adhd discussions

More than two decades after its formal recognition as a mental illness in the official manual of psychiatric disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder continues to have an identity crisis.

As psychiatrists press for greater efforts to identify and treat what they deem a disorder that, undetected and unattended, can cause children unnecessary suffering, the critical minority pushes in the opposite direction, contending it is overzealous attention focused on inattention that is causing youngsters needless pain.

“Instead of a culture where we say we have the wealth and resources to identify people with mental illness and offer them treatment, we say instead mental illness is bad, but treatment is worse, so we’ll stigmatize both treatment and mental illness and incorporate the dysfunction associated with that into our definition of normal,” said Dr.