CapeFearCadaver: my lip balm addiction: You knew he was unstable at 15 and you started dating him years later. Sounds like he wasn't the only farked up one.

/no excuse for the abuse but look in the mirror too
//sane people don't start dating someone they already know is unstable

ADHD does not equate unstable.

No, everything else in your post "equates" unstable

But, sure, it's all my fault. I pushed him. I shouldn't have dressed that way, goddammitsomuch!

It must be so exhausting playing the victim all day long. Get some rest, Sweetie, you're not responsible for anything, ever.

The first thing I have to wonder about this study is if they screened out the teenagers who had other disorders before counting this "8%" or whatever?

Because about 4% of the population will end up being sociopaths, and about 4% will end up being narcissists. That's DSM IV TR. They really don't like to classify anyone with either of those diagnoses until the patient is solidly adult.

But anyway, the angry, raging, violent temper tantrum is a lovely, endearing feature you can get with both narcissists and sociopaths. So it is entirely possible that what this study is effectively saying is, "Hey, these whack jobs that we don't want to stick this nasty, permanent, adult, abnormal label on until they're fully adult? They're some pretty darned obnoxious gits as kids, too."

However, you can also get explosive, violent, raging behavior with some other mental health problems, so it matters how the study was designed and what methods they used to try to exclude people who had other mental illnesses.


/DSM V mostly rolls sociopathy and some of the worst behavior of narcissists into "psychopathy" but because they change the criteria for the personality disorders all around, across the whole manual, the "incidence" numbers will all change at the edges. It's going to be a right mess. And it's going to be expensive as hell to do all the studies to get good population statistics numbers for the new diagnostic categories.

I think I get this sometimes, especially when I haven't eaten recently or haven't gotten enough sleep. A little thing will just make me incredibly angry and I'll start to boil over. I've learned to recognize it and just walk away to avoid doing anything stupid. It honestly kind of scares me since I'm not normally like that.

/It's really a problem since I don't always get hungry but I'll get headaches and be irritable if I haven't eaten

heh.. try getting through the DHS at an airport when the little booger goes off

"ma'am, please controll your child"

" i can't, he's got a medical condition. He's got IED"

TSA hears"blablabalbablab no balbabla IED"

"ON THE FLOOR NOW LADY!"(sounds of tazers being applied to unruly crochfruit and helicopter parent)

Julie Cochrane:
/DSM V mostly rolls sociopathy and some of the worst behavior of narcissists into "psychopathy" but because they change the criteria for the personality disorders all around, across the whole manual, the "incidence" numbers will all change at the edges. It's going to be a right mess. And it's going to be expensive as hell to do all the studies to get good population statistics numbers for the new diagnostic categories.

Well of course.
1) Who gets paid for the studies? The same people making the distinction.
2) If it's too common it's normal human behavior, not a disorder. This, of course, is the huge problem with ADHD diagnoses

bhcompy: Julie Cochrane:
/DSM V mostly rolls sociopathy and some of the worst behavior of narcissists into "psychopathy" but because they change the criteria for the personality disorders all around, across the whole manual, the "incidence" numbers will all change at the edges. It's going to be a right mess. And it's going to be expensive as hell to do all the studies to get good population statistics numbers for the new diagnostic categories.

Well of course.
1) Who gets paid for the studies? The same people making the distinction.
2) If it's too common it's normal human behavior, not a disorder. This, of course, is the huge problem with ADHD diagnoses

Yeah. The other problem with the ADHD diagnosis, sort of, and with the whole pathologizing of behavior, is that if we call a biologically-based behavior that is just dammit how people are a "disorder" we can force schools and workplaces---but primarily schools---to set their policies so that the expectations for the people in question are actually humanly possible for those people to achieve.

We have a harder time telling schools, "You have to let the little boys run around like wild maniacs for fifteen minutes after lunch so that they can settle down and learn in the afternoon because they're human little boys. They're not robots, and they're not little girls, and you can't just wave a magic wand and make them how you wish them to be."

So yeah, instead we say, "Johnny is an especially human-little-boy-like boy and can't settle down and learn worth a crap in the afternoon unless you let him run around for a few minutes and get the excess energy out of his system. You have to let him go to the gym and run laps until he can settle down. He has ADHD and it's in his IEP."

When, really, probably all the little boys in Johnny's class could use a few laps around the gym after lunch to work a few lumps of lard off their poor, obese, out-of-shape, couch-parked asses.

But the school has a corncob up its collective arse and wants all the kids' butts in chairs at desks, all the time, doing classwork--as if that's going to help their standardized test scores. Dumbass bureaucrats.

Came for Randy Orton references. Only saw one, leaves disappointed to punt my dog and give and RKO to my cat!

Julie Cochrane: The first thing I have to wonder about this study is if they screened out the teenagers who had other disorders before counting this "8%" or whatever?

Because about 4% of the population will end up being sociopaths, and about 4% will end up being narcissists. That's DSM IV TR. They really don't like to classify anyone with either of those diagnoses until the patient is solidly adult.

But anyway, the angry, raging, violent temper tantrum is a lovely, endearing feature you can get with both narcissists and sociopaths. So it is entirely possible that what this study is effectively saying is, "Hey, these whack jobs that we don't want to stick this nasty, permanent, adult, abnormal label on until they're fully adult? They're some pretty darned obnoxious gits as kids, too."

However, you can also get explosive, violent, raging behavior with some other mental health problems, so it matters how the study was designed and what methods they used to try to exclude people who had other mental illnesses.


/DSM V mostly rolls sociopathy and some of the worst behavior of narcissists into "psychopathy" but because they change the criteria for the personality disorders all around, across the whole manual, the "incidence" numbers will all change at the edges. It's going to be a right mess. And it's going to be expensive as hell to do all the studies to get good population statistics numbers for the new diagnostic categories.

Well for one thing, you're forgetting that the DSM criteria for IED specifies that these anger attacks AREN'T the result of another disorder or substance abuse. Upon reading the actual study, their methods weren't too bad, honestly (though I'll admit I always find it sketchy when they use a P

Oh my god, I just typed out that whole response and Fark made it go bye bye all because I didn't add a space between P
... (though I'll admit I always find it sketchy when they use a P

batcookie: Oh my god, I just typed out that whole response and Fark made it go bye bye all because I didn't add a space between P
... (though I'll admit I always find it sketchy when they use a P

FARK IT, I'M DONE. YOU SUCK FARK FILTERS. I'm taking my psychologist brain elsewhere. :-P

Anything anyone doesn't like about someone else is now a disorder and must be cured by expensive mind-altering drugs and/or therapy. We used to deal with these things through a concept called "controlling yourself".

Assimilate This: Anything anyone doesn't like about someone else is now a disorder and must be cured by expensive mind-altering drugs and/or therapy. We used to deal with these things through a concept called "controlling yourself".

Right because there's no such thing as an "impulse control disorder," which is what this is. Next you gonna start telling people with depression to just get over it and cheer up? Or even better, tell people with cancer to stop their cancerous cells from dividing! Come on man, we can't do EVERYTHING for you! *rolls eyes* I mean, honestly, are there cases where it's learned? Yes, which is what I was TRYING to get at in the post Fark kept insisted on not letting me post (thanks filters... grrr), but to say there aren't people that honestly CAN'T control it is stupid. There ARE different shortcomings in the brain that some people have. Would you argue that a schizophrenic person should just "stop seeing things" by using self-control? So why is this different?

So basically, lack of getting their asses whipped is a mental disorder?

Slappajo: So basically, lack of getting their asses whipped is a mental disorder?

Yes, because hitting is guaranteed to create a well-adjusted and non-violent adult...

cuzsis: Kids who weren't disciplined for throwing temper tantrums when they were little, keep throwing temper tantrums when they're older?

[www.myfacewhen.net image 493x349]

There's just as many kids who continue to throw tantrums when they're older even when they are disciplined.

In general, punishment teaches people to avoid the behavior when they can't get away with it, it doesn't necessarily condition them to behave in acceptable ways. They just act like morons again once they don't have to worry about punishment. Sure, it works for some people, depending on who they are and who their parents are, but for every anecdote about how getting smacked helped them become responsible adults, there's at least one other person who just ends up being an a-hole who hates his parents. Punishment for bad behavior is just not the best way to ensure that people grow up as reasonable, well-adjusted adults.

batcookie: There ARE different shortcomings in the brain that some people have. Would you argue that a schizophrenic person should just "stop seeing things" by using self-control? So why is this different?

I agree with you. However....

People are (rightly, I think) concerned that it will end up being overdiagnosed and overmedicated like other disorders have become (ADHD is a good example). When that happens, not only do you have the problem of kids spending their developmental years under the influence of mood-altering drugs, you end up with two overarching camps that are both problematic -- one group of people who repeatedly try to convince their kid's therapists (often successfully) to give them drugs so they'll be easier to handle instead of actually undergoing therapy, and another group which refuses to believe that the disorder even exists because so many fairly normal kids are diagnosed with it. And that doesn't even mention the hordes of people that end up thinking that practically every psychological disorder is a "big pharma" conspiracy that is actually treatable by "sucking it up", in large part because so many relatively normal people are suddenly given the "I'm sick" excuse for poor behavior.

I believe ADHD is absolutely real, and I'd wouldn't deny the existence of this one, either. The brain can malfunction in any number of odd ways. But it is important also to realize that these symptoms exist in almost ALL kids to some degree. Impulse control is done in significant part in the frontal lobe, which is one of the parts of the brain that is latest to develop. Kids and teenagers are notoriously impulsive and emotional, for very good biological reason! This is not something that needs to be medicated in the vast majority of cases, even if it IS disruptive on some level. If it is TRULY a problem, they should do sit-down therapy FIRST, and be medicated only as a very last resort.

Unfortunately, many therapists (AND parents) are all to happy to simply pop pills because it is so very much easier to do.

Gawdzila: batcookie: There ARE different shortcomings in the brain that some people have. Would you argue that a schizophrenic person should just "stop seeing things" by using self-control? So why is this different?

I agree with you. However....

People are (rightly, I think) concerned that it will end up being overdiagnosed and overmedicated like other disorders have become (ADHD is a good example). When that happens, not only do you have the problem of kids spending their developmental years under the influence of mood-altering drugs, you end up with two overarching camps that are both problematic -- one group of people who repeatedly try to convince their kid's therapists (often successfully) to give them drugs so they'll be easier to handle instead of actually undergoing therapy, and another group which refuses to believe that the disorder even exists because so many fairly normal kids are diagnosed with it. And that doesn't even mention the hordes of people that end up thinking that practically every psychological disorder is a "big pharma" conspiracy that is actually treatable by "sucking it up", in large part because so many relatively normal people are suddenly given the "I'm sick" excuse for poor behavior.

I believe ADHD is absolutely real, and I'd wouldn't deny the existence of this one, either. The brain can malfunction in any number of odd ways. But it is important also to realize that these symptoms exist in almost ALL kids to some degree. Impulse control is done in significant part in the frontal lobe, which is one of the parts of the brain that is latest to develop. Kids and teenagers are notoriously impulsive and emotional, for very good biological reason! This is not something that needs to be medicated in the vast majority of cases, even if it IS disruptive on some level. If it is TRULY a problem, they should do sit-down therapy FIRST, and be medicated only as a very last resort.

Unfortunately, many therapists (AND parents) are all to happy to si ...

It kind of sucks that it's so very expensive to do SPECT scans. Those suckers can give hard, visual data about little Johnny's or little Suzie's brain that people won't believe if you diagnose it some other way. And, frankly, it can do a lot to rule out or rule in what you think you're seeing about a patient and the details about a particular patient's damages.

It's a lot easier to deal with family, schools, etc., when you have a very visually convincing and understandable set of brain scans in hand and can show them, "This is a normal brain. This is Johnny's brain. This is the area that makes the difference in behavior."

"Oooooh. Aaaaaahhhh."

"This is Johnny's brain on drugs. See how it looks more like the normal brain?"

"Oooooh. Aaaaaahhh."

Or, variously, "These are the befores and afters of someone with Johnny's same diagnosis after TalkFixO (TM) Brand Therapy."

"Ooooh. Aaaaahh."

Personally, I'm a fan of DBT--it's not just for Borderlines anymore.

CapeFearCadaver: "Which kids grow out of it and which kids don't?"

Haven't RTFT yet, though this seems to be the prominent question in my mind.

A little bit of background: I grew up with my abuser; had known him for 17 years before we started dating; throughout our entire adolescence. It was obvious in those early years he had ADHD (growing up in the Tipper Gore age of 'let's put all of our kids on psychotropic medication') I had honestly never believed that ADHD existed until I met my ex when he was 14 and I 15, but he was textbook. His outbursts back then involved him getting frustrated because he had a hard time keeping up wit our conversations, would get quite and sulk out of our presence... then it grew to frustration that he wasn't performing correctly a couple years later and he started to take his frustrations out on inanimate objects such as walls or doors, or beer bottles against walls or doors. He'd spend his energy, blow off some steam then he'd be himself again.

All the sudden out of nowhere, he dropped off the face of the planet, as far as we were concerned. No one could get a hold of him, nor did he try to get in touch with anyone else, for four years. He was simply gone. He shows back up, out of the blue, gets in touch with me (we were reeeally close friends), we hang out and started dating. A few months later, from my eyes, he went from taking his aggression out on inanimate objects onto animate objects; i.e., me. At that point I was kind of stuck. Got out, he's been convicted of DV assault, place on house arrest and probation, I've got a restraining order.... against. my. best. friend.

When I was a teen, I had my moments, we all did. At least most of us have. I've felt that urging and uncontrollable rage before; but, I was a kid. It never went further than breaking something real quick and then feeling incredibly remorseful over it afterwards. What exactly could the difference between my own teenage angst and his? Yes, he, during those four years absence from ...

Sad story, sis.

Gawdzila: batcookie: There ARE different shortcomings in the brain that some people have. Would you argue that a schizophrenic person should just "stop seeing things" by using self-control? So why is this different?

I agree with you. However....

People are (rightly, I think) concerned that it will end up being overdiagnosed and overmedicated like other disorders have become (ADHD is a good example). When that happens, not only do you have the problem of kids spending their developmental years under the influence of mood-altering drugs, you end up with two overarching camps that are both problematic -- one group of people who repeatedly try to convince their kid's therapists (often successfully) to give them drugs so they'll be easier to handle instead of actually undergoing therapy, and another group which refuses to believe that the disorder even exists because so many fairly normal kids are diagnosed with it. And that doesn't even mention the hordes of people that end up thinking that practically every psychological disorder is a "big pharma" conspiracy that is actually treatable by "sucking it up", in large part because so many relatively normal people are suddenly given the "I'm sick" excuse for poor behavior.

I believe ADHD is absolutely real, and I'd wouldn't deny the existence of this one, either. The brain can malfunction in any number of odd ways. But it is important also to realize that these symptoms exist in almost ALL kids to some degree. Impulse control is done in significant part in the frontal lobe, which is one of the parts of the brain that is latest to develop. Kids and teenagers are notoriously impulsive and emotional, for very good biological reason! This is not something that needs to be medicated in the vast majority of cases, even if it IS disruptive on some level. If it is TRULY a problem, they should do sit-down therapy FIRST, and be medicated only as a very last resort.

Unfortunately, many therapists (AND parents) are all to happy to si ...

Haha these are most of the points I was trying to make when the Fark html filters wouldn't let me get past trying to type P (less than symbol) .05.

batcookie: Assimilate This: Anything anyone doesn't like about someone else is now a disorder and must be cured by expensive mind-altering drugs and/or therapy. We used to deal with these things through a concept called "controlling yourself".

Right because there's no such thing as an "impulse control disorder," which is what this is. Next you gonna start telling people with depression to just get over it and cheer up? Or even better, tell people with cancer to stop their cancerous cells from dividing! Come on man, we can't do EVERYTHING for you! *rolls eyes* I mean, honestly, are there cases where it's learned? Yes, which is what I was TRYING to get at in the post Fark kept insisted on not letting me post (thanks filters... grrr), but to say there aren't people that honestly CAN'T control it is stupid. There ARE different shortcomings in the brain that some people have. Would you argue that a schizophrenic person should just "stop seeing things" by using self-control? So why is this different?

No I'm saying these legitimate problems are over-diagnosed solely to line the pockets of psychiatrists and pharmacists.