The official history of ADHD research (Attention Deficit hyperactivity Disorder) can be summed up with the list of labels used to describe what we today call ADHD. It illustrates more of a bad attitude towards children than objective science trying to understand bad behavior in some children. All these descriptions are negative:
- Morbid Moral Defect of Moral Control
- Minimal Brain Damage
- Minimal Brain Dysfunction
- Hyperactive Child Syndrome
- Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood
- Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
History of ADHD Research
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) has been with mankind since Adam, just as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CO) have been with us since Cain. ADHD research however has only a hundred year old history.
Adam and Eve? Deciding to eat the fruit of knowledge seems like a result of attention deficit and impulsivity. They were creative naming all the animals and creativity is a trait in the true attention deficit personality type.The British paediatrician George Stills coined the first of these names 110 years ago. He was not writing about normal gifted attention deficit or hyperactive children. He was writing about young people with ODD (Opposition Defiant Disorder) and/or CO (Conduct Disorder).Even though it is generally known by the foremost ADHD researchers that there is a clear difference between children and young people with ADHD and those with ODD and CO, they still group these very different youngsters together. These two groups, ADHD on the one hand and ODD and CO on the other have different responses to treatment and general life outcomes, but share a few symptoms. Not all, only inattention and hyperactivity. These are subjective criteria of symptoms and there is no objective medical, or physiological test for ADHD.There will never be an objective test for ADHD as long the diagnosis criteria are symptoms. The signs or symptoms are not a disorder. A disorder is what causes the signs or symptoms.Coughing is a symptom. Coughing is not a disease. What causes the coughing is the disorder. Coughing can be caused by tuberculosis, lung cancer, emphysema or a common cold. ADHD similarly is a list of symptoms. There are over 100 causes for these attention deficit and hyperactivity symptoms. They are medical, physiological, genetic, environmental, emotional and psychological. The majority of ADHD research projects unfortunately do not reflect this diversity of causes.
The future of ADHD history can go two ways.
Either it follows the old conventional way stuck in the “disorder” groove, only digging deeper into itt, and this is where the latest diagnostic manual, the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition) is heading. This being rushed to be published by the spring of 2012.
Or science will ultimately triumph, and there will be an open debate in the scientific community. ADHD will be accepted for what it is by acknowledging the most basic of concepts, separating symptom from disorder or cause. ADHD is a confusing mixture of over 100 different conditions, with a set of common symptoms, each with its own cause(s) all stamped with the same unscientific label. We need an open debate without bigoted moralising arrogance with which many of today's foremost ADHD researchers, funded by drug companies seem to suffer from.