Posted by med_empowered on June 27, 2007, at 11:09:25
In reply to Re: Is ADHD a Hoax? This Doctor Says So. Read On... » zeugma, posted by BabyBunny on June 26, 2007, at 9:36:43
Psychiatrists do make up disorders; that's how we've gone from the original DSM, with like 60 conditions, to the DSM-IV (over 400) and soon the DSM-V (god only knows how many).
From what I understand, the US consumes most of the worlds RX stimulants, so at the very least ADHD is diagnosed more liberally here. I tend to think that a lot of it isn't just evil docs; a lot of it is our tendency as a culture to view problems as strictly individual. As in...Timmy and Sally (and millions of other kids) can't sit still because they each, individually, have a brain issue (ADHD)...instead of: maybe Timmy and Sally and their millions of ADHD peers are bored, frustrated, underserved, alienated, so on and so forth....its like we live in denial of the social forces all around us, which would explain not only why we use so many psychiatric drugs, but also why American Psychiatry tends to be so very, very biologically oriented to the exclusion of other approaches, while other countries tend to have systems that are more open to the bio-psycho-social model.
poster:med_empowered
thread:765389
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070622/msgs/766184.html