Add
 

Is ADD an excuse for mere lack of discipline and sloth and another vehicle for shrinks to develop revenue streams? To tell you the truth I've mistrusted ADD more than the alcoholism as a disease model. If I'm wrong somebody enlighten me.

There are plenty of things that are waaaay over-diagnosed, in my opinion. We appear to have successfully conned the general public into believing that any distress, any aberrant behavior, any excess emotion, etc. is a disorder. I imagine the tenth version of the DSM will have some 2500 diagnostic categories in it (tic). Emil Kraepelin is doing a veritable jig in his grave.

And yes, money makes our world go round, too. Witness psychologists trying to get a piece of the prescriptive ability pie.

I have a bit of skepticism about ADD. And esp. treating it with methamphetamines and other amphetamines.

But it's really out of my expertise and experience.

I've seen Ohio Blue's paradigm in action. Kid starts smoking pot and flunking his classes. Parents take him to a shrink who says the kid has ADD. Parents are hugely relieved to know their kid is stricken by a terrible disease rather than just a lazy, bad kid. What's better they can give him medication for it.

Here's the kicker. What if he starts the medication, and all that bad kid stuff goes away. And then you stop the medication and it comes back gradually. And then you start the medication again, and it goes away.

This is what some parents face.

I'm sure that can happen and I hope I never face that choice. But my current thinking is let the kid suffer the consequences of his bad behavior unmedicated and hope that what doesn't kill him will make him stronger. Plenty of successful people did recreational drugs and flunked high school classes. I'm afraid you get him used to prescribed medication as a crutch and he'll live in a malaise. That's my uneducated instnct, but I'd be loath to give a kid of mine a powerful medication on the bare diagnosis of ADD.