What if? Why, it would be akin to a social revolution. There would be literally millions of people who would not only have to deal with the original symptoms, but also the side-effects of withdrawal from a pharmaceutical addiction.
It can't happen, at least not overnight. It is going to take at least 2 or 3 generations before the dependency on industrialized-pharmaceuticals can be removed as an aspect of our western societies. Even if we have a solution to the dependency that pharmaceutical customers have, it is no small thing to come off the prescription.
So how far have we come as a species that we are having these 'generational approach' questions posed to us? Last centurys' Ritalin addict is this years flapper girl. All we do as cultures is propel the change of fashion forward. I feel nothing but pity for those who have a chemical dependence where the next patient bears no such duress, should they push pixels instead of pills. I would love to see it all change, such that none of us are dependent on industrialized pharmaceutical production - the penultimate of capital masters, but the closest analog to a solution in this regard, that I see, is the legalization of weed.
Legalize it, and a lot of these industrial problems have the potential to disappear...
Perhaps my pretentiousness-recognition skills are poor, but I'm not sure I can regognize any ways in which the GP's post or writing style is pretentious. Can you elaborate on what makes one think the writing is pretentious? I'd like to avoid it.
... and if you think I'm being pretentious when writing this, sorry. As I mentioned, I don't even know how I'd recognize it.
To answer your question, it's a combination of being long winded, using unnecessary non-standard phrasing like "industrialized-pharmaceuticals", thinking they know better than medical science/that there's a conspiracy to drug everybody so that they can't notice the conspiracy, and it all just adds up to a crackpot.
In general, pretentious is when you try to make your content 'deeper' than its actual information value.
I think the conclusion comes from a perception that the narrative in my position is not 'the mainstream perspective', and therefore its a matter of pretense over the popular.
And to that, I can only say that the popular opinion is not always the better position. Fight the power. In this case, the power is industrialized pharmaceuticals. Just because its been sold to you as a solution, doesn't mean the problem is solved ..
There are a number of theories, none of which have very strong support.
You probably have met someone with ADHD, you just probably judged them as lazy or immature. Some people very much do struggle with keeping certain topics on their minds.
Yes you have. You've just never met a person diagnosed with ADHD. Even in the US, the diagnosis rate of ADHD is way below the statistical rate of occurrence in the population (and yes, that is true even when you only say something is "ADHD" if it is critically impairing the person's life.) But in other countries, diagnosis is virtually nonexistent, despite similar prevalence. In those countries, people with ADHD are just seen as lazy or lacking character, and are told to "suck it up." (Where ADHD is precisely the lack of executive function necessary to "suck it up.") These people do not turn out well.
If you look at most countries besides the US, there is a distinct "slacker" subculture that is likely a bunch of people with undiagnosed ADHD. NEETs in Japan, for example. These are approached as unique cultural phenomena, rather than through the lens of epidemiology.
(Other thought: maybe you have met someone diagnosed with ADHD, but they've never told you they have it. I don't go around telling my friends and coworkers I have ADHD; it's an annoying conversation to have with someone if you don't know whether they know enough about the disease to separate it from "laziness" as a temporary emotion. I just blab about it to strangers on the internet.)
ADHD is a cultural representation. Its not an actual condition. If you believe in the Religion of DSM, then you've got a problem: you live in a box.
Not everyone on planet Earth actually considers that attention-deficiency requires drugging and dependency on industrialized pharmaceutical dealers.
Its probably part of the "American supremacy" package, though - which is not necessarily only a US infliction, but more of a "Western" one. If you look beyond the West, you might find that its not as big a cultural problem as those who control your mind would have you believe ...
> ADHD is a cultural representation...Not everyone on planet Earth actually considers that attention-deficiency requires drugging and dependency on industrialized pharmaceutical dealers.
Attention and focus are physical processes your brain executes to function normally. There is certainly a cultural aspect to the definition of normal, but its not a completely subjective interpretation as you're implying. Nor is over diagnosis synonymous with (the ailments) existence (i.e. it being over-diagnosed does not mean it does not exist). In the same way that lack of sleep can reduce your ability to focus, there are other physical processes that can go awry, and treatment (such as pharmaceutical intervention) can and does help people.
This bullshit has got to stop. Let me explain neurochemical imbalances generally, once and for all.
Your brain is a machine to enact your choices. "You" are a small part of your brain; the executive center that makes moral judgements about potential courses of action and makes plans to get what you want.
Your brain has reference ranges of neurochemicals. When it is within those ranges, you have a full spectrum of choice available to you, with no particular physiological bias toward one choice over another. A healthy brain enacts "your" whims at precisely the weightings you give them. You have all the options.
When one of your neurochemicals falls out of the reference range, your brain enacts your choices in a biased manner. Your options become impaired. You no longer have the freedom to do exactly what you want.
In clinical depression, choices that would lead to positively-charged emotional stimuli (going out for a walk instead of laying on your bed doing nothing, for example) are down-weighted. Your brain is taking away "your" choice about whether to enjoy something.
In social anxiety, choices that would lead to socially-complex interactions (seeing friends; taking university courses; working in a job involving customer service) are down-weighted. "You" might enjoy doing these things, but your brain won't let you do them.
In ADHD, choices that would lead to short-term effort but only long-term reward (practicing an instrument, for example) are down-weighted. "You" want to learn to play the piano? Too bad; your brain doesn't.
These are not facets of personality. These are impairments in your available choices, just as much as missing a leg impairs your ability to choose to go dancing or being nearsighted impairs your ability to choose to sit at the back of a classroom.
And like the physical impairments, they have prosthetics—drugs that return your brain to the reference ranges of these neurochemicals. Like any prosthetic, the point of them is to give you back the options that having the impairment takes away.
Anti-depressants let you choose to go do something fun. You don't have to. You can stay in. But the choice is no longer being made for you, by your brain.
Anxiolytics let you choose to socialize. You don't have to. You can be an introvert. But now you don't have to worry about someone making a demand of you based on an expectation that all the options are equally easy.
ADHD medication lets you choose to work on a task with no short-term reward. You can still play video games or goof off, but now you can also start—and finish—writing a book. You no longer have to select from the subset of hobbies and jobs your brain is willing to put up with.
What industrialized product did you take that let you choose to take more pharmaceuticals?
Perhaps it was the advertising and other marketing materials that produced the chemical change in your "brain" to further prompt you to go get addicted to industrial drugs.
Well, if it works for you: good for you. Doesn't work for everyone.
> Let me explain neurochemical imbalances generally, once and for all.
You know that the neurochemical explanation for depression is mostly bullshit, right?
Note that I'm not saying that meds don't work, but there's a reason why first line treatment for depression or for anxiety disorders in the UK is not meds but is a (more expensive) talking therapy: the evidence is stronger.
No, the evidence is not "stronger" for the efficacy of psychotherapy over medication in moderate to severe depression. Nor is it "stronger" for mild depression - they appear to be about as efficacious.
And no, the "neurochemical" explanation for depression isn't bullshit.
But please do enlighten us with your own scientific theory on what scientific process other than chemicals underlies phenomenon like mood, motivation, focus, etc.
> but there's a reason why first line treatment for depression or for anxiety disorders in the UK is not meds but is a (more expensive) talking therapy
It's not actually that the evidence is stronger (as in, there is more supporting evidence) but rather that the evidence suggests the effect size is stronger. Talk therapy is a really good way to treat anxiety in particular. It's a good prosthetic!
I'm not arguing that there's a 1:1 mapping of neurochemicals to disorders; in fact, that's almost certainly the opposite of the case, and one of the main reasons drugs don't seem to beat placebo is that there are bimodal distributions where a given drug will only work on the subset of people with a given symptom where that symptom is caused by that particular chemical imbalance.
Sometimes what clinical depression needs is a dopaminergic (e.g. Wellbutrin). Sometimes what social anxiety needs is an SNRI. It's all a mess. But that doesn't mean that it's not all chemicals, and that there isn't a combination of chemicals that wouldn't put things right in proper dosages. Neurotransmitters are how your brain does multicast electrochemical signalling; any message that's not just a local one between two synapses is travelling via a neurotransmitter.
(I apologize for feeding the troll; I just wanted to write that post above for a long time, and figured this would be a good time to do it. To said troll: I will note that I'm not arguing for the pharmaceutical industry as it stands. My own personal desire is to figure out a set of non-invasive tests that can measure effective "executive weight normalization" on various axes the way dual-N-back measures effective IQ, and then give people a "chemistry kit" of various -ergics, reuptake inhibitors, and inhibitors, and let them do their own science.)
> In ADHD, choices that would lead to short-term effort but only long-term reward (practicing an instrument, for example) are down-weighted. "You" want to learn to play the piano? Too bad; your brain doesn't.
is the natural human condition. In the past they called it "building character" or whatever but it's always been an effort to get people to value the long-term reward vs. short-term. Drugs are just an alternative short cut to what used to be a decades long grind to build the ability to delay gratification.
Probably because they seem normal to you. I have found that if you were to compartmentalize behaviors independent of the person or other behaviors, you are far less likely to give it a name, never mind categorizing it as an illness.
<rant>
If people have ADHD and it needs to be "prescribed" a drug or treatment, then there are so many different habits and behaviors that can just as well be labeled as an illness.
Schools have used ADHD diagnosis to explain disruptive students. The truth of the matter was that those students turned out to be a little more difficult to handle simply because they demanded more of the teacher and were not content with either the style of information or the amount of info they were getting.
Which brings me back to the article: games exhaust mentally hyped minds. And that is supposed to be a "cure", just like physical activity is supposed to be a "cure" to restless bodies. </rant>
Long story short: some vaccines used to include thiomersal[0, 1]. It was removed from most of them due to fearmongering (i.e. no evidence of harm [2]).
Also associated with this hysteria: Andrew Wakefield (barred, discredited former doctor) and Jenny McCarthy (model).
It's an emotional topic because it involves giving amphetamines to children. Either you don't believe in ADHD and thus think kids are being prescribed/forced to take hard drugs for no reason other than a cultural and educational flaw.
Or you do believe in it and want to justify why giving amphetamines to children is a good thing. Maybe you take them yourself.
Either way, it's emotional because people are heavily invested in their choice since the opposing side will basically view them as monsters.
32 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 78.6 ms ] threadIt can't happen, at least not overnight. It is going to take at least 2 or 3 generations before the dependency on industrialized-pharmaceuticals can be removed as an aspect of our western societies. Even if we have a solution to the dependency that pharmaceutical customers have, it is no small thing to come off the prescription.
So how far have we come as a species that we are having these 'generational approach' questions posed to us? Last centurys' Ritalin addict is this years flapper girl. All we do as cultures is propel the change of fashion forward. I feel nothing but pity for those who have a chemical dependence where the next patient bears no such duress, should they push pixels instead of pills. I would love to see it all change, such that none of us are dependent on industrialized pharmaceutical production - the penultimate of capital masters, but the closest analog to a solution in this regard, that I see, is the legalization of weed.
Legalize it, and a lot of these industrial problems have the potential to disappear...
Very US-centric. We don't prescribe amphetamines like candy in Europe.
Pharmaceuticals aren't the devil and god your writing style is off the charts pretentious.
Not in your culture maybe, but beyond your borders it more than suffices.
>writing style is off the charts pretentious.
++good. Meds, rectify.
You reminded me to take them, so wish granted. ;)
There is no better currency today than attention, so thanks for spending a little of it on this message.
... and if you think I'm being pretentious when writing this, sorry. As I mentioned, I don't even know how I'd recognize it.
To answer your question, it's a combination of being long winded, using unnecessary non-standard phrasing like "industrialized-pharmaceuticals", thinking they know better than medical science/that there's a conspiracy to drug everybody so that they can't notice the conspiracy, and it all just adds up to a crackpot.
In general, pretentious is when you try to make your content 'deeper' than its actual information value.
You mean in lieu of those presented in the DSM? Oh, I get it: you're a member of the pharma-cult.
And to that, I can only say that the popular opinion is not always the better position. Fight the power. In this case, the power is industrialized pharmaceuticals. Just because its been sold to you as a solution, doesn't mean the problem is solved ..
You probably have met someone with ADHD, you just probably judged them as lazy or immature. Some people very much do struggle with keeping certain topics on their minds.
If you look at most countries besides the US, there is a distinct "slacker" subculture that is likely a bunch of people with undiagnosed ADHD. NEETs in Japan, for example. These are approached as unique cultural phenomena, rather than through the lens of epidemiology.
(Other thought: maybe you have met someone diagnosed with ADHD, but they've never told you they have it. I don't go around telling my friends and coworkers I have ADHD; it's an annoying conversation to have with someone if you don't know whether they know enough about the disease to separate it from "laziness" as a temporary emotion. I just blab about it to strangers on the internet.)
Not everyone on planet Earth actually considers that attention-deficiency requires drugging and dependency on industrialized pharmaceutical dealers.
Its probably part of the "American supremacy" package, though - which is not necessarily only a US infliction, but more of a "Western" one. If you look beyond the West, you might find that its not as big a cultural problem as those who control your mind would have you believe ...
Attention and focus are physical processes your brain executes to function normally. There is certainly a cultural aspect to the definition of normal, but its not a completely subjective interpretation as you're implying. Nor is over diagnosis synonymous with (the ailments) existence (i.e. it being over-diagnosed does not mean it does not exist). In the same way that lack of sleep can reduce your ability to focus, there are other physical processes that can go awry, and treatment (such as pharmaceutical intervention) can and does help people.
As an interesting aside, sleep apnea is sometimes mis-diagnosed as ADHD (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21808754)
Really? I think that all cultures are subjective by definition.
So I can't agree with you, simply. Ask the French if they have an ADHD problem ..
Your brain is a machine to enact your choices. "You" are a small part of your brain; the executive center that makes moral judgements about potential courses of action and makes plans to get what you want.
Your brain has reference ranges of neurochemicals. When it is within those ranges, you have a full spectrum of choice available to you, with no particular physiological bias toward one choice over another. A healthy brain enacts "your" whims at precisely the weightings you give them. You have all the options.
When one of your neurochemicals falls out of the reference range, your brain enacts your choices in a biased manner. Your options become impaired. You no longer have the freedom to do exactly what you want.
In clinical depression, choices that would lead to positively-charged emotional stimuli (going out for a walk instead of laying on your bed doing nothing, for example) are down-weighted. Your brain is taking away "your" choice about whether to enjoy something.
In social anxiety, choices that would lead to socially-complex interactions (seeing friends; taking university courses; working in a job involving customer service) are down-weighted. "You" might enjoy doing these things, but your brain won't let you do them.
In ADHD, choices that would lead to short-term effort but only long-term reward (practicing an instrument, for example) are down-weighted. "You" want to learn to play the piano? Too bad; your brain doesn't.
These are not facets of personality. These are impairments in your available choices, just as much as missing a leg impairs your ability to choose to go dancing or being nearsighted impairs your ability to choose to sit at the back of a classroom.
And like the physical impairments, they have prosthetics—drugs that return your brain to the reference ranges of these neurochemicals. Like any prosthetic, the point of them is to give you back the options that having the impairment takes away.
Anti-depressants let you choose to go do something fun. You don't have to. You can stay in. But the choice is no longer being made for you, by your brain.
Anxiolytics let you choose to socialize. You don't have to. You can be an introvert. But now you don't have to worry about someone making a demand of you based on an expectation that all the options are equally easy.
ADHD medication lets you choose to work on a task with no short-term reward. You can still play video games or goof off, but now you can also start—and finish—writing a book. You no longer have to select from the subset of hobbies and jobs your brain is willing to put up with.
Perhaps it was the advertising and other marketing materials that produced the chemical change in your "brain" to further prompt you to go get addicted to industrial drugs.
Well, if it works for you: good for you. Doesn't work for everyone.
You know that the neurochemical explanation for depression is mostly bullshit, right?
Note that I'm not saying that meds don't work, but there's a reason why first line treatment for depression or for anxiety disorders in the UK is not meds but is a (more expensive) talking therapy: the evidence is stronger.
EDIT: also, stop feeding the fucking troll.
The drug that changes their mind hasn't been patented yet.
And no, the "neurochemical" explanation for depression isn't bullshit.
But please do enlighten us with your own scientific theory on what scientific process other than chemicals underlies phenomenon like mood, motivation, focus, etc.
Stop peddling psuedoscience.
> but there's a reason why first line treatment for depression or for anxiety disorders in the UK is not meds but is a (more expensive) talking therapy
It's not actually that the evidence is stronger (as in, there is more supporting evidence) but rather that the evidence suggests the effect size is stronger. Talk therapy is a really good way to treat anxiety in particular. It's a good prosthetic!
I'm not arguing that there's a 1:1 mapping of neurochemicals to disorders; in fact, that's almost certainly the opposite of the case, and one of the main reasons drugs don't seem to beat placebo is that there are bimodal distributions where a given drug will only work on the subset of people with a given symptom where that symptom is caused by that particular chemical imbalance.
Sometimes what clinical depression needs is a dopaminergic (e.g. Wellbutrin). Sometimes what social anxiety needs is an SNRI. It's all a mess. But that doesn't mean that it's not all chemicals, and that there isn't a combination of chemicals that wouldn't put things right in proper dosages. Neurotransmitters are how your brain does multicast electrochemical signalling; any message that's not just a local one between two synapses is travelling via a neurotransmitter.
(I apologize for feeding the troll; I just wanted to write that post above for a long time, and figured this would be a good time to do it. To said troll: I will note that I'm not arguing for the pharmaceutical industry as it stands. My own personal desire is to figure out a set of non-invasive tests that can measure effective "executive weight normalization" on various axes the way dual-N-back measures effective IQ, and then give people a "chemistry kit" of various -ergics, reuptake inhibitors, and inhibitors, and let them do their own science.)
> In ADHD, choices that would lead to short-term effort but only long-term reward (practicing an instrument, for example) are down-weighted. "You" want to learn to play the piano? Too bad; your brain doesn't.
is the natural human condition. In the past they called it "building character" or whatever but it's always been an effort to get people to value the long-term reward vs. short-term. Drugs are just an alternative short cut to what used to be a decades long grind to build the ability to delay gratification.
<rant> If people have ADHD and it needs to be "prescribed" a drug or treatment, then there are so many different habits and behaviors that can just as well be labeled as an illness.
Schools have used ADHD diagnosis to explain disruptive students. The truth of the matter was that those students turned out to be a little more difficult to handle simply because they demanded more of the teacher and were not content with either the style of information or the amount of info they were getting.
Which brings me back to the article: games exhaust mentally hyped minds. And that is supposed to be a "cure", just like physical activity is supposed to be a "cure" to restless bodies. </rant>
I did not know that vaccines sometimes contain a mercury-compound. Mercury is highly toxic. I'm mildly surprised.
Also associated with this hysteria: Andrew Wakefield (barred, discredited former doctor) and Jenny McCarthy (model).
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy
[2]: http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability...
Why do so many react so strongly emotionally to this topic? Or does my impression misguide me?
Or you do believe in it and want to justify why giving amphetamines to children is a good thing. Maybe you take them yourself.
Either way, it's emotional because people are heavily invested in their choice since the opposing side will basically view them as monsters.