Posts
“Opposition
Defiant Disorder” — Non-Conformity and Anti-Authoritarianism Now
Considered an Illness
Contributing
Writer for Wake
Up World
26
November, 2014
The Brave
New World of “Mental Health Disorders”.
If
Albert Einstein was a youth today, there’s a good chance he
would be saddled with an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) diagnosis, possibly even Opposition Defiant Disorder (ODD) as
well. He ignored his teachers, failed college entrance examinations
several times and was hard-pressed in holding down a job.
In ‘Einstein:
The Life and Times‘,
biographer Ronald Clark argues that Einstein’s problem wasn’t
attention deficits at all, but rather a hatred of authoritarian,
Prussian influences in school. “The teachers in the elementary
school appeared to me like sergeants and in the gymnasium the
teachers were like lieutenants,” Einstein once remarked. The fact
that he read Kant’s difficultCritique
of Pure Reason for
pleasure is quite revealing. He also refused to prepare for college
admissions out of rebellion to his father’s “unbearable” path
of “practical profession.” When he did gain entrance to college,
one of his professors chided Einstein, “You have one fault; one
can’t tell you anything.” The very characteristics that troubled
authorities, were exactly the ones which helped him to excel.
Considering
Einstein’s life history, it makes one wonder about the
rampant use of ADHD and ODD diagnosis that are plaguing our children
and teenagers today. According to the statistical research by Russell
Barkley, Ph.D., on average for every 30 children, 1-3 have ADHD. Of
these children, 65% have issues with defiance, non-compliance and
problems with authority figures, which can manifest as verbal
hostility and temper tantrums. It’s estimated that between 1-16% of
all American children have ODD. The real question, however, is
not how many diagnosis there have been, but rather should we be
looking at ADHD and ODD as a mental illness in the first place?
The age of excessive diagnosis, conformity and over-medication.
No
other time in history has the public had such access
to pharmaceuticals for alleged mental illness. Once reserved for
extreme cases of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, mania and suicidal
depression, today we
have a veritable free-for-all in diagnosis — and subsequent
drugging — of any mental state we find the least bit inconvenient.
Take
ADHD. For these children, sitting still in a classroom — under
fluorescent lighting and being bombarded with EMFs from cell phones
and wi-fi — completely removed from the natural world and pumped
full of preservatives, artificial additives, GMOs, pesticides and
sugar, is simply impossible. Their sensitive bodies and minds cannot
take the onslaught. Instead of extending outdoor time and cleaning up
the diet, recess has been slashed and poor quality food remains the
norm. Worse, they are drugged into submission with the likes of
Evekeo, Adderall, Concerta and Ritalin — several of which are
amphetamines. (For more on this topic, please see: The
Fictions Surrounding ADHD and the “Chemical Imbalance” Theory of
Mental Illness.)
A 2009 Psychiatric Times article titled “ADHD & ODD: Confronting the Challenges of Disruptive Behavior” reports that “disruptive disorders,” which include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and opposition defiant disorder (ODD), are the most common mental health problem of children and teenagers. ADHD is defined by poor attention and distractibility, poor self-control and impulsivity, and hyperactivity. ODD is defined as a “a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct disorder”; and ODD symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”
One
of the leading mainstream mental health’s authorities on ADHD,
psychologist Russell Barkley believes that those afflicted with ADHD
are deficient in what he classifies as “rule-governed behavior,”
since they are less open to established authorities and not as
responsive to positive or negative consequences. Those with ODD also
have these so-called deficits. Because of this, it’s exceptionally
common for young people to be diagnosed with both ADHD and ODD.
But
as Levine rightly observes, “Do we really want to diagnose and
medicate everyone with “deficits in rule-governed behavior”?
Some
of our greatest freethinkers throughout history were non-conformists
and challenged authority. At what point do we simply become a nation
of zombies, drugged out on pharmaceuticals, unable to think for
ourselves? Americans have become increasingly socialized to associate
inattention, anger, anxiety and paralyzing despair with a medical
condition, and subsequently rely on medical intervention instead
of political remedies. “What better way to maintain the status quo
than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as
biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal
reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society,” said Levine.
He believes Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to
question, test and oppose illegitimate authorities and regain trust
in their own common sense.
And
yet, we’re moving into deeper authoritarian waters by the day. A
good example is the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). ODD is actually a new label
in the manual, defined as “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile
and defiant behavior,” where symptoms include negativity,
questioning authority, argumentativeness and irritability. ODD joins
the ranks of other, newly created mental illnesses —‘disorders’
like arrogance, narcissism, exceptional creativity, cynicism and
antisocial tendencies. Keep in mind that over the last 50 years, the
manual has been prolific in creating new afflictions, with the total
number of ‘mental illness’ classifications rising from 130 to
357.
Also
remember that each
‘mental illness’ has a pharmaceutical counterpart used in
‘treatment.’ But
at what cost to the soul of humanity?
George
F. Will provides a possible answer in an article for Washington
Post, ‘Handbook
suggests that deviations from ‘normality’ are disorders‘:
Another danger is that childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled “disorders” to be “cured.” If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.
In
the face of such bizarre and chilling authoritarian mental
illness classifications, the famous quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti
comes to mind:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Article
sources:
Most
of us alive today will not have heard this speech – or the message
JFK
- The Speech That Killed Him
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