It’s a possibility, says the psychiatrist who identified the disorder:
. . . skeptics believe the diagnosis is a ‘biobabble’ label, which has evolved from a soundbite culture that is too prepared to medicalise anti-social human traits.Dr Spitzer, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, now says the classification led to many people being diagnosed as medically disordered when their mood swings and behaviour were simply normal feelings of happiness and sadness.
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{ 7 comments }
This makes a great deal of sense, especially since financial benefits (particularly from schools) are bestowed on those parents that are able to have their children diagnosed in such a way.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Of course, I’m not sure I believe in fibromyalgia, either.
Well, you have to ask yourself a few common sense questions…
A. An article that gets basic information wrong (Robert Spitzer was not the first or only person to “identify attention deficit disorder,” no more so than he identified “depression”), he was just a chair that worked on versions of the DSM.
B. No attribution is given by Dr. Spitzer where he’s pulling his “20 to 30 percent” number. Is that just a random number taken from the air? Or is there empirical research he’s done that verifies this number. If so, shouldn’t someone be citing these sources instead of just repeating one person’s opinion?
Possible? I’d say 30% might be low. Creating pathologies from personality is pretty sad…
This information has made the rounds through the media here in Australia, but a program on a channel (called ABC) here called media watch has explained that it has all been completely misinterpreted from the source, I’ll post a link here to a transcript of the show which explains it all.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1882075.htm
Sorry the address got cut off a bit when i pasted it, here is the working address.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1882075.htm
(My wrong, it looks cut off in post preview mode but after going back to the main blog comments page it is listed in its entirety)
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