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ADHD & DSM Part 3
Is there proof for these so-called disease categories? None whatsoever, but this has not prevented Ratey and many like him from coating their pronouncements with the necessary professional patina to ensure respectability -- and then cashing in.If Ratey is up the creek without a paddle, then he is up there with the best of company. The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the Rosetta Stone of the profession, has grown since its inception in the 1950s from 60 categories of abnormal behaviour to about 410 diagnostic labels today and counting.”
“Good news: abnormal behaviour is a disease”
North Shore News (Vancouver, B.C.), Sept. 6, 1999
The same issue is viewed from this slightly different angle by Doctor of Economics Thomas Sowell.
“One of the latest in the seemingly endless rounds of alarming statistics is that one out of 12 American children has some form of disability. With all the things that are supposedly getting worse, you have to wonder how our life expectancy keeps increasing. A cynic might even wonder if the increasing availability of money from the government has anything to do with the increasing number of "problems" that need to be "solved" by government programs.
One way of telling whether a given statistic is a fact or an artifact is to ask whether the definition used fits the thing that is being defined. Buried in the news story about the children with disabilities is the fact that the definition of "disability" has been expanding over the years.”
Expanding Definitions and Suspicious Statistics
by Thomas Sowell (July 30, 2002)
Not only is there more to the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ than first appears, there seems, also, to be some interesting stuff hidden behind the curtain regarding the CHADD organization…
Next, Ritalin & CHADD
ADHD-Report.com: The concerned
parents' guide to childrens' attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD/ADD)