unarguably normal students consume ADHD meds as study aids. If stimulants improve performance for everybody, they can't be considered diagnostic for a problem. My concern here isn't that people are choosing that. We're half-evolved monkeys; it's great that we can choose who we want to be. My concern is that we're taking natural human variation and medicalizing it mainly because our current educational system finds some of that variation inconvenient.
- com2kid 13y ago
  People with ADHD have reduced brain growth in areas associated with executive control. ADHD is very real. So is the 50%+ of untreated people with ADHD having substance abuse problems. So is the higher suicide rate. So is the reduced rate of high school and college graduation. So are the dramatically increased rates of depression. Then there is the incredibly high rate of co-morbidity of ADHD with other psychological disorders, most prominently Bipolar Disorder.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Those are interesting facts, but I don't think they prove anything about existence of ADHD as an actual disease. Lower-than-average height is also correlated with many diseases but it isn't a disease on its own.
    - com2kid 13y ago
      The portion of the brain associated with self control is smaller in people with a mental disorder that is characterized by a lack of self control. Now obviously proving the entire causation thing here is pretty hard, but, if someone is missing their eyes, and that person is blind, there might just be a causative relationship happening. To put it in perspective (http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/549973 http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/549973), 32% of people with ADHD suffer from depression. 21% bipolar. That isn't some statistical oddity. (The % is higher in the untreated population, no citation on hand right now sorry) Over 50% of people with ADHD have substance abuse problems. Imagine taking a population and saying "oh yeah half those people are alcoholics, but there is no strange underlying cause, nope, we should just let them be."[1] ADHD isn't the popularized image of "little Johnny can't do his boring old homework that the mean teacher assigned", but rather "Jenny can't make herself go to sleep even though if she is late one more day for work she will be fired and have no money for food or rent." ADHD is like having your entire sense of self control ripped away from you, no matter how much you want to do something, you cannot force yourself to do it. Pleading and begging doesn't work. Breaking down in tears over one's complete lack of ability to accomplish the simplest of tasks doesn't help any. The neurochemical responsible for self control quite literally isn't there. [1] Well ignoring that America has basically done that for multiple cultures already...
ginko 13y ago
Because I don't believe it's a disease.
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  And yet, thousands of doctors do, and they prescribe medication to thousands of patients who also do, and for the most part, those medications work as expected.
- nav1 13y ago
  Of course. Never mind all the evidence. What you believe is more important than any research could ever be.
  - UK-AL 13y ago
    What evidence says it disease? rather simply a normal difference.
UK-AL 13y ago
It's not a disease, its a different type of mind.

Why not "drug it out of them"? If the disease is caused by a chemical imbalance, why not try to fix the chemical imbalance? Some people (myself included) are not functional without medication.

wpietri 13y ago

Personally, I'm pretty skeptical that most of the people diagnosed with it have a disease. I think it's a perfectly normal human variation that just doesn't match well with our Industrial Age approach to education. The way I think of it is like height. There's a normal range of tall and short. There are also diseases that make people unusually tall or short. But mere shortness doesn't prove disease. And just because short people have trouble reaching cabinets built for average people doesn't mean we must give short kids extra hormones to make them be average in height. I think it's reasonable to say, "Hey, in the world we want to create, it's better if many or all people take drugs to shape behaviors so that they match the system they should fit into." Why I don't like is the medicalization of variation.

saosebastiao 13y ago
I think it is perfectly reasonable to take that viewpoint. It certainly might be over-diagnosed. However, as with all neurological disorders, there is often quite a bit of mutability in the actual diagnosis; It isn't uncommon for people to be initially diagnosed with ADHD, only to be later diagnosed with something else. There are a lot of overlapping symptoms with other disorders, varying from OCD to Bi-Polar to Asperger.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Sure. And that's a sign to me that we don't really understand what's going on yet. Those are interesting to mention in this context. It's a commonplace among hackers that a little OCD or a little Asperger can be beneficial in some circumstances. Indeed, Temple Grandin, perhaps the world's best-known high-functioning autistic, recommends computer programming as a career for people like her. Among artists, the same is true about Bipolar (the book Touched with Fire is an interesting study of why and how that's true). I think it's relevant that Asperger was a valid diagnosis for a few decades, but it no longer is. (As of DSM-5, people are just placed somewhere on a spectrum of autism.) That's a great sign that we still have a lot to learn. I'm sure you get this, but I worry that others will misunderstand me, so let me be clear here: I'm not saying that any of these things aren't a problem for people in today's society. With attention span, for example, high-end classroom-style education and many high-end jobs require a great deal of focus. But that doesn't imply that people with lower-than-average levels of focus are diseased. Indeed, more than half of Americans consume stimulants daily, and many workplaces provide their staff with free stimulants (coffee, Coke) so they can keep up. Many unarguably normal students consume ADHD meds as study aids. If stimulants improve performance for everybody, they can't be considered diagnostic for a problem. My concern here isn't that people are choosing that. We're half-evolved monkeys; it's great that we can choose who we want to be. My concern is that we're taking natural human variation and medicalizing it mainly because our current educational system finds some of that variation inconvenient.
com2kid 13y ago
People with ADHD have reduced brain growth in areas associated with executive control. ADHD is very real. So is the 50%+ of untreated people with ADHD having substance abuse problems. So is the higher suicide rate. So is the reduced rate of high school and college graduation. So are the dramatically increased rates of depression. Then there is the incredibly high rate of co-morbidity of ADHD with other psychological disorders, most prominently Bipolar Disorder.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Those are interesting facts, but I don't think they prove anything about existence of ADHD as an actual disease. Lower-than-average height is also correlated with many diseases but it isn't a disease on its own.
  - com2kid 13y ago
    The portion of the brain associated with self control is smaller in people with a mental disorder that is characterized by a lack of self control. Now obviously proving the entire causation thing here is pretty hard, but, if someone is missing their eyes, and that person is blind, there might just be a causative relationship happening. To put it in perspective (http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/549973 http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/549973), 32% of people with ADHD suffer from depression. 21% bipolar. That isn't some statistical oddity. (The % is higher in the untreated population, no citation on hand right now sorry) Over 50% of people with ADHD have substance abuse problems. Imagine taking a population and saying "oh yeah half those people are alcoholics, but there is no strange underlying cause, nope, we should just let them be."[1] ADHD isn't the popularized image of "little Johnny can't do his boring old homework that the mean teacher assigned", but rather "Jenny can't make herself go to sleep even though if she is late one more day for work she will be fired and have no money for food or rent." ADHD is like having your entire sense of self control ripped away from you, no matter how much you want to do something, you cannot force yourself to do it. Pleading and begging doesn't work. Breaking down in tears over one's complete lack of ability to accomplish the simplest of tasks doesn't help any. The neurochemical responsible for self control quite literally isn't there. [1] Well ignoring that America has basically done that for multiple cultures already...

ginko 13y ago

Because I don't believe it's a disease.

saosebastiao 13y ago
And yet, thousands of doctors do, and they prescribe medication to thousands of patients who also do, and for the most part, those medications work as expected.
nav1 13y ago
Of course. Never mind all the evidence. What you believe is more important than any research could ever be.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  What evidence says it disease? rather simply a normal difference.

UK-AL 13y ago

It's not a disease, its a different type of mind.