As more and more people seek a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), so grows a debate among mental health specialists about the use of diagnostic labels that may medicalize the human experience instead of delving into the psychological issues behind symptoms.
The United States has also seen a notable rise in adults seeking prescriptions for ADHD drugs, both before and during the pandemic, according to the CDC.
Pathologizing Behavior
Ben Harris, a psychotherapist in private practice in London, told The Epoch Times that he believes that we’re living in a culture that incentivizes us to give ourselves illness labels.“What we need to do in our culture is to think less about diagnostic labels and more about the meanings, the meaning of people’s experience, because that’s the only way you can understand what ADHD means to a specific person,” he said.
“Is there more ADHD than there used to be? Well, diagnostically, it appears so. There could be various reasons for that.”
In certain cases, he said, parents or indeed adults do want to have a diagnosis, and we “could be incentivizing the diagnosis of these symptoms at lower and lower thresholds.”
One of the reasons people may want a diagnosis is to access drugs popularized for the treatment of ADHD. Another is because it provides an explanation for some of the difficulties they face.
We should be looking behind the label, Harris said, because what’s being diagnosed as ADHD could be many things grouped together behind one label.
Depression, the distraction of digital addictions, poor nutrition, stress, and illness can all compromise focus and executive function.
And then there’s the simple fact that some people are just different. While ADHD-type behaviors can impair function in certain roles and environments, some people celebrate the creative traits many ADHD types have. And then there’s the profound change in our culture and lifestyle with people becoming more sedentary and chair bound, with less physical engagement and less dynamic routines. People that could have once thrived in the endless variety of work in common rural lifestyles are now bound in cubicles staring at screens.
People are suffering, but that may not be a mental illness, Harris said.
‘Are You Saying My Distress Isn’t Real?’
Dr. Damian Wilde, a psychologist with many years of clinical and therapeutic experience in the NHS, told The Epoch Times that an ADHD “diagnosis is quick, but formulation takes time.”“People want quick these days, which is modeled by the government and society, people need to slow down,” he said.
Depression is another diagnosis that’s on the rise, with people seeking a quick diagnosis and drugs to boost their mood. But saying depression is an illness overlooks the fact that people have legitimate reasons to be depressed, including the fact that we live in a time of tremendous isolation, uncertainty, and division. Stress, processed foods, toxic exposures, and too much time online can all contribute to feelings of depression.
Wilde says that ADHD isn’t an illness in the way many people think it is, though the distress is very real.
He said many people experience trauma, a difficult life event, neglect, a lack of opportunity, poverty, day-to-day stress, and poor relationships, all of which can contribute to psychological distress. In some cases, this unresolved pain can manifest as ADHD-like symptoms.
An ADHD assessment takes place with a specialist, typically a neurobehavioral psychiatrist, and normally takes one to three hours, using a list of symptoms from the reference book “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” often known as the “DSM.”
Wilde said that when he worked with a team in NHS Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services, he saw child patients that may have difficulties with attention, but by speaking to parents and schools, he was able to formulate an explanation.
“The explanation wasn’t, for example, about attributing blame but saying, for example, perhaps the child has witnessed a trauma and this is a reaction,” he said.
He noted that, sometimes, if someone gets an ADHD diagnostic label, the risk is that they don’t have to look at themselves. Famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside awakes,” Wilde noted.
‘We Can Lose the Essence of a Person’
Wilde said that there’s a risk with every diagnosis, however.“The problem with a diagnosis is the attribution becomes the disorder—the child does something, that’s because of his ADHD, and it can’t be helped,” he said.
He noted a trend of people putting a “neurodiverse” label on social media biographies.
While some may celebrate the label, others surrender to it. Wilde said that the problem with an ADHD diagnosis is that it can become part of a person’s identity, which can halt recovery from otherwise resolvable issues.
“With a psychiatric diagnosis, we can lose the essence of a person here in some ways, because it becomes about the disorder rather than about the person’s likes and interests,” he said.
“It can stop people from exploring and finding out the real reason for their problems, and secondly, it becomes part of their identity.
“People can say, ‘I am always going to struggle, I am always going to be unwell because of this illness; I’ve got this disorder.’”
