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But what you've said doesn't mean you have a disease---it could just mean that what society expects of you is unreasonable given your temperament.

by pc2g4d 12y ago

geoelectric 12y ago
It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other (edited) is a collection of symptoms with unclear origin, but which happen together enough to be their own thing. It's pretty likely different people acquire dysfunction from different circumstances, whether traumatic, epigenetic, genetic, or whatever else interacts with brain development. But to your point, and without going into a bunch of personal info, I doubt it. There were plenty of issues and deficits that I can't imagine being appropriate in any setting. Moreover, ADHD has been acknowledged for a long, long time. The term is modern, but the disorder is not. It was minimal brain damage, IIRC, prior to ADHD, and had a bunch of increasingly archaic terms as you go back. You have to understand, the popular view of ADHD--stereotypical hyperactivity and scatterbrained behavior--yeah, those are part of it, but they're not the whole. The cluster of symptoms mimics prefrontal cortex damage. Executive function is responsible for a whole lot of stuff. If you're willing to acknowledge that mental disability exists in general, and that there's a line where we say, OK, that person is impaired, then it's not a huge jump to understand that it can exist in specific physical areas too. When it affects executive function to whatever degree you're going to draw that line, that's ADHD.
- supercanuck 12y ago
  >It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other is a collection of symptoms that are frequently observed together, and which cause an issue. I'm not able to tell the difference about which one you are talking about even after reading your definition. Maybe there isn't much of a difference after all?
  - geoelectric 12y ago
    Disease is a root cause, disorder is a manifestation that either comes from an unknown root cause or from several root causes with the same effect. Alternately, Google it. I'm not a doctor, and I'm sure it's explained better elsewhere.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ashleyp 12y ago
Sorry. But as someone who studied neuroscience I can tell you it is a very real neurological difference. Society labels it as a disorder and I don't believe that is the case(but to be fair if society was more welcoming and accepting of differences it wouldn't be one, but it is very challenging to live with) - but it IS a difference in how the brain works, we can see that from scans.
- pc2g4d 12y ago
  Difference is not the same as disease. Is me being shorter than you a disease? No. Perhaps things like OCD also deserve to be classed as natural variation that is more functional in some and less functional in other contexts---not wholly condemned as being a "disease".

But what you've said doesn't mean you have a disease---it could just mean that what society expects of you is unreasonable given your temperament.

by pc2g4d 12y ago

But what you've said doesn't mean you have a disease---it could just mean that what society expects of you is unreasonable given your temperament.

geoelectric 12y ago

It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other (edited) is a collection of symptoms with unclear origin, but which happen together enough to be their own thing. It's pretty likely different people acquire dysfunction from different circumstances, whether traumatic, epigenetic, genetic, or whatever else interacts with brain development. But to your point, and without going into a bunch of personal info, I doubt it. There were plenty of issues and deficits that I can't imagine being appropriate in any setting. Moreover, ADHD has been acknowledged for a long, long time. The term is modern, but the disorder is not. It was minimal brain damage, IIRC, prior to ADHD, and had a bunch of increasingly archaic terms as you go back. You have to understand, the popular view of ADHD--stereotypical hyperactivity and scatterbrained behavior--yeah, those are part of it, but they're not the whole. The cluster of symptoms mimics prefrontal cortex damage. Executive function is responsible for a whole lot of stuff. If you're willing to acknowledge that mental disability exists in general, and that there's a line where we say, OK, that person is impaired, then it's not a huge jump to understand that it can exist in specific physical areas too. When it affects executive function to whatever degree you're going to draw that line, that's ADHD.

supercanuck 12y ago
>It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other is a collection of symptoms that are frequently observed together, and which cause an issue. I'm not able to tell the difference about which one you are talking about even after reading your definition. Maybe there isn't much of a difference after all?
- geoelectric 12y ago
  Disease is a root cause, disorder is a manifestation that either comes from an unknown root cause or from several root causes with the same effect. Alternately, Google it. I'm not a doctor, and I'm sure it's explained better elsewhere.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ashleyp 12y ago

Sorry. But as someone who studied neuroscience I can tell you it is a very real neurological difference. Society labels it as a disorder and I don't believe that is the case(but to be fair if society was more welcoming and accepting of differences it wouldn't be one, but it is very challenging to live with) - but it IS a difference in how the brain works, we can see that from scans.

pc2g4d 12y ago
Difference is not the same as disease. Is me being shorter than you a disease? No. Perhaps things like OCD also deserve to be classed as natural variation that is more functional in some and less functional in other contexts---not wholly condemned as being a "disease".