From Tim May:
Any trendy new diagnosis always gets some recruits...dyslexia, ADD (*), the abuse excuse, etc. (* Like any trendy thing, it gets renamed to keep its panache. ADD has been renamed to something with four letters, which I now forget (must be ADD).)
And it is worse than that, they're scum, Tim. They claim (in last months SciAm) that 5% of kids have ADHD (some sources have it at 15%). This isn't a disease, this is one end of the normal variation in behaviour. It is as if you diagnosed an adult male height of less than 5 foot 4 inches as "dwarf" and prescribed growth hormone. Or as if you operated on any woman over 5 foot 10 to shorten her legs. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm says 3 to 4 times as many boys as girls have it. So they are saying that ADHD affects 15 to 60 percent of all boys! This isn't one end of the normal range of behaviour, this is just plain normal. The psycho-babble establishment is proposing drugging 5 to 15 percent of the population to alter their behaviour. If this "diagnosis" had been around when I was a kid they would have drugged me. I found a 14 point checklist for ADHD on the web at: http://www.docnet.org.uk/autopage/messages/23.html In the last 48 hours my daughter has shown 11 of these. And I've shown 14. This is just normal life they are talking about. This is the misuse of psychiatric medicine for political control, as much as anything that went on in Stalin's Russia. (the personal is political - if one young man behaves in a way unacceptable to their elders that is personal - if 5 million do it is political). I object, strongly, to some guy in a white coat saying the problem with my life is my brain and he wants me to take this little pill and then it will be alright. Which is not to say that some people don't have real problems for which Ritalin is a workaround. But 15%, 10% or even 5% isn't psychiatry it is politics. Large parts of our daily life is tedious, boring, of no direct relevance to anything we are interested in. Most kids in school are made to sit through boring lessons. Bloody hell! They made us do sport. Is anything more shitlike? Most adults at work make themselves do things they have no interest in other than for the money they might get out of it (which is where we cam in with all that discussion about research that shows that people perform less well on tasks done primarily for reward - Marx was right about alienation, you know) A healthy person *ought* to have trouble paying attention to some of the things they are asked to do. Maybe we will have better lives if we drug ourselves (Ritalin, Prozak, E, daytime television) to get through the shit of the day but let it be a decision adults make for themselves, not one imposed on children by parents or the psychatric eastablishment. I could do with a cup of tea...
We've had some nutballs and losers (luser spelling: loosers) on this list. People who claim the reason they can't make a coherent argument or hold a steady job is because of something some psychobabbler told them was their excuse.
It's weird how people do that. If a doctor gives something a long name is suddenly becomes alright. Some parents are ashamed that their kids can't read well. Put it in Greek and call it "Dyslexia" and all of a sudden it isn't something you do, or are, or don't do or aren't capable of - it becomes something you *have*, not really part of you, baggage, a burden that could one day be dropped, something that has been done to you, imposed on you, soemthing that is not your fault. Reality hasn't changed, just the words used to describe it, yet it is now less threatening. The germ theory of disease is stretched to the limit. Pasteur showed that some diseases are caused by microorganisms. Simple cause and effect. One baterial disease is caused by pone organism, another by another. That is deeply embedded in our thoughts. So now all disease, all misfortune, has to be given a name, put in a box and traced back to a simple cause. I'm not fat, I have an eating disorder. I'm not stupid, I have a learning disability. I'm not sad, or worried, or bored, or scared - I have depression or an anxiety disorder or an attention deficit disorder. Some societies attribute all misfortune to witchcraft - if your cow dies then someone, somewhere must have cursed you. We now attribute all misfortune to something outside ourselves, not part of us. It wasn't me, it was my syndrome. And its all part of the pressure put on familys by business. Conform, consume, keep quiet. Don't rock the boat. Turn up on time, wear our clothes, work our hours. No alcohol on the premises. Or at lunchtime. Take this here drugs test - we don't want dope fiends and hippies in our office. Stressed out? Bored? Overworked? Tense, anxious, nervous soul-ache? Nothing acts faster than Ritalin. Especially when cut with Prozac to prolong that cool, mellow feeling. Time off to look after the children? Not if you want the job to be open when you come back. Just give them a bite of our magic apple and they will be alright. What's that you say about drugs? No, these are Good Drugs. The men in the white coats say so. And what's more they are patentable and we own shares in Ciba Geigy, Lilly, Fison's and Hoffman La Roche. Good Drugs keep you working until we want to let you go. Good Drugs keep you consuming until you have no more money to pay us with. Good drugs keep you working for our profit. Good Drugs keep you from complaining, striking, joining a union, praying, helping, loving, singing, fighting back in any way whatsoever. Good Drugs keep you from realising that half your work goes into our pockets. Good Drugs keep you scared, scared of poverty, scared of being different, scared of standing out, scared of using your head to think any thoughts we don't want thank. Good Drugs keep you addicted to your job, your country, your government, your boss. The Best Drug is the mortgage. John the Ranter/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com