The Distractions of “Debate”

Great article by Judith Warner on the irrationality and sensationalism attached to ADHD (and other disorders):

http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/21/getting-distracted-from-the-real-issues-of-adhd/

 

Here’s the money quote:

I’ve spent the past eight years now reading about ADHD and comparing the differences between what specialists in the disorder say and what the public hears. Researchers, practitioners, advocates for helping children and adults with ADHD tend, when they speak about the disorder, to be shouting into the wind, their words quickly lost in the storm of sensationalism, irrationality, and unavowed prejudice that’s unleashed at the mere mention of the diagnosis. Indeed, I’ve come to think that the discussion of ADHD in our country has now reached a level of hysteria we haven’t seen since the debate over working motherhood in the late 1980s and 1990s.