[ExI] adhd, creativity, memory types

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2016-05-03 23:05, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
> Anders, what's the situation in the UK? Increasing diagnosis and 
> treatment of ADHD?  Many think it's just a fad and only the extreme 
> need diagnosis and treatment.

Overdiagnosed and overmedicated, *and* underdiagnosed and 
undermedicated. There is a lot of inhomogenity in who gets the 
diagnosis, partially mediated by (parental) social capital.

Many of these traits are on a spectrum: we are all a bit paranoid, a bit 
scattered, a bit narcissitic, a bit unable to figure out others, and so 
on. So we can often recognize something of ourselves in people with a 
diagnosis, but the key thing is (1) do these things impair us enough 
that we need to change, and (2) would a medical gatekeeper recognize 
this as a proper, intervention requiring diagnosis?

In practice, people are fond of ascribing creativity to all sorts of 
mental conditions. The actual research data is much more equivocal.

-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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