There are more than enough people with serious mental issues who really do need professional help without all the other Toms, Dicks and Harriets rushing to the therapist's couch.
I've tried many times to set out the case against the wicked fantasy of 'ADHD,' which usually earns me nothing but ignorant rage in return.
I think it's ill-advised to attribute pathologies to healthy people. It doesn't help normal, healthy, thriving children to be viewed as pitiable and fragile.
The trouble with being a hypochondriac these days is that antibiotics have cured all the good diseases.
One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis.
The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient.
but all I could think was in New York that kid would have been stuck in a straitjacket practically from birth and dangled over a tank full of Educational Consultants and Remedial Experts all snapping at his ankles for the next twenty years arguing about his Special Needs and getting paid plenty for it.
We have been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.
I think mental illness is a slippery slope to talk about these days because people are overly diagnosed, overly prescribed, overly everything.
