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Why is ADHD a Disorder?

What is ADHD?

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) also called Hyperkinetic Disorder and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) are conditions increasingly diagnosed in the industrial western world during the last two decades.

This thing called ADHD is highly complex and individual. Every one with ADD/ADHD or with a child this condition needs to find their personal solution. The experts disagree on what ADHD is and how to treat this condition. If your child is always on-the-go and climbing the walls, there is a natural solution.

What makes this attention deficit hyperactivity thing a “disorder?”

The first mention of it in scientific literature was over one hundred years ago, in 1904, when George Frederic Still, a British paediatrician, published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, a description of a group of boys displaying, what he called, a “morbid defect of moral control.” We do not know what their problems were, but they could have suffered emotional traumas, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Conduct Disorder, or any other of the other 101 causes of ADHD-like symptoms without having ADHD itself.

This thing we now call ADHD has been a part of the variations within humankind as long as we humans have existed. Aristotle probably had ADHD, as did Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Picasso, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, the entrepreneur Richard Branson and a long list of other people who have benefited and enriched humanity, and brought us to where we are today in fields as varied as science, technology, economics, mathematics and the arts.

ADHD personalities have an innate creativity. They are scatterbrained, and easily distracted, but if given the chance to get on with what fascinates them, then they are able to hyperfocus. Where the average person sees problems, the hyperfocussed individual will see solutions.

Attention deficit and hyperfocussing are situational and that is not a disorder. Disorders are not situational.

What makes ADD and ADHD a disorder?

• A historical assumption still strong in the academic community dating back 100 years to George Still.
• The economic/political benefits of having this “disorder” which is driven by the pharmaceutical industry. This industry is powerful and invests in academic institutions. Many professors owe their research grants, directly or indirectly, to funding from the pharmaceutical industry.
• A school system centred around the average child. ADD and ADHD children are boredom intolerant, and unstimulating classes cause them to be easily distracted as they crave something to stimulate them. ADD children daydream (and hyperfocus on their daydream) for stimulation, while ADHD children fidget and feel restless.
• A school system that focuses on correcting our weaknesses and not on improving our strong points. This is an effect of forming pupils into average people. An ADD or ADHD person after school who continues in this mindset is likely to find difficulties in life. If on the other hand that same person concentrates on what makes him/her special and develops coping strategies for the weaknesses, then that person is likely to succeed in life after school.
• Disorders which have medical, genetic (not the ADHD genes) or psychological causes, or injuries which result in attention deficit and/or hyperactive symptoms.

The idea that ADHD is a disorder is based on assumptions, not science.

This article continues on page 2: ADHD Definition

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