Monday, July 18, 2011

In your opinion, do you think things like autism and ADHD are way overdiagnosed?

I might be totally wrong in my assessment, but it seems like autism, ADHD, and a myriad of other "labels" that get placed on a child are placed on children way too often and other wise "normal" children get labeled with a "disorder". We now have people so worried about their children having these conditions that they scrutinize the tiniest behavior and want to seek a clinical diagnosis for every little thing that seems a little off. Statistically, the rates of autism and ADHD are skyrocketing through the roof, toddlers are even being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and being placed on powerful antidepressants. It's getting to be a scary world where every deviation of an extremely narrow definition of "normal" is clinically diagnosed as some disorder. And once a child is labeled, it's very easy to treat them like that label and confine them in a box. Yes, I know that there are real actual cases where there is a clear and definite "disorder", autism and ADHD are real. But I'm just wondering if perfectly normal kids are being labeled with a disorder.

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