Intriguing read, Thom. I've thought about ADHD as a somewhat static condition (in the sense it exists in X% of people, regardless of time or external conditions). But what you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I believe it connects today's prevalence of conditions (like ADHD) to neoliberal policies adopted beginning in the late 1970s/early 1980s. We seem to be on that same trajectory now and continue to be feel the consequences.
I have been thinking about this article for a couple of days and how it aligns with my worldview. Coming from a nursing background and having taught Nursing Diagnosis, in my opinion, ADHD, type 2 diabetes, and some mental illnesses are symptoms rather than final diagnoses for which we seek a cure with treatment, primarily medication. They are the symptoms of an underlying cause, or what I think of as the real disease/diagnosis.
I wrote my graduate thesis for Medical-Surgical Nursing based on my personal experience having had my husband die in the Critical Care Unit I worked in, and my experience observing patients and their families in that unit. We had a strict visitor policy of five minutes per hour during the day and evening which I experienced and observed as adding stress to the patients and families.
I used Seyle's theory to hypothesize that if families were allowed more time together in the CCU, patients would have less stress and, therefore, more energy for healing. I couldn't follow up with my own study because I had five children including a new baby, but a few years later I read my thesis word for word in a nursing research magazine where a nursing student did the research study (I wasn't credited and had too much on my plate as a single mother with a high-stress job and five children).
Seyle's theory, in summary, states that the body physiologically reacts to stress in three stages: initial reaction, adaptation, and exhaustion. I believe that when we are continuously confronted with stress, our body's response is strengthened and adapted by storing energy (fat), and the fight or flight system becomes efficient to the point that any stress will cause insomnia. Because our bodies reach the exhaustion stage and we don't have a chance to rest and recuperate, the body advances to obesity, fatty liver, and fat-coated pancreas, which become the symptoms of diabetes. I prefer to think of it as a symptom and to think about it in a way that looks for the cause and how to reverse it rather than merely taking medication that masks the symptom (high blood glucose.)
If you think of ADHD as the symptoms, inattention, impulsivity, and excess movement for the setting, you could understand it as a fight or flight reaction to a threat or stressor. I read a book years ago, Adult Children of Alcoholics, by Janet Geringer Woititz, that explains hypervigilance is a lifelong reaction to the erratic parenting of an alcoholic. As Thom explains, living in the situation of insecurity and threats posed by neoliberal policies for the middle and working class may have continuous stress on the body that results in both conditions, type 2 diabetes and ADHD.
Science has recently found that evolution can take place in one or two generations, and research attributes the environment's effect on the alleles of genes as the cause. We also now understand a phenomenon known as generational trauma that is at least partially hereditary. So, stress can probably even cause a rapid change in humans as we adapt to modern-day stressors.
Stress can be caused by real or perceived threats, but their effect on the body is the same as the fight-or-flight response. When we reach a state of exhaustion, stress eventually makes us ill. Most of us would agree that leaders, monarchs, religions, and governments have used fear to control populations for thousands of years. In the magazine Psychology Today, a study seemed to demonstrate that the more fear a person feels when viewing disturbing photos, the more likely they are to vote conservatively Republican. Would Republicans create imaginary threats to get votes?
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan let the cat out of the bag when he said, "Inflation is partly held in check by job insecurity." So, the Federal Reserve can keep inflation in check by raising interest rates, which raises unemployment and worker insecurity. However, if unremitting stress causes illness, which leads to higher healthcare costs, then we shouldn't allow healthcare costs to be a burden on taxpayers. Right? We should make the victims pay for their own healthcare or die without it.
And in a for-profit healthcare system with a pill as the treatment for every ill, it's more profitable to increase stress. Right? We don't need a safety net that would reduce stress and save lives. Our children with ADHD result from stress through their stressed, exhausted parents and are forced into educational penitentiaries where they are unable to learn.
It will work until people don't take it anymore. They succumb to homelessness and die prematurely, but it's alright as long as the one percent can continue to satisfy their hoarding disease.
Gloria, this is so interesting, and I see what you're saying. I'm still processing it... Your highlight of the hyper-vigilance response to erratic parenting is a spot-on connection. And then there's the deeper, more insidious concept that there's an incentive to these policies because they propagate poor health outcomes and a need for medication (i.e., profit for private corporations). Thank you for sharing.
Sorry to burden you with so much and in such a scrambled fashion, but you are the only one who responded to Thom's most insightful article. I was thinking on paper.
The outline should be that unremitting stress causes body changes that cause illness. In response to stress, the body attempts to store energy, which is stored as fat, eventually leading to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc. The decision-makers at the top intentionally induce stress through fear of unemployment, so the workers will be compliant, work for less income, and work in poor working conditions that allow more profits for the 1%. No safety net adds to the stress and, of course, the wealthy don't want to pay for that either.
The wealthiest don't want to pay for the consequences (an unhealthy population) of their artificially created, unnecessary stress, and even make more money because of it through the increasingly profitable healthcare and pharmaceutical systems.
Wall Street is now buying up the infrastructure of hospital systems.
After I replied to your comment, I looked up your profile and found that you are an outdoorsman and a writer. Both relieve stress, lol.
As you can tell from the way I try to communicate my thoughts, I am not a writer and most likely have ADHD. Two of my five children have the diagnosis. The genetic component as it relates to generational trauma and the discovery of alleles which allow DNA changes in a single generation is quite interesting as well as the decrease in longevity we are experiencing in the U.S. compared with more human friendly countries. Take care.
Intriguing read, Thom. I've thought about ADHD as a somewhat static condition (in the sense it exists in X% of people, regardless of time or external conditions). But what you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I believe it connects today's prevalence of conditions (like ADHD) to neoliberal policies adopted beginning in the late 1970s/early 1980s. We seem to be on that same trajectory now and continue to be feel the consequences.
I have been thinking about this article for a couple of days and how it aligns with my worldview. Coming from a nursing background and having taught Nursing Diagnosis, in my opinion, ADHD, type 2 diabetes, and some mental illnesses are symptoms rather than final diagnoses for which we seek a cure with treatment, primarily medication. They are the symptoms of an underlying cause, or what I think of as the real disease/diagnosis.
I wrote my graduate thesis for Medical-Surgical Nursing based on my personal experience having had my husband die in the Critical Care Unit I worked in, and my experience observing patients and their families in that unit. We had a strict visitor policy of five minutes per hour during the day and evening which I experienced and observed as adding stress to the patients and families.
I used Seyle's theory to hypothesize that if families were allowed more time together in the CCU, patients would have less stress and, therefore, more energy for healing. I couldn't follow up with my own study because I had five children including a new baby, but a few years later I read my thesis word for word in a nursing research magazine where a nursing student did the research study (I wasn't credited and had too much on my plate as a single mother with a high-stress job and five children).
Seyle's theory, in summary, states that the body physiologically reacts to stress in three stages: initial reaction, adaptation, and exhaustion. I believe that when we are continuously confronted with stress, our body's response is strengthened and adapted by storing energy (fat), and the fight or flight system becomes efficient to the point that any stress will cause insomnia. Because our bodies reach the exhaustion stage and we don't have a chance to rest and recuperate, the body advances to obesity, fatty liver, and fat-coated pancreas, which become the symptoms of diabetes. I prefer to think of it as a symptom and to think about it in a way that looks for the cause and how to reverse it rather than merely taking medication that masks the symptom (high blood glucose.)
If you think of ADHD as the symptoms, inattention, impulsivity, and excess movement for the setting, you could understand it as a fight or flight reaction to a threat or stressor. I read a book years ago, Adult Children of Alcoholics, by Janet Geringer Woititz, that explains hypervigilance is a lifelong reaction to the erratic parenting of an alcoholic. As Thom explains, living in the situation of insecurity and threats posed by neoliberal policies for the middle and working class may have continuous stress on the body that results in both conditions, type 2 diabetes and ADHD.
Science has recently found that evolution can take place in one or two generations, and research attributes the environment's effect on the alleles of genes as the cause. We also now understand a phenomenon known as generational trauma that is at least partially hereditary. So, stress can probably even cause a rapid change in humans as we adapt to modern-day stressors.
Stress can be caused by real or perceived threats, but their effect on the body is the same as the fight-or-flight response. When we reach a state of exhaustion, stress eventually makes us ill. Most of us would agree that leaders, monarchs, religions, and governments have used fear to control populations for thousands of years. In the magazine Psychology Today, a study seemed to demonstrate that the more fear a person feels when viewing disturbing photos, the more likely they are to vote conservatively Republican. Would Republicans create imaginary threats to get votes?
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan let the cat out of the bag when he said, "Inflation is partly held in check by job insecurity." So, the Federal Reserve can keep inflation in check by raising interest rates, which raises unemployment and worker insecurity. However, if unremitting stress causes illness, which leads to higher healthcare costs, then we shouldn't allow healthcare costs to be a burden on taxpayers. Right? We should make the victims pay for their own healthcare or die without it.
And in a for-profit healthcare system with a pill as the treatment for every ill, it's more profitable to increase stress. Right? We don't need a safety net that would reduce stress and save lives. Our children with ADHD result from stress through their stressed, exhausted parents and are forced into educational penitentiaries where they are unable to learn.
It will work until people don't take it anymore. They succumb to homelessness and die prematurely, but it's alright as long as the one percent can continue to satisfy their hoarding disease.
Gloria, this is so interesting, and I see what you're saying. I'm still processing it... Your highlight of the hyper-vigilance response to erratic parenting is a spot-on connection. And then there's the deeper, more insidious concept that there's an incentive to these policies because they propagate poor health outcomes and a need for medication (i.e., profit for private corporations). Thank you for sharing.
Sorry to burden you with so much and in such a scrambled fashion, but you are the only one who responded to Thom's most insightful article. I was thinking on paper.
The outline should be that unremitting stress causes body changes that cause illness. In response to stress, the body attempts to store energy, which is stored as fat, eventually leading to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc. The decision-makers at the top intentionally induce stress through fear of unemployment, so the workers will be compliant, work for less income, and work in poor working conditions that allow more profits for the 1%. No safety net adds to the stress and, of course, the wealthy don't want to pay for that either.
The wealthiest don't want to pay for the consequences (an unhealthy population) of their artificially created, unnecessary stress, and even make more money because of it through the increasingly profitable healthcare and pharmaceutical systems.
Wall Street is now buying up the infrastructure of hospital systems.
After I replied to your comment, I looked up your profile and found that you are an outdoorsman and a writer. Both relieve stress, lol.
As you can tell from the way I try to communicate my thoughts, I am not a writer and most likely have ADHD. Two of my five children have the diagnosis. The genetic component as it relates to generational trauma and the discovery of alleles which allow DNA changes in a single generation is quite interesting as well as the decrease in longevity we are experiencing in the U.S. compared with more human friendly countries. Take care.