Unlike "stop staying awake" which is not actionable.
A book might not be a good suggestion for everyone, and finding the right "off internet thinking environment" is not easy for some, but it's doable for most.
That's the problem: you think "stop staying awake" is not actionable, while "leave your phone at home" is actionable for a person with ADHD.
Again, this is not different than saying "just be happy" to a depressed person. To that person, in that moment, "stop wasting time on the internet" is not actionable just as much, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place.
I'm not an insomniac; nor do I have ADHD, as far I know.
I assure you that I cannot action an instruction to 'stop staying awake'. I certainly can 'leave [my] phone at home', and frequently do.
It might go against the "just feed them drugs" mentality, but lots of times it totally works.
They had plenty of "traumatic stress" before the 21st century, in all parts of the world -- huge wars, conflicts, disasters, even genocide. But those involved (like older friends and relatives that have survived bombings and wars and dictatorship) also could grow a pair and snap out of it, and even thrive afterwards. I don't believe they had a different DNA or mental wiring back then.
At an FDA hearing on March 23, 2006, I testified: “Saying any
psychiatric diagnosis ‘is a brain-based problem and that the medications
are normalizing function’ is an anti-scientific, pro-drug lie” [ 14].
Yet this has become standard practice throughout medicine, for example, at the American Psychiatric Association [ 15], American Medical
Association [ 16], American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
American Academy of Pediatrics, Child Neurology Society, American
Academy of Family Physicians [ 17], FDA [ 13], and virtually all US
government health-care agencies.
Journal articles [ 6], press releases, ads [ 18], drug inserts, and
research informed consent documents say, or infer, that psychological
diagnoses are abnormalities/diseases. All patients and research
participants with psychological problems are led to believe they have an
abnormality/disease, biasing them in favor of medical interventions, and
against nonmedical interventions (e.g., love, will power, or talk
therapy), which presume, as is the case, that the individual is
physically and medically normal and without need of a
medical/pharmaceutical intervention.
Currently, depression is not diagnosed via objective chemical
tests, nor is treatment guided by any such tests. If depression did
result primarily from a known chemical imbalance, such tests
would likely be available and in widespread use, and depression
would be easily and quickly resolved for most patients.
Luckily, a number of effective interventions are available for
treating depression. Such interventions include a variety of
pharmacological as well as nonpharmacological approaches, sometimes
used alone and sometimes in combination with one another
To the contrary, I think the past generations of my family who have survived WW2 and Stalinism were, till the end of their days, heavily impaired by it. They "snapped out of it" to the degree that was required for not starving, but I would not say they had developed nearly up to their full potential.
In hindsight, it was painfully obvious with so many of them. And the number of functional alcoholics (with often a rather loose definition of "functional") was huge.
I'm talking more general war and civil war scenarios (e.g. having your city bombed, being in a war, having family members die in such scenarios, etc -- which have been common in many places in the developing world (and Europe).
But the constant terror of a concentration camp for months or years on end is another thing.
This is like telling depressed people to be happy or victims of violence with PTSD to 'grow a pair' and 'snap out of it'.
This is the kind of simplistic, unhelpful, shaming advice that keeps mental illness taboo.