> Unless you have a better idea how to treat it

Actually, if you read the article until the end, it proposes a better idea to treat it: Do not lump together all the conditions that lead to the symptoms together. Treat them as individual conditions with different causes and administer appropriate treatment - don't just hand them pills because it's simple.

I sincerely doubt that stimulants are the best treatment we can give those people. They may help in the short term, but they're highly addictive and your body develops a tolerance. What are you going to do once those people are tolerant to medication? Wave your hand in the air, tell them "bad luck, you developed a tolerance, now have a nice day". Medication may be required in some cases, but it's often only the beginning of a treatment. You need to solve or at least tackle the complex problem to really help them - and assigning a simple label doesn't always help.

I've personally known someone who has taken Ritalin type meds for 20+ years and did extremely well on it. In addition, my research indicates that tolerance to ADHD meds is uncommon and typically a person can be kept on one dose for years.

See, I'm under long-term medication myself, for an incurable, but treatable condition. Long term medication is a last-ditch remedy and that's for a reason. It's generally speaking a PITA. Where ever you go, you need to take your medication with you. Depending on what you get, you might have to take it on schedule. Depending on what you get, the pharmacy round the corner needs to order it and the stuff needs a prescription. Most stuff has side-effects, mine is mildly liver-toxic which means that I need to go have blood tests about every 8 weeks. I need to go to the doctor every 4 weeks for the prescription. When I travel longer than 4 weeks I need to jump through several hoops to get a larger amount. It's much better than without treatment, so if a friend asks me how I'm doing with the medication, I'd say "extremely well", but mainly because without medication it's extremely bad.

Yes, medication helps and it's sometimes the last remedy when nothing else helps. But I think that not labeling all conditions that lead to ADHD-like symptoms as ADHD and rather try and find a more nuanced understanding of the problem is helpful, especially in a case where a condition is often diagnosed on children where parents read stuff on the internet and run from doctor to doctor to doctor trying to get a prescription for ritalin, since they're certain that the kid matches those 5 relatively generic symptoms.

I think medication for ADHD should be avoided unless it is necessary.

I also have read statistics on how ADHD is treated in children which very much trouble me - there it seems to be highly overdiagnosed and treated.

Saying that a certain medical condition doesn't exist isn't a denial of the suffering of people who suffer, it's a denial of the label that's been placed on that suffering.

As long as an attack on bad science continues to be interpreted by a segment of sufferers as a personal attack, sufferers groups will never exist as anything other than tools for drug companies to subvert the scientific process.

Imagine reading an article on punctuated equilibrium with the headline "Darwin is Wrong". Technically true, but WTF? Or a discussion of potential side-effects of the H1N1 vaccine with the headline "Vaccines Kill People".

Just because it's true doesn't mean you don't need some tact.

Also, I notice you've assumed I'm a sufferer. You might want to put away the "jump to conclusions mat" and maybe just try having a little empathy?

>Also, I notice you've assumed I'm a sufferer.

Where did you notice that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_transparency

> As long as an attack on bad science

The bad science is this book that pretends to have evidence on its side.

This guy is putting on his white overcoat and trying to look like a scientist, but he doesn't actually cite any real research in favour of his claim, and instead uses anecdotal evidence ("Usually, once the original condition is found and treated, the ADHD symptoms go away" and such) rather than statistics to support his conclusion and sell his book.

This isn't to say he's incorrect in his conclusion, he just isn't supporting it very well. I would hope the book has referenced stats but this article isn't very promising. He's not too far removed from a pilot claiming his story about a flying saucer must true because he was in the airforce.

For the record, I've been diagnosed with ADHD and have plenty of anecdotal evidence that it's for real, but may be suffering from confirmation bias.

Yes I agree, in fact I think it is particularly concerning that these op'eds are getting picked up by more recognized news outlets. He wrote an almost identical piece for the daily mail last week.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2577814/The-eminen...

this is clearly just self promotion

It sells.

Do you have an alternative? Do we regulate what the news is allowed to say? How do we prevent such poor quality journalism?

News is entertainment (sadly, and mostly worthless), expecting it to be anything else these days is foolish.

As a sufferer of various mental things, I feel like the suffering and problems can be real, and the diagnoses and explanations still carry a heavy bullshit component.