Psychiatrist Who First Diagnosed ADHD Says It’s Not Actually Real Right Before Dying
12 years ago

From WorldPublicUnion.org:

The German weekly Der Spiegel quoted in its cover story on 2 February 2012 the US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, born in 1922 as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who was the “scientific father of ADHD” and who said at the age of 87, seven months before his death in his last interview: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease”

What?

(*takes a minute to let this sink in*)

WHAT?

(*starts looking back over entire life*)

WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!

(*reality comes crashing down*)

Are you telling me that all these years I’ve just been a lazy asshole? There’s no medical reason for my mediocre grades, inability to remember names, or inability to pay attention when almost anyone is talking to me? I’m just a stupid, lazy, inconsiderate, douche bag!?!?! I took all that medicine and put up with its side effects (depression, anxiety, appetite loss, extreme shrinkage, and severe impotence and other stuff) for NOTHING? FUCK!

My world is crashing down around me. I’m surrounded by lies. What else haven’t I been told? Are grandma and grandpa not living on that farm I can never visit because I’m still not old enough? Whose lap have I been sitting on at the mall every December? Babies don’t come from when a daddy inserts his penis into a mommy and ejaculates into her vagina, thus causing his sperm to fertilize her egg cell, do they? They come from storks! I KNEW IT!

Seriously, fuck me. It’s all a lie. I suppose deep down I knew this all along. I mean, taking Adderall didn’t make me any more interested in geology class, or your name. Yes you, any of you. I guess I should just be happy that I got to take advantage of it for so long. I don’t care if my extra time on the ACT is illegitimate now, I do better on tests when I’m allotted time to daydream. It lets my mind EXPLORE!

So what now? Obviously ADD/ADHD isn’t going anywhere. It’s far too profitable for the pharmaceutical companies. This is like when that one astronaut says, “Yeah, aliens exist,” and everyone is all interested for thirty seconds before going back to not giving a shit. My advice? Let’s all keep living this glorious lie. Otherwise Adderall and the other fun ADD drugs might stop existing, and students will have to revert back to taking diet pills, or start smoking meth.

Consider my head buried in the sand. What? ADD isn’t real? I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA!

But really, thank God I have a job I like, otherwise I’d have a shitty work ethic and nothing to blame it on.

[via World Public Union]

***

    1. Whiskey_Ginger

      I just took a look at the linked original story. The translation doesn’t come out well using machine translation. Basically, he was saying there are extreme overdiagnoses of it, not that it doesn’t exist. I don’t know where the hell they got “completely fictitious” from. The wording isn’t even close to that.

      12 years ago at 3:53 pm
  4. Nice Try

    It’s a reason for doctors to prescribe amphetamines, which is good enough for me

    12 years ago at 3:29 pm
  6. Old Fratsputin

    The quote was out of context. We always knew ADHD was bullshit to some extent, but that’s just because we don’t understand yet what’s really going on. So the APA lumped together a hundred different things all under the name “ADHD” because they didn’t know what else to do with them. So basically anyone who’s a little out there, but not completely psycho is diagnosed as having ADHD. That doesn’t mean that they don’t actually have something though. Also, psychiatric disorders are determined just by what society perceives as pathological behavior. Homosexuality used to be considered a psychiatric disorder until society became more tolerant toward it; and narcissistic personality disorder is getting taken out of the next DSM because a lot of successful people are narcissists and our society doesn’t really see it as something that’s all that bad.

    12 years ago at 3:52 pm
    3. Lld3

      So we just all decided that if someone annoys us, we’ll just prescribe them some low grade meth, sounds reasonable to me.

      12 years ago at 3:40 pm
  7. Channel4NewsTeam

    Somehow news of this fictitious disease hasn’t affected my cash flows at all, still open for business.

    12 years ago at 4:10 pm
  9. WtF_

    He was 87 and probably senile. That’s what I’m going with. I don’t want to be retarded!

    12 years ago at 10:01 am
    1. Major Glory

      But for a man to say that on his death bed and not something like “son, you always disappointed me”…

      12 years ago at 7:38 pm