Rather than helping to explain, psychiatric diagnoses like ‘ADHD’ do more to obscure what really matters.
Whatever you might think are the perceived merits of constructing ADHD as a “diagnosis” that has biological origins and can be “treated” with medication, the scientific truth is that it cannot be thought of as a valid scientific entity and the current recommendation for its treatment that usually prioritises medication without time limits is not evidence based.
ADHD is an example of the way academic psychiatry got infected with scientism that has likely led to untold harm. Imagining that ADHD is a diagnosis blinds children, parents, teachers, doctors, and other practitioners to a whole variety of context-related factors, including immaturity, learning difficulties, schooling issues, bullying, violence exposure, dietary, lifestyle, lack of family support, lack of confidence in parenting, and so on, that may be relevant.
It also blinds them to the ordinariness of childishness and the capacity of kids to irritate adults. ADHD is more of a commentary on the cultural intolerance we have for the diversities of the ways children grow up, and the pressure we put on them and their parents to perform to the narrow age-dependent standards we set.
Timimi is in the process of publishing a serialised version of his new book, Insane Medicine: How the Mental Health Industry Creates Damaging Treatment Traps and How You Can Escape Them. An up-to-date archive of this series of articles can be found here.
