Hello dr. Peterson, thank you very much and my question is regarding
ADHD which is something I haven't heard you speak a whole lot about maybe a little bit
Now it seems to me that we or at least maybe just me do not quite understand
ADHD - what could be its full capacity maybe and
Because there's many of many voices saying that it's an over diagnosed overblown small
Mental variance that's prevalent in boys or it's just young boys being young boys and then there are some that would fight and advocate for
very different treatment in the academic world
And I was wondering what you what your thoughts are on ADHD itself
and on
the whether you think it's over diagnosed and
Maybe advice for me as someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD on how to overcome it
without maybe becoming completely reliant on
prescribed medication
Okay, so first of all it's definitely over diagnosed
Second
It's it's a very unreliable
Psychiatric diagnosis many psychiatric diagnosis are unreliable and that's because psychiatric diagnosis aren't precisely
Scientific categories, they're weird hybrids right first of all psychiatrists aren't scientists. They're engineers
Engineers are trying to do something rather than to describe the objective world and psychiatrists are trying to make people healthy whatever that means
It's actually partly ethical. It's very complicated
We don't know how to distinguish it from temperamental variation so for example if you're high in openness and high in extraversion and low in
conscientiousness
Low in agreeableness conscientiousness and and high in neuroticism you're likely to manifest symptoms of ADHD
It's because you're exploratory you don't like to sit down
You're full of ideas your attention scatters across a wide variety of topics and you very stable
temperamental variation it's also much more common among boys
Panksepp showed same guy with rats that if you deprive young routes of
Rough-and-tumble play which is what the young boys are deprived of in school. Let's say that they get hyperactive and
Then their prefrontal cortexes
Don't develop very well because they're not having the right kind of experiences and that you can treat that quite effectively with
psychomotor stimulants like ritalin
so that's kind of an interesting bit of scientific information that no one pays any attention to
There is also absolutely no evidence whatsoever that long-term use of psychomotor stimulants produces increases in cognitive
Gain zero, and there's plenty of evidence that it's harmful
so
Then the second part of that was what about
Adjustments for in the academic world say we
disability adjustments it's like
That's a such a rat's nest that I don't want to even discuss it. I mean it it. I'll discuss it for like 15 seconds
There is a never-ending
multiplication of disabilities, that's what's happening right now the
Disability offices and the universities are swamped like I know some people have it rough like believe me
I know that I was a problem. I seriously know that I've dealt with extraordinarily damaged people in my life
You're a bloody hard pressed to find someone who doesn't have a serious problem or
Who doesn't have a serious problem in a close family member
It's like where do you draw the line with regards to disabilities? Well you can't?
You can't they multiply
just like
LGBT identities multiply just no shit really technically just like that just like
Intersectionality categories of oppression multiplied, it's it's it's inevitable
the way that you deal with it is you have objective standards you apply them to everyone not because that's
It's not fair if you
If your criteria for fairness is that everyone has the same outcome. It's not fair at all. It's not even close to fair
It's just less tyrannical than the alternatives now
We don't know that yet because we haven't seen the full range of the tyranny of the alternatives manifest itself not in our culture
But it certainly did in other cultures. I think it's a bad idea now I
Don't want to be absolute about that like
It's tricky you know because if you have a disability that
Would allow you to do the work in the university and in the workplace
with a modification
Then perhaps the modification could be made
But I think that was done a lot better when that was in the hands of the professor's and not in the hands of these
crazy
Bureaucratic structures that have risen up around the disability issue
Like they're one of the ten things that are going to kill the universities or maybe you've already killed them
Possibly because they mean they're walking corpses as far as I can tell
Zombies so and that might be wrong, but it's what it looks like to me.
