Practice and practitioners

Practice and practitioners - ADHD

In this world we have laborers, professionals, researchers, and practitioners - not to forget politicians, which are ignored for the moment. Let's discuss the practitioners, those who practice a profession. These include accountants, psychologists, lawyers, and doctors. This implies they use an extant body of accepted knowledge and make arguments and prescriptions on what to do in the various circumstances. They have no need to think beyond their sandbox of this knowledge. Indeed, thinking beyond is discouraged.

BUT... This may be a good thing. You don't want your doctor simply manufacturing new medicine when you are under care. You don't want your lawyer inventing legal precedents when you have some grievance or other situation. Thinking inside the box, in these cases, is just plain OK. But the practice does entertain and in some cases slavishly follows the leads of others.

Case-in-point is ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.   This is a condition, now at least 40 years old, diagnosed for up to 10% of all young boys, and some claim it continues into adulthood. Even ancient illuminaries such as Julius Caesar have been so diagnosed. But the inventor of this condition claims it to be a fictitious disease. The normal treatment for this disease is Ritalin, a powerful stimulant that seems to stem hyperactivity in youngsters. This medication treats the symptoms of the problem, but not the problem itself. So it is claimed by US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, the creator of this condition. The ADHD condition is rampant. But do the treatments actually work? Eisenberg claims it deprives these folks of learning how to cope with and then grow up with their situation.

For more information, please see http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03-27-NEWS-inventor-of-adhd-says-adhd-is-a-fictitious-disease.html

In a recent discussion on LinkedIn special group on Neuro-education: Promoting Cognitive Development
I made the following comment:

Interesting article. I have a son diagnosed with ADHD, and he was prescribed to take Ritilan. (Anyway, what do young-ish pediatricians know about such very subtle things.) It helped the symptom but not the problem. I wouldn't call him abnormal, but would rather use "not normal" as a softer touch, and far less pejorative.

That said, we live in an age where anything deemed "not normal" needs a diagnosis, a name, and a treatment. BTW, it seems that ADHD has migrated to Asperger's syndrome, and even a full spectrum of Autistic issues. Growing up is so multifaceted it defies categorization. However, we do try. Does anyone treat the overenthusiastic cheerleader? If our society was just a little bit more introverted, this would be a "condition," have a diagnosis, a name, and medication. Perhaps the Norwegians, a taciturn bunch to which I am connected, would concur.

The practitioners would be all in.

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