Is “Overdiagnosis” Selected new culture war buzzword? I had been wondering about this for a while, but Wes Street claimed on Sunday that there was a “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions. Now I’m sure.
I first noticed the term used in connection with anxiety and depression, then attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and more recently autism. Two books on overdiagnosis, Sami Timimi’s search for normality during Suzanne O’Sullivan’s “diagnosis” era, has attracted attention across the media, fueling new fires that “everyone has a label these days.”
This does not mean that these authors and health professionals do not have any valid points, or that social issues health care is not a concern. We all know how “therapeutic speech” leached into public discourse, and that teens lift conditions like “traumatic responses” and “stimulation” out of serious tiktok.
There is a generational aspect here, but in reality, our openness to examine our mental health determines the division. In some households, fault lines can occur between those with whom they have been diagnosed and treated (often younger) and those who do not tolerate it (often older). After a massive treatment, look at Prince Harry, determined to talk about the trauma of his mother’s death. Post-traumatic stress disorder – a diagnosis I had in the past – is another condition that people argue that it is not real.
We all noticed that the autism spectrum has expanded significantly over the past 30 years due to the removal of Asperger’s diagnosis. When my brother was officially diagnosed in 1997 at age 4, you usually had to be what they called “severe.” Today, there are children who can be in mainstream schools that have been verbally diagnosed. This surge is also worth testing. But I’m not one of those people who says this has to mean that it’s not autism or that they’re not facing any major challenges. Heterogeneous and multifactorial disorders tend to do that.
It’s not the existence of books on overdiagnosis that interferes with me. I have a lot of respect for the opinions of doctors, especially those who ask important questions about how patients with chronic illness, mental distress, and neuroproducts. What’s surprising is that the concept of overdiagnosis is being unfolded by culture warriors as abused rams to beat people with illnesses and disabilities, question the diagnosis, laugh at them, and, in the case of politicians, justify further punitive reductions to their support systems.
I take this paragraph from a Sunday Times review of Timimi’s book. “Instead of manipulating Socrates’ principles of doctors talking to patients to find the emotional and historical source of unhappiness, many focus on diagnosing patients as “disorders” and slap pathological labels (such as ADHD) to diagnose patients and diagnose patients. ”
Where should I start? What is the fact that autism and ADHD are not mental illnesses? Autism and ADHD are neurodevelopmental disorders (they can both co-suspend with mental health issues). But what I find most troublesome is the suggestion that doctors are slapping a diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Perhaps we must now be troubled by distrust of neurologists, developmental pediatricians, psychiatrists, geneticists, speech therapists and occupational therapists involved in the diagnosis? Parents who find their children struggle to meet milestones, special educational needs coordinators at schools, GPS and health visitors to refer?
Waiting for the NHS autism assessment, and the slightest possible support that may arise from it, is over four years with some trust. At least in the NHS, no one “slaps” autism diagnosis to anyone. I am concerned about the private market for diagnosis, but it is worth noting that for these diagnosis to be of any use, many wards require that they be reviewed by a panel of NHS experts.
Of all this uninformed noise about overdiagnosis, there was little discussion about the UK that many people struggle to function within.
This culture war places individuals accountable for functioning in a brutal society that makes little effort to include or support them. It destroys patients as a starting point and has a real impact on people’s lives. That means people have to repeatedly justify their own diagnosis and their child’s diagnosis. That means people have to fight hard to support themselves and their children. That means facing people parroting lines like “ADHD? What he needs is a good smack.” It means a general atmosphere of ignorance and light emptying.
Parents who advocate for sick people, disabled people, and children, and the experts who support them are far superior to this unkindness. The measure of our society lies in how we treat vulnerabilities. As it stands, it’s really troublesome.
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