Thanks for sharing this story Adrian! Truly stunning and sad. I met one homeschool parent many years ago who pulled her son out of school because teachers suggested that he should be put on Ritalin because of his "disruptive" behaviour. Instead she took over his education and allowed him to move around while learning. He loved to dance, and over the years this became his passion, and he is now a professional ballet dancer.
It seems like there’s an insistence on labeling everything as part of some sort of spectrum but then conversely an insistence that the entire spectrum be treated exactly the same.
When I was a kid in the nineties I had a classmate diagnosed with “ADHD”. Today that diagnosis would be something like “severe combined ADHD” because they have to differentiate it from “mild inattentive ADHD” which is essentially the same as a diagnosis of “bored kid”. Yet doctors want to give both kids today Ritalin. The kid I grew up with didn’t just have trouble sitting still, it’s like every molecule in his body was trying to go in a different direction all the time. The rest of us could tell from an early age when he had missed his morning medicine because he was 200% at everything and pinging off the ceiling. He seems to have genuinely benefited from his medication which just shaved the edge off. Medicated he was still super creative and funny, maybe more so because otherwise he was just entirely too much. From what I can see he wasn’t impacted by many of the side effects discussed likely because his case was severe and I suspect his dose was much lower than what they use today. Back then it was much harder to get a diagnosis and only the “severe” cases got medicated. Now any kid that daydreams is declared needing medication.
We see this happen across the board in mental health. Anyone who is sad is “depressed”, even if they have good reason to be sad. Someone for whom life seems to be going generally well who cannot drag themselves from bed in the morning may indeed have a mental health issue that needs dealt with. Someone who doesn’t want to face the day because they broke up with their significant other or because they are dealing with the loss of a parent isn’t depressed they are grieving. One is aberrant the other is perfectly normal human behavior and experience. Yet doctors want to medicate both.
It happened with “autism” and “neurodivergence” as well. Everyone is now on the spectrum but yet those with “profound autism” are left out of the public discourse which is why you have people like Elizabeth Warren declaring we don’t need to prevent autism because it’s a wonderful part of what makes America great.
This insistence that everything is on a spectrum but that everything on the spectrum needs to be treated the exact same way is the worst of both worlds.
A recent shooting at FSU in Tallahassee had me wondering if the shooter, a student at the University and the son of a sheriff’s deputy, had been on medication for ADHD. Apparently, he had been medicated for a number of years. When will people who can steer us in the right direction start making the connection between these mind altering drugs and aberrant, destructive behavior (RFK, Jr.)?
The War On The Child: Battlefront “No Humor, Please”
‘A third article, by Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist who lectures at Harvard Medical School, gave advice to clinicians on how to respond if parents say they are worried that stimulant medication is muting their child’s sense of humor.
‘The suggested response: Maybe your child was the wrong kind of funny. “Parents should know that not all personality changes sparked by medication are negative,” Olivardia advised. “If a child known for his sense of humor seems ‘less funny’ on medication, it could be that the medication is properly inhibiting them. In other words, it’s not that the child is less funny; it’s that they’re more appropriately funny at the right times.”’
Thanks for sharing this story Adrian! Truly stunning and sad. I met one homeschool parent many years ago who pulled her son out of school because teachers suggested that he should be put on Ritalin because of his "disruptive" behaviour. Instead she took over his education and allowed him to move around while learning. He loved to dance, and over the years this became his passion, and he is now a professional ballet dancer.
Same thing happened to Edison, except with the lightbulb instead of Swan Lake : )
Thanks for covering this. Longtime AHHD critic here. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3918118/Conners emailed me to say I was “right about everything I said.”
Wow, of course! It’s an honor! I loved your episode with Dr McFillin, thank you for all you do!
Hello and thank you for the feedback.
It seems like there’s an insistence on labeling everything as part of some sort of spectrum but then conversely an insistence that the entire spectrum be treated exactly the same.
When I was a kid in the nineties I had a classmate diagnosed with “ADHD”. Today that diagnosis would be something like “severe combined ADHD” because they have to differentiate it from “mild inattentive ADHD” which is essentially the same as a diagnosis of “bored kid”. Yet doctors want to give both kids today Ritalin. The kid I grew up with didn’t just have trouble sitting still, it’s like every molecule in his body was trying to go in a different direction all the time. The rest of us could tell from an early age when he had missed his morning medicine because he was 200% at everything and pinging off the ceiling. He seems to have genuinely benefited from his medication which just shaved the edge off. Medicated he was still super creative and funny, maybe more so because otherwise he was just entirely too much. From what I can see he wasn’t impacted by many of the side effects discussed likely because his case was severe and I suspect his dose was much lower than what they use today. Back then it was much harder to get a diagnosis and only the “severe” cases got medicated. Now any kid that daydreams is declared needing medication.
We see this happen across the board in mental health. Anyone who is sad is “depressed”, even if they have good reason to be sad. Someone for whom life seems to be going generally well who cannot drag themselves from bed in the morning may indeed have a mental health issue that needs dealt with. Someone who doesn’t want to face the day because they broke up with their significant other or because they are dealing with the loss of a parent isn’t depressed they are grieving. One is aberrant the other is perfectly normal human behavior and experience. Yet doctors want to medicate both.
It happened with “autism” and “neurodivergence” as well. Everyone is now on the spectrum but yet those with “profound autism” are left out of the public discourse which is why you have people like Elizabeth Warren declaring we don’t need to prevent autism because it’s a wonderful part of what makes America great.
This insistence that everything is on a spectrum but that everything on the spectrum needs to be treated the exact same way is the worst of both worlds.
A recent shooting at FSU in Tallahassee had me wondering if the shooter, a student at the University and the son of a sheriff’s deputy, had been on medication for ADHD. Apparently, he had been medicated for a number of years. When will people who can steer us in the right direction start making the connection between these mind altering drugs and aberrant, destructive behavior (RFK, Jr.)?
"The wrong kind of funny."
Love it! :-)
Excellent post Sir👍🏻🎯
I read ADHD Nation per your recommendation. A fabulous, eye-opening read.
That last quotation made my stomach turn. Great article.
The War On The Child: Battlefront “No Humor, Please”
‘A third article, by Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist who lectures at Harvard Medical School, gave advice to clinicians on how to respond if parents say they are worried that stimulant medication is muting their child’s sense of humor.
‘The suggested response: Maybe your child was the wrong kind of funny. “Parents should know that not all personality changes sparked by medication are negative,” Olivardia advised. “If a child known for his sense of humor seems ‘less funny’ on medication, it could be that the medication is properly inhibiting them. In other words, it’s not that the child is less funny; it’s that they’re more appropriately funny at the right times.”’
https://open.substack.com/pub/gaty/p/the-emperors-new-clothes-are-fading