The Shame Of Society

I believe that there is a real problem with American society regarding certain subjects. One that I wish to highlight now is its acceptance and, to an extent, encouragement of disorders. I am not talking about many mental disorders with which thousands of people struggle every day. Rather, I am talking about the abundance of psychological disorders that seem to afflict every other person in the nation. For instance, attention defecit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, seems to be an epidemic in today's society.

Before I continue, let me say that I understand that there are many people who are tremendously affected by this disorder and require treatment in order to be productive. But I believe that ADHD is greatly overdiagnosed. A large number of the people who are initially diagnosed with ADHD are boys in elementary school. I see an inherent problem with this, and let me tell you why.

Most every gradeshool boy can be considered hyperactive for some part of the day, usually during recess or other time when they are free. However, some boys take longer to transition from an active to a calm state, which could pose a problem during times when their heightened activity is disruptive. When these boys who seem to be naturally disruptive go through the natural processes of rebellion, looking for attention, and testing the bounds at school and at home, situations can become difficult. However, instead of confronting the problem and working toward a permanent solution that would enable the boys to control their bodies, teachers and/or parents decide that the child has a disorder and force him to take pills to temporarily solve the problem.

But several of the people that I have met that have ADHD routinely neglect to take their pills. This tells me that they feel that they can be productive without medication. Also, I have observed occasions when the person would be told to take the pills and instead this person promised to change his behavior. This tells me two things: that the medication is somehow unpleasant to ingest or its effects are unpleasant, neither of which I can claim as factual, and that on these occasions the person believed that he could control himself without the pills. This leads me to believe that he could control himself all the time if he wanted to, or at least enough to warrant the termination of treatment without ill-effects. However, as a society we accept the disorder as legitimate in cases that do not merit it and we encourage its diagnosis to remove misbehavior and further increase the idea of normalcy among people.

For the following paragraph I deem myself to be someone with the authority to offer a sound diagnosis. I believe that American society has a disorder. It suffers from a terrible affliction with symptoms including laziness, irreverence, and envy. It seeks to change those who are not in accordance with it and works to enforce complete acceptance of its beliefs at all cost. If left unchecked, the consequences could be dire.