Gamma Research tie-in? Alert Frost, Villette.

[jimsmyth]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976&sc=fb&cc=fp

Brain function, a "warrior gene", and an environmental tie-in, all leading to psychopathy.

Science finally starts catching up to the PTB!

[DavidG]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976&sc=fb&cc=fp

Brain function, a "warrior gene", and an environmental tie-in, all leading to psychopathy.

All this and Lizzy Borden too!

[InkRose]

I just came across this last night: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-problem-with-psychopaths-a-fear-2009-09-29

[DavidG]

I just came across this last night: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-problem-with-psychopaths-a-fear-2009-09-29

I probably didn't have the expected reaction to that. It started me analyzing the writer's word exclusionary word choices that label kids with antisocial tendencies or ADHD as 'unhealthy' and 'abnormal'. Bah, psychologists and Medical Model thinking

[eschatonic]

I just came across this last night: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-problem-with-psychopaths-a-fear-2009-09-29

I probably didn't have the expected reaction to that. It started me analyzing the writer's word exclusionary word choices that label kids with antisocial tendencies or ADHD as 'unhealthy' and 'abnormal'. Bah, psychologists and Medical Model thinking.

I had to actually meet a kid with ADHD before I believed it was a real disorder. It's so over-diagnosed in kids who are just bored that the ones who actually have a disability get ignored.

There's a huge difference between people who are weird or inconvenient or unhappy, on one hand, and people who have a real problem that makes it difficult or impossible for them to function successfully in society, on the other.

I think (warning: pet peeve ahead!) that the advertisement, especially on TV, of psychoactive drugs which all have major, major side effects, is a big part of the problem. There really aren't that many people who have these problems. But pharmaceutical companies market them to people who are just weird or unhappy or whatever, because there's more money to be had medicating slightly strange people than just the truly ill. And especially with bullshit cases of ADHD, it's easier to give a restless kid a pill every day than make him do jumping jacks when he gets too fidgety.

And yeah, you can't tell from this article whether the study authers were using kids who have genuine psychiatric problems or if they just picked a bunch of random brats who are known to be pains in the ass.

[jennygadget]

I just came across this last night: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-problem-with-psychopaths-a-fear-2009-09-29

I probably didn't have the expected reaction to that. It started me analyzing the writer's word exclusionary word choices that label kids with antisocial tendencies or ADHD as 'unhealthy' and 'abnormal'. Bah, psychologists and Medical Model thinking.

I had to actually meet a kid with ADHD before I believed it was a real disorder. It's so over-diagnosed in kids who are just bored ....

Sorry to get off topic - but is it really, though?  over-diagnosed, I mean? 

I'm not saying no parent/teacher has ever pushed to have a particularly annoying kid diagnosed...or that there wasn't a time in the late '80s when it seemed everyone was talking about it (and ppl do have a tendency to be hypochondriacs)...

It's just that what I hear most is that dismissive attitude ("it's not real/it's just made up/most ppl that are diagnosed are just bored") and "jokes" that so and so has ADD - when clearly the speaker doesn't actually think that's the problem (bc ADD can't possibly be a real problem).  At the same time, most of the people that I know that have it struggle to get properly diagnosed and find effective treatment - in no small part because they are convinced it's not real either.  Also, the people that are finally diagnosed still have to deal with others assuming that they - er, we - are just bored or lazy, and are using ADD as an excuse.

It seems to me the problem with the underdiagnosing is not that the wrong people are getting diagnosed and that's ruining it for the rest of us, but the dismissive attitudes that assumes that huge chunks of the people getting diagnosed are simply bored and don't have any real claim to having ADD.

Also - needing to go out and do jumping jacks does not preclude having ADD.  There is a reason why people with ADD tend to seek out jobs where they can get up and pace around quite often.  People who have ADD very often ARE bored - that's kind of the hallmark of ADD, actually:  inability to control focus, whether it's staying focused or moving onto other things.  Which often feels and looks a lot like boredom when one is trying to concentrate and one's brain isn't cooperating.

Sorry to make this post longer, but to give you all a true story illustrating that last point:

Not long ago, I was in a co-workers office, helping her write an evaluation, and I was pretty much fidgeting all. over. the. damn. place.  I don't remember if she asked or I just offered, but it came out that yeah, I don't mean to be annoying or distracting, I just have ADD.  and OMG yeah, the moving around was because I was bored. out. of. my. frickin. mind.  Because, despite how necessary it was to write the evaluation this way, it was just so much more tedious to have me help her than it would have been for me to just do it myself.  So I had all this energy that wanted to be channeled into writing the evaluation that had to go somewhere else instead - so that I could stay focused on the helping her part.  Which means that I looked like I really wanted to leave and didn't care how rude I was being, when what I was actually doing was struggling to not rush ahead of where we needed to be.

[InkRose]

And yeah, you can't tell from this article whether the study authers were using kids who have genuine psychiatric problems or if they just picked a bunch of random brats who are known to be pains in the ass.

"Using various assessment measures, such as “The Psychopathy Checklist” and the “Antisocial Process Screening Device,” twelve of the children had been clinically diagnosed as having “callous and unemotional” traits (antisocial)."

I'd like to believe these kids weren't diagnosed just because they were a bit more annoying than most...

Mind you, here in Finland, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisement is strictly restricted to over-the-counter non-prescription stuff. Allergy meds, paracetamol, bandaids, etc.. And they have to read out (or clearly list in print ads) the active ingredient, marketer/manufacturer, and a standard warning bit about prolonged symptoms and doctors.

[jennygadget]

Ok, I know I should let this go and at least give other people a chance to respond first but...it's this line that keeps making me see red:

And yeah, you can't tell from this article whether the study authers were using kids who have genuine psychiatric problems or if they just picked a bunch of random brats who are known to be pains in the ass.

You do not know these children.  Who are you to suggest that they are pains in the ass to begin with?  It's one thing to suggest that the people who are supposed to take care of them choose instead to drug them, it's quite another to suggest that children that you don't even know don't have real problems but are instead simply annoying brats.

Don't get me wrong, kids can be annoying brats - it just seems very out of context and very victim blamey to me to imply that *these* children may not actually have ADD but are simply unpleasant to be around.

Especially as, to the extent that ADD is over diagnosed, it's over-diagnosed in order to provide "easy" answers and labels for children that have real problems that society - that *we* - do not care enough to provide solutions for.  It's much easier to label the *child* as somehow "not right" than it is to deal with things like systematic poverty and racism.

[DavidG]

There's a huge difference between people who are weird or inconvenient or unhappy, on one hand, and people who have a real problem that makes it difficult or impossible for them to function successfully in society, on the other.

And the problem is that society is crap at distinguishing between levels of disability and has a negative view of it, so tends to classify everyone in the most pejorative way possible. ADHD/FMS/ME isn't real, you aren't in real pain, it's all in your head, she doesn't need that wheelchair and so on. A big part of why I use crutches (on top of actually needing them most of the time) is that they are an undeniable visible signal that I have a significant disability, people with completely invisible disabilities don't have that option and I don't envy them their situation.

With psychopathy there's a real emotional vortex around the worst murder cases that tars everyone with mental health issues and makes society as a whole reluctant to admit it as a 'proper' disability.

[DavidG]

it's much easier to label the *child* as somehow "not right" than it is to deal with things like systematic poverty and racism.

Which is actually just substituting a more socially acceptable '-ism', in ablism/disablism, for classism/racism.

[tylik]

In the early nineties, I used to work for a private school for gifted children, particularly those with unmedicated ADHD. I also have a (large) number of friends who have been diagnosed with ADHD, including ones who "grew out of it", ones who didn't, ones who were diagnosed as adults, and various other permutations.

I think one of the reasons there is such a foo-rah about overdiagnosis is that diagnosis has often been linked - both in people's imaginations and in actual practice - to medication. I know people for whom medication has been a godsend, either as adults or children (one friend started taking ritalin in his late forties, and it was almost a religious experience). I know people who feel like they lost large portions of their childhood to medication. (The father of my nerdsons fought having one of the boys diagnosed as ADHD in part because of his own experiences. And while the kid is unusual, I think an AHDH diagnosis is probably inappropriate in any case. Delightful little unworldly nerdling - no problems with attention, some problems with communications, though he doesn't fit the usual Asperger's diagnostics, and he seems to be adjusting.)

There were a lot of kids at our school who seemed to have no problems with attention when given a challenging curriculum. And yet, a number of these children went to our school because they were considered too disruptive at public schools, and their parents were under a lot of pressure - sometimes really inappropriate pressure (ultimatums from the school administrations and suck) - to have them medicated if they were to stay in a normal classroom. Oh, and as a note, regarding classism and racism - yes, this was an upper middle class Birkenstock yuppie private school*, largely white, etc. etc. I am aware that this isn't disagreement - but these children weren't having problems because they were poor minorities. They did have a lot more options, obviously, because they were not.

Oh, and just a general note - I'm not following things as closely as I once did, but there at least used to be what looked like a pretty strong correlation between more boys being diagnoses with ADHD not because it was necessarily more prevalent in boys, or that they needed more help, but because they were more likely to be actively disruptive, where girls were somewhat more likely to have trouble attending in school, but in ways that didn't annoy people.

There were kids who clearly had issues with attention, or other issues that made it harder for them to function in a public school environment. (And we had small class sizes, and we all got training for dealing with them, and frankly, it worked pretty well - which isn't to say that medication wasn't the right option for other people) But this is incredibly broad and while at the time most of them had been diagnosed with ADHD (and I suspect a whole subset would be diagnosed with Asperger's now) I think that's mostly a label we plaster over a whole region of the map we don't understand very well. And that, ahem, is my professional opinon both as a neuroscientist and a teacher.

So there is very narrow sense in which I think a diagnosis of ADHD isn't "real" - and that is that I don't think we have much of a clue about etiology, differential diagnosis or how to determine appropriate treatment (other than trial and error, which requires money and a lot of stubborness). It doesn't mean that I don't think people aren't having real problems. I just think we're highly ignorant in describing those problems, differentiating them from eachother, and treatment is often pretty crude.

(This is pretty similar to the opinion I have of FMS. Of course there, it's even stronger, as even now, in my current state of fairly robust health** I fit the diagnostic criteria, and yet, hello, I have a spine injury, and don't have chronic pain that isn't traceable to a fairly straightforward cause. Some specificity, please?)

Bah. I think that as the specificity of the diagnosis decreases, your ability to say much meaningful about the syndrome tanks. But then, duh.

* This is the school where I kind of ended up teaching about Sappho to elementary students.
** Well, I think so. And strangely few people want to argue.

[Lioness]

So there is very narrow sense in which I think a diagnosis of ADHD isn't "real" - and that is that I don't think we have much of a clue about etiology, differential diagnosis or how to determine appropriate treatment (other than trial and error, which requires money and a lot of stubborness). It doesn't mean that I don't think people aren't having real problems. I just think we're highly ignorant in describing those problems, differentiating them from eachother, and treatment is often pretty crude.

Within that very narrow sense, and using the specifics you have given, I can see what you mean.  (I don't know enough to be able to say I agree; having a diagnosis of ADD myself does not make me an expert on how it gets diagnosed and how accurately, let alone the rest of it.)

(This is pretty similar to the opinion I have of FMS. Of course there, it's even stronger, as even now, in my current state of fairly robust health** I fit the diagnostic criteria, and yet, hello, I have a spine injury, and don't have chronic pain that isn't traceable to a fairly straightforward cause. Some specificity, please?)

Dear me. This may turn into a fibro rant. If so, perhaps I should move it elsewhere. I will do so if anybody thinks it's detrimental to have it here.

Interesting. I do believe I agree with you there, particularly with regards diagnostic criteria. Having a clear etiology would be wonderful, and in that sense I definitely agree that your earlier statement that "we're highly ignorant in describing those problems, differentiating them from eachother, and treatment is often pretty crude" fits fibro as well. But I mostly wind up hearing about people's diagnoses -- or lack thereof, which is usually what gets me all gripey, though I try not to jump in people's faces about it.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia (FMS) in the early/mid nineties, and had never heard of it before I was diagnosed.  Given my experience when I was diagnosed by a rheumatologist who had been specifically trained in adminstering the "tender points" exam, I have a tendency to be fairly conservative in my opinions about the diagnostic process.  It's possible this leads me to be unfair to others, I realize. But I have strong reservations about anybody who hasn't had the diagnosis from a trained diagnostician with specific experience and training in tender point exams -- because believe me, it's a VERY specific sort of thing, and it's not a DIY exam in the slightest. As for people who self-diagnose without ever even looking for trained-exam-diagnostician confirmation at all, I am afraid that I put them in the mind-pocket labeled "speculation" unless and until I get a sense that they have more clues about the whole thing. (Which means it's probably a good thing I'm not gate-keeping for anything that's based on having a diagnosis of FMS, then. The way it is now, it's just my opinion of them that gets a question mark appended, and mostly I never say anything about it... and either learn as we go on that they're more sensible than I first worried, or learn any of a number of other things, and adjust my attitude accordingly.)

This attitude stuff is likely to get an overhaul yet again, and soon, because I need to rebuild my self-care program preparatory to travel (Montreal! New Zealand! Melbourne! maybe even exotic Maine!), so I'll be looking at all my health stuff and checking the current treatments with an eye to deciding whether I'll tweak what I'm doing.  (I'll be researching with particular attention to those which are NOT medication-based, because the non-medication-based ones are sometimes easier for me to implement at lesser cost and risk, and having complementary therapies has worked pretty well for me, but that's a preference solely based on my personal experience and on having a GP who is willing to suggest meds if they seem warranted and if I'm not getting somewhere on my own, or if the getting somewhere is costing me so much it impedes other good life stuff.)

Hm. Wasn't a rant after all, I guess.

Back on the main topic, though, I am pondering the whole ADD-and-disabilities thing, and thinking of gammas, and thinking of how one copes versus how the average hypothetical person copes. I keep coming back to how we don't always know what makes somebody resilient.

Has anybody discussed resilience in terms of gamma-hood and of resisting gamma-hood? It's a concept that I encountered years ago in the context of discussions of people who were abused who did not then pass it on, but instead did something better with their lives. I found the concept tremendously helpful and a great encouragement, though I haven't looked to see if anybody's done much with it in the intervening (um, twenty?) years.

As it was presented to me then, though, it might map interestingly to people who resist the Anomaly.

[eschatonic]

Ok, I know I should let this go and at least give other people a chance to respond first but...it's this line that keeps making me see red:

And yeah, you can't tell from this article whether the study authers were using kids who have genuine psychiatric problems or if they just picked a bunch of random brats who are known to be pains in the ass.

You do not know these children.  Who are you to suggest that they are pains in the ass to begin with?  It's one thing to suggest that the people who are supposed to take care of them choose instead to drug them, it's quite another to suggest that children that you don't even know don't have real problems but are instead simply annoying brats.

Don't get me wrong, kids can be annoying brats - it just seems very out of context and very victim blamey to me to imply that *these* children may not actually have ADD but are simply unpleasant to be around.

Especially as, to the extent that ADD is over diagnosed, it's over-diagnosed in order to provide "easy" answers and labels for children that have real problems that society - that *we* - do not care enough to provide solutions for.  It's much easier to label the *child* as somehow "not right" than it is to deal with things like systematic poverty and racism.

I didn't mean to sound judgemental about those specific kids. I'm aware that there are children who have genuine problems, and InkRose pointed out a sentence from the original article that I clearly missed, indicating that these children were chosen for the study because they clearly displayed maladaptive behaviors.

I spent a lot of my adulthood in communities where kids were labeled (I don't know if they were officially diagnosed and/or medicated or not, just that they were labeled) as having ADD/ADHD when clearly what they needed was less sugar and more attention. And then parents and teachers use this as an excuse for not dealing with their actual (usually more minor) problems.

These were upperclass and/or hippy communities, like the one Tylik taught in. The kids' lives are overly structured and expectations for their attention spans are too high, and they are given too much sugar and too many electronics, and what they really need is free time, quiet time, and attention and discipline from mom & dad.

Poor minority kids displaying the exact same behaviors in communities 2 miles away are generally labeled Problems and shoveled into Special Ed. Except that I suspect what those kids need is therapy (along with gifted classes and probably better nutrition etc.), because they live in a war zone infested with gangs.

Part of my prejudice might come from the fact that my own behavior as a child would have gotten me labeled as ADD if I was a decade younger. I am flaky and prone to daydreaming and wandering off-task, and my boredom threshold is ridiculously low. The rest of my problems line up much better with the shallow end of the Asperger's spectrum (not quite up to the diagnostic threshold). Lack of focus is the easiest thing for me to compensate for. Social skills, not so much.

[DavidG]

But this is incredibly broad and while at the time most of them had been diagnosed with ADHD (and I suspect a whole subset would be diagnosed with Asperger's now) I think that's mostly a label we plaster over a whole region of the map we don't understand very well.

I tend to think there's a massive degree of overlapping symptoms and patterns of symptoms in the various autism spectrum and developmental disorders.

[DavidG]

Has anybody discussed resilience in terms of gamma-hood and of resisting gamma-hood?

I think the PTB are doing precisely that with Hafs!