I have no numbers with which to back this up, but:
There is anecdotal evidence to indicate that some children medicated for ADD/ADHD have become such at the loud, incessant insistence by parents demanding a cure from their doctors... who have given in, to shut them up. In these cases, the "disorder" is not truly seated in the child's brain, but in the failure of parents and schools to allow for a wider range of modes of thought and paces of learning.
Such, I believe, is also the source of the increasing emphasis on "adult ADHD", and the inevitable advertisements for palliatives. ("If you have X symptoms, ask your doctor about...") I believe the disease to be as manufactured as the medications sold to alleviate its symptoms. In other words: People such as we -- with high intelligence and curiosity, thus a tendency to be distracted by the next interesting thing -- might have been medicated into "normal" behavior, as our children's classmates are now, had the trend started 50 years sooner.
There, but for the grace of God, go we... and what might we have missed? In spite of all that has happened between then and now, owing to what others might call a lack of focus, I would not trade the breadth of what I've learned for a narrower depth.
Flame » in reply to Not fair, and also wrong.
Nevertheless...
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