[ExI] adhd, creativity, memory types

[William Flynn Wallace]

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?   anders

The problem with all of it is that the gatekeeper decides where the line
is, to try to reduce false positives or false negatives (can't reduce both
without improving diagnostic accuracy), and so often says "Well, if we
treat him he might not get better, but then he might, and if we don't he
might get worse, so let's treat."  This would be good thinking if the drugs
weren't so powerful and didn't have side effects that included suicide.
And then there are parents who push doctors to do something, and feel
ill-served if leaving a physician's office without pills.

I have seen perfectly normal boys get drugs that turned them into zombies.
It's always boys who get an 'overactive' rating.

bill w

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 11:39 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160506/6064e6bd/attachment.html>