They say that more people are diagnosed with ADHD each and every year. Do you think that the percentage of people who have it is legitimately increasing, or do you think that many people are wrongfully diagnosed?
My mother believes that parents and teachers nowadays are quick to have children diagnosed and referred to psychiatrists because it’s easier to medicate and tranquilize a rowdy child than to teach them discipline, and that most people with “ADHD” now simply don’t know how to sit still because they have a lot of energy and were not taught discipline like past generations were.
Others believe that due to various factors be it environmental, genetic, dietary… the prevalence of ADHD is actually increasing.
There is some evidence that certain college students are faking ADHD symptoms to get meds like Ritalin, which can increase focus and concentration even in normal folks (up to a point - too much leads to bad side effects, as usual for any medication) and that also is contributing to the increasing numbers diagnosed.
I think there is a legitimate disorder, but I also think the label gets abused for various purposes.
There’s another option between “faking/exaggerating” and “it’s an epidemic! halp!”
Our society has put a premium on attention and focus that it hasn’t always had. Thirty-forty years ago, we would have laughed at the parents who think it wise to teach their five-year-olds how use a typewriter or a word processor. Nowadays, kids are being plopped in front of computers as toddlers…and with high expectations too.
As soon as kids enter school, they are tested and ranked and sorted. When a kid becomes a walking test score, it becomes damn-near impossible not to fixate on their deviation from the norm and try to explain why they aren’t stacking up.
Everyone seems to be expected to be high-achieving and college-bound so that one day they can get a comfortable 9-to-5 desk job. This is Success. But you have to have great focus to make all-As in school and to do well on standardize tests. Woe to the person who doesn’t have great focus. They’d be better off under different societal pressures, where focus isn’t the end-all, be-all.
It’s kind of like if our society decided to put a high premium on sprint runners. Not everyone can run fast, even if most people have the ability to run. So in such a society, we’d see more people walking around with the Developmental Coordination Disorder diagnosis as a way to explain their inability to be like Flo Jo. And they would indeed be disabled. But many of those people would not be disabled if society was structured a different way.