What do you think about the fact that the creator of the term "ADHD," Dr. Leon Eisenberg, said that ADHD is vastly over diagnosed?

For many years I’ve said that it is a label stuck on normal children by lazy parents and doctors.

They do go nuts with the labeling. I once took my daughter to a psychologist for her depression. He talked to her and me for 15 minutes and promptly labeled her as ADHD. She showed absolutely no HINT of an inability to pay attention, and was not hyperactive!

Many bipolar kids are diagnosed ADHD because noone wants to label a kid with that.

Why not, @Judi?

It is my guess the social stigma attached to a bipolar diagnoses which is not always clear cut in and of itself makes it an unpopular label at so early an age.

It is odd i have heard so much about labeling and such and yet I have no experience with it.

I have been to cognitive therapy with various therapists, no one has offered me pills or labels.

Furthermore the children of my friends are very rarely labeled or encouraged labeling. It is more a parents fear that their active child will be labelled.

Though in the few cases of labeling I have seen. It was the school system that did the labeling. I think they have altogether too much power.

Our local government always grants their proposed budget first and foremost with little or no questioning. Otherwise we get blamed for not caring for the children.

Yet if a parent questions a method then that child pays. Gets set up and is treated like a problem child. Develop a big enough file on them and then they start throwing out accusations and labels and demanding medication.

Then no one seriously questions any teaching method or the results of the schooling experience on the children.

These are just my observations. I could be wrong. And I do know there are good teachers out there. Often they to are put in bad situations where their hands are tied.

I think the good doctor has ADHD. :)

@Dutchess_III , I think they’re diagnosing it more now, but I think there was a feeling that kids could grow out of ADHD but that’s not so with Bipolar. Once yo have that it’s pretty much a problem for life. Doctors are relay mostly guessing with their diagnosis anyway and it’s easier to tell a parent their kids have ADHD than bipolar. Problem is, the treatments are so different.

But I don’t understand. What does NOT saying the kid is bi-polar accomplish, if he really is? It’s not like he’s going to outgrow it if he’s never officially labeled.

I think they “hope” it’s just ADHD. Less severe and since their just guessing anyway…..

That’s totally depressing. The doctors just “guess” and change those poor children’s lives forever. But hey….the drugs make it easier for everyone around them.

@Dutchess_III The drugs for bipolar would likely be much more severe. I think it makes sense to go with a less intense diagnosis until events prove otherwise.

Don’t they have tests or something they can run? My own experience was a total joke.

I think like most diagnoses in the DSM it is done by assessing the cluster of symptoms and then deciding on the basis of that.

In my case daughter’s case there were NO symptoms of ADHD in evidence at the time. He based his diagnosis on one thing I shared with him, and that was I had to teach my daughter to sit on my lap and cuddle, believe it or not. When she was about 2 I made her sit on my lap until I counted to 5 then I let her go. Then, a few days later, until the count of 10, and so on. She’d tolerate it, knowing that it would end soon, and she knew when because I was counting down. By the end of the week she realized that this was a pleasant experience and I couldn’t get her off my lap after that! She realized that she liked cuddling. It seemed a little odd and I still have no explanation for it, but it was resolved. To make a diagnosis like ADHD based on ONE incident that had happened 8 years earlier, when she was a toddler, was irresponsible IMO.

@Dutchess_III I agree.

I was told by a male speech therapist that my son’s speech delay was due to the fact that I had breastfed him. “Lazy Lips”!!

OMG! Oh, how scary that people like that are in positions like that!

Ha ha!

Yes! Luckily, I was smart enough – even back then – to feel he was full of shit.

It probably is over-diagnosed. That doesn’t mean that no one has it. The suffering from ADHD is real… and it effects the whole family.

I do think that there should be more investigation into home life and family therapy should be used more often, as well as teaching parents family management/organization skills.

My son’s pediatrician had no interest in discussing alternative diets or therapy as treatments for ADHD.

Have you heard of intermittent explosive disorder? Road rage, domestic abuse, throwing or breaking objects, or other temper tantrums may be signs of intermittent explosive disorder.

Could be signs of how you were raised, too.

It is a real disorder.

I, personally, call it “losing your temper.” It’s been a long, long time since I’ve thrown anything, and never did it in front of the kids, but I have been known to do it. It’s what my Mom did.

A person who was physically abused as a child may well grow up to become abusive to others as an adult. That’s nurture, not nature.

That is my point, @Dutchess_III. Designer diseases. Disorders created for medications. It is a gigantic multibillion dollar business.

Well, that makes me just want to throw something!!!!
It’s interesting….Dr. Eisenberg came up with ADHD in the 50’s, but it didn’t become popular until the 80’s. What’s the correlation there?

I think it is a new generation of prescription medications.

When new disorders are first introduced, they have historically been over-applied. There are fads even in epidemiology.

I heard about Intermittent explosive disorder. Two instances. One where an epileptic girl’s brain was being stimulated in a specific region. When hooked up to electrodes and not made aware of when they were stimulating that part of the brain she stopped responding to questions her face became stoney and started smashing her guitar, which she had been playing, on the person who had been engaging her. A series of surgeries destroyed that part of her brain and she never had a problem again.

The second was a man who had a tumor pressing on a certain area of the brain. Once it was removed he was fine until it grew back.

@rosehips , I saw that guitar smashing video in a freshman psychology class in 1979!
I think the part of the brain is the amygdala?

I’m sure there are instances @rosehips where people have actual, physical problems that affect their behavior, but what @bkcunningham is saying, though, is that they’re starting to call normal human behavior (anything outside of ‘happy’) “medical problems” in order to sell the drugs.

@Dutchess_III, hyperthymia temperament disorder is excessive happiness.

Yep that sounds right @Judi.

I do see and largely agree with your point @bkcunningham and @Dutchess_III but you can’t automatically dismiss every diagnoses as superfluous and a result of Big Pharma industry.

I haven’t heard of the term for excessive happiness. But I believe it probably become a problem if that person didn’t have rational fears. Or didn’t have any empathy for others who did have pain and so on and so forth.

I made up the term, @rosehips.

@bkcunningham Lol actually not so much. Hyperthymia: Hyperthymic personality disorder is classified more as a temperment then a disorder.

However since hyperthymia so closely mimics manic episodes in bipolar they are interested if it is class IV bipolarism or a possible precursor to some one manifesting bipolar. They are certain there is some link…

Other then the person probably being annoying they don’t consider a presentation of symptoms to be too far out of line with society that it needs treatment or drug therapy.

I had to look…. I may be annoying but I don’t have hyperthemia temperment.

Hyperthymic productiveness anyone?