National Post
By John Baglow
April 27, 2010
Some time back I remarked on a new childhood “affliction” to be dealt with by the judicious use of drugs and psychiatrists: “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” If you had four or more of the following as a child, you were ODD, and I guess I was, too:
1. often loses temper [check]
2. often argues with adults [check]
3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules [check]
4. often deliberately annoys people [check]
5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
7. is often angry and resentful
8. is often spiteful or vindictive
To qualify as ODD, those “disturbances” must cause “clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.” But of course that can mean almost anything. Talking back. Fighting back. Asking a lot of questions. Standing up for yourself in a hostile environment.
In those days teachers and jocks simply bullied you into submission. Now it’s all white coats and Ritalin.
Creativity? Lateral thinking? Oddball hypotheses? Questioning authority? For goodness sake, tell your kids to leave it at home, for their own good. That’s what the Internet is for.
In any case, it looks as though I was onto something. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is going through another update. The first version of the DSM, published in 1952, listed 128 disorders (including homosexuality, delisted in 1973). DSM-IV, appearing in 1994, listed 357–almost three times the original number. And DSM-5, scheduled for publication in 2013, may swell the list even more.
Dr. Allen Frances chaired the committee that wrote DSM-IV. He has, to put it mildly, had a change of heart, after having had more than a quarter-century to observe the human tragedies that resulted:
Frances says [DSM-IV] unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.
Rates of bipolar disorder alone jumped 40-fold in the U.S. after the definition was broadened to suggest that children don’t have to experience the typical manic symptoms seen in adults to be diagnosed bipolar — and that depression in kids can be a persistent irritable mood.
Read entire article: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/04/27/john-baglow-message-to-disease-industry-that-s-why-they-call-it-acting-like-a-child.aspx
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