!!!!!! I wish I could say this to ppl more without risking a "you're invalidating my struggles" - friend i am validating them, i am invalidating capitalism dammit!
Thank you for this!! I’m so tired of diagnoses being treated as law - the human body doesn’t work that way! It does not invalidate your experiences, but the diagnosis itself doesn’t mean anything outside of the system that created it. The medical field isn’t an infallible set of rules our bodies abide by, it’s an attempt (often mistaken) to explain patterns of symptoms in statistically large sets of humans, decided by humans! I wish more people understood that. But it’s partly pharma propaganda - if your body works like a machine, there’s always a pill you can take for your specific problem and it will work again.
My therapist said “wait you're right,” when I told her that the diagnostic criterion just asks “how much of an inconvenience are you to others at home/school/work.”
It's why inattentive type is typically diagnosed later in life because it doesn't obviously disrupt the classroom.
Awesome piece. I'd also slowly been piecing together the ties of mandatory schooling and the apparent rise of these behaviours.
You touched on it briefly, the moralisation of these behaviours, coming from religion, and I wonder as capitalist societies have become more secular, the power of the church failed to be a controlling force thus medicalisation took its place. So the narrative went from ADHD symptoms: immoral to genetic/environmental deficit.
I take great issue w a lot of adult ADHD advocacy because it does exist solely in the realm of surviving capitalism with ADHD. And I feel heartbroken when I am working with my kids who are going to be subject to similar stuff in the future. I want them to succeed, but schools are still failing to meet their needs.
YESSSSSS. I actually studied this topic a bit and how disability and difference are seen as such because they differ from this mythical average being. All medicine and other treatment are seen as trying to get back to this average- for some this is important (I.e. life saving) but for others it's invalidating. I've had my own ethical crisis over this as someone with pre-mature menopause since I was in my early teens: do I need to take estrogen? Is it just to become harmonally 'normal'? Or is it actually important so I don't get a heart disease?? Thank you for addressing both sides of the argument and also for mentioning how schools were affected by neoliberalism into becoming businesses as I didn't realise that before. Really eye-opening essay so thank you!
Source on encephalitis lethargica being at all related to ADHD? Just because it was treated with a dopamine precursor doesn’t mean it was also ADHD, I’m pretty sure.
!!!!!! I wish I could say this to ppl more without risking a "you're invalidating my struggles" - friend i am validating them, i am invalidating capitalism dammit!
Thank you for this!! I’m so tired of diagnoses being treated as law - the human body doesn’t work that way! It does not invalidate your experiences, but the diagnosis itself doesn’t mean anything outside of the system that created it. The medical field isn’t an infallible set of rules our bodies abide by, it’s an attempt (often mistaken) to explain patterns of symptoms in statistically large sets of humans, decided by humans! I wish more people understood that. But it’s partly pharma propaganda - if your body works like a machine, there’s always a pill you can take for your specific problem and it will work again.
My therapist said “wait you're right,” when I told her that the diagnostic criterion just asks “how much of an inconvenience are you to others at home/school/work.”
It's why inattentive type is typically diagnosed later in life because it doesn't obviously disrupt the classroom.
This was a wonderful read, and I’ll be sure to quote in future. Ughh. I needed this.
Awesome piece. I'd also slowly been piecing together the ties of mandatory schooling and the apparent rise of these behaviours.
You touched on it briefly, the moralisation of these behaviours, coming from religion, and I wonder as capitalist societies have become more secular, the power of the church failed to be a controlling force thus medicalisation took its place. So the narrative went from ADHD symptoms: immoral to genetic/environmental deficit.
I take great issue w a lot of adult ADHD advocacy because it does exist solely in the realm of surviving capitalism with ADHD. And I feel heartbroken when I am working with my kids who are going to be subject to similar stuff in the future. I want them to succeed, but schools are still failing to meet their needs.
Really appreciated this, thanks.
Beautifully said!
All of this!!!
YESSSSSS. I actually studied this topic a bit and how disability and difference are seen as such because they differ from this mythical average being. All medicine and other treatment are seen as trying to get back to this average- for some this is important (I.e. life saving) but for others it's invalidating. I've had my own ethical crisis over this as someone with pre-mature menopause since I was in my early teens: do I need to take estrogen? Is it just to become harmonally 'normal'? Or is it actually important so I don't get a heart disease?? Thank you for addressing both sides of the argument and also for mentioning how schools were affected by neoliberalism into becoming businesses as I didn't realise that before. Really eye-opening essay so thank you!
Source on encephalitis lethargica being at all related to ADHD? Just because it was treated with a dopamine precursor doesn’t mean it was also ADHD, I’m pretty sure.
ADHD is internalized capitalism. ESPECIALLY the impatience
Initial thought: ‘well of COURSE not.’
So interesting!
Very well put. Thank you for writing this Jesse.