Oh, for fuck's sake.

[rivka]

Ninety-nine percent of the time, when I'm offensive, (a) I know that I'm being offensive, (b) I'm doing it on purpose, and (c) I'm willing to acknowledge it. This may not be much of a virtue, but sometimes it's all I've got.

In another journal to which I shall not link, a commenter presented the opinion that "autism and ADD are 'massively overdiagnosed.' " When I asked if she had any evidence for this claim, she posted a long set of justifications involving lazy teachers, parents with no discipline skills, venal psychologists, and suggestive idiots who see symptom lists on the internet and become convinced that their child is autistic. Here's the money quote:

what is often diagnosed as autism is more likely a lack of parenting skills combined with a therapist's interest in creating a lucrative "treatment" plan - one that involves "specialists" "drugs" and "group therapy" - all of which line someone's pockets.

My response, I acknowledge, was not at all kind or temperate. I regretted, afterwards, not making the same points in slightly more temperate language. But I am not amused, today, to discover that she made a long self-pitying post in her own journal about how victimized she was by my horrible attack. Because she is never one to make a point offensively, herself. She's very gentle.

If the bit I quoted above is not unbelievably offensive to parents of autistic children and to mental health treatment providers, then I need a new definition for the word. Yes, when I fired back, I was harsh. But I'll be damned if I'm going to accept a version of events in which I am supposed to have fired the first shot.

Comments

Two thoughts, on one piece of this

[redbird]

I am not aware that the concept has a name attached to it; but I know several parents who insist that they can see marked differences in their children's behaviour directly related to their diets; I know a couple of adults who will attest the same about themselves, so I think it's at least worth looking at. I know that I have difficulty concentrating if I skip breakfast and load myself with quick carbs...

First, I know that I get grumpy if I don't have enough protein. That's not ADHD, it's well within "normal" human variation. That people do better with healthy food doesn't mean that improving one's diet will cure ADHD, or any other disease.

Second, it is very hard to sort out random chance and the placebo effect. This is especially true in cases where the evaluation of whether a treatment helps is the same person who has decided to try the treatment, and is administering it, rather than either an outside observer or the patient. I don't know how much variation there is in symptoms from day to day, or week to week, with hyperactivity or ADD. With conditions that do have such variation, almost anything can appear to be a "cure". Hence the belief among some people with multiple sclerosis that removing mercury fillings from their teeth is a cure, or at least a significant treatment: relapses and remissions are part of the normal course of MS, and it's not at all unlikely that a given person will have a remission right after trying any random treatment. Post hoc does not mean propter hoc.