this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
126 points (95.0% liked)
Asklemmy
47726 readers
782 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
ADHD is massively over diagnosed in the US. No shit stimulants make you concentrate better, that doesn’t mean you had ADHD. Concentration is like a muscle, you have to actively invest effort into making it better. It’s hard to concentrate and scrolling through posts and flicking through shorts is atrophying this ability. It’s like someone who doesn’t work out or eat well thinking they have a muscle development disorder, taking anabolic steroids, and since they gained muscle it confirms their suspicions that they had a disorder. Concentrating is difficult, it takes active effort, and you will hit walls when your brain is tired. It can be trained, however. This should be the focus and stimulants should be the absolute last option and only for people who truly meet the definition of disorder, i.e. it greatly impairs their relationships, work, or daily life.
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist at all, but I do think it’s way over diagnosed. Doctors want those high patient satisfaction scores, which is another issue in medicine in general.
You're right, but I think it's also massively underdiagnosed in certain groups like women, immigrants from countries with shit views on mental health.
A lot of my opinion also hinges on that last D, disorder. For example, many people have autistic characteristics, but few have autistic spectrum disorder that severely impairs their normal functioning in life. Likewise with ADHD; just because you can’t concentrate well doesn’t mean you have a disorder. Pills shouldn’t be the first line response.
In general I see this as an issue with healthcare in general; few want to put in the hard work, everyone wants pills or injections. This is also seen in fat loss (GLP-1 drugs rather than a healthy diet and being active) or how the VA treats disabled servicemembers (pills first, skimp on the mental health treatment or physical therapy). I’m not sure where to place the crazy rise of testosterone replacement therapy but I also believe it fits in this general “drugs first” approach. We love our drugs.
The fact doctors rely heavily on patient satisfaction scores exacerbates the issue. Sometimes the best medicine is not at all what the patient wants to hear.
What I'm hearing here though is a greater critique of capitalism than anything. Medicine attempts to resolve situations with drugs first because it's cheapest and keeps the lights on, and people can't afford non-drug therapies because they're poor and overworked. The VA skimps because it's underfunded and America wants people to fight its imperial wars and then fucks them for doing so. Peoples' hormones are disordered because of unprecedented levels of environmental pollutants.