I'm a 21st Century Digital Boy
I don't know how to live, but I've got a lot of toys
My daddy's a lazy middle class intellectual
My mommy's on Valium, so ineffectual
Ain't life a mystery, yeah?
— Bad Religion, ‘21st Century (Digital Boy)’
ADHD, history will vindicate, may be the single most over-diagnosed mental health condition in a veritable ocean of suspect yet officially recognized mental health diagnoses for which children are prescribed a plethora of drugs.
The dirty little secret, which you inevitably discover if you spend enough time with psychologists/psychiatrists, is that the entire field is, in the most charitable framing, more or less educated guesswork.
In the least charitable framing, it’s mystical gibberish.
What clinicians do is group a bunch of symptoms together, consult their Bible (the DSM), decree that these symptoms constitute a “condition,” offer diagnosis, and then prescribe medications ostensibly designed to remedy that condition.
But it doesn’t work — at least, not to fix the problem the field purports to want to fix. It does work for generating massive revenues for drug companies.
Look around: Americans are taking more prescription drugs for mental health problems than any other population on Earth by far, with by far the worst outcomes.
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Depressed people given SSRIs often get more, not less, suicidal (I know firsthand). People with anxiety are given benzodiazepines that, while they work in the short term, only serve to make things worse in the long term along with causing physical addiction. Etc.
Perhaps even worse, though, is having a bunch of kids indoctrinated in public schools and purely devoted to the material sciences diagnosing themselves on the internet based on TikTok videos.
Via Neuroscience News (emphasis added):
A new study found that popular ADHD-related content on TikTok often misaligns with clinical guidelines, potentially influencing how young adults perceive the disorder. Researchers analyzed the top 100 ADHD videos and found that less than half of the claims matched professional diagnostic criteria.
Young adults who consumed more of this content were more likely to overestimate ADHD symptoms and recommend videos with misleading information. Experts emphasize the need for mental health professionals to engage in social media discussions to ensure accurate, evidence-based resources reach viewers.
The study itself, via PLOS One (emphasis added):
Two clinical psychologists with expertise in ADHD evaluated the claims (accuracy, nuance, overall quality as psychoeducation material) made in the top 100 #ADHD TikTok videos. Despite the videos’ immense popularity (collectively amassing nearly half a billion views), fewer than 50% of the claims about ADHD symptoms were judged to align with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In Study 2, 843 undergraduate students (no ADHD = 224, ADHD self-diagnosis = 421, ADHD formal diagnosis = 198) were asked about their typical frequency of viewing #ADHD content on TikTok and their perceptions of ADHD and were shown the top 5 and bottom 5 psychologist-rated videos from Study 1. A greater typical frequency of watching ADHD-related TikToks was linked to a greater willingness to recommend both the top and bottom-rated videos from Study 1, after controlling for demographics and ADHD diagnostic status. It was also linked to estimating a higher prevalence of ADHD in the general population and greater challenges faced by those with ADHD. Our findings highlight a discrepancy between mental health professionals and young adults regarding the psychoeducational value of #ADHD content on TikTok. Addressing this is crucial to improving access to treatment and enhancing support for those with ADHD.
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The exact same process works itself out with trannifying the kids.
- TikTok groomer video plants the seed: “Maybe you’re trans”;
- kid starts to wonder if he’s a transgender;
- kid asks mommy if he’s a transgender;
- mommy reflexively affirms that he is transgender because she knows having a gender-diverse kid is major street cred on the suburban block, or else she just doesn’t want to deal with any CPS visits for refusing to “affirm” her kid’s process of re-discovering his gender identity;
- the family doctor, who just so happens to work for a hospital system that rakes in millions of dollars in revenue surgically altering children’s genitalia, agrees wholeheartedly that they’ve got a transgender kid on their hands;
- mommy buys her little tike all the genital-packing fashion accessories his little gender- queer heart desires from Target;
- before you know it, her gender-diverse Social Justice™ icon is twerking for the cameras.
