This CULT, founded upon junk spiritualism, has the Fed and State Government teats to suck on.
Their reigning dogma is that 'Mental Disorders' are 100% Incurable.
My friggin sock drawer is "disordered". Does that mean Treating it becomes the Government and the Tax Payers Cross to Bear?
They have NO CURES for any of their 'Disorders'.
They NEED paperwork to bill the Treasury, which means they NEED an EXCUSE to commit massive Health Care Fraud.
So what they Do have to sell, All that they have to sell, is human Unhappiness/Disorder, tarted up as a Tax Funded, Ongoing Research Project.
These are situations where the recipients are given drugs, which cannot be quit cold turkey without serious psychological effects, and often cause those effects. Testing is minimal, and often the patients are the lab rats for the extended studies. SUicidal/homicidal ideations and even actions are not uncommon, and that was what the drugs were supposedly administered to remedy.
In short, if there is any way you can survive the events which make life tougher, without medication, do so. You will become stronger. Kids will push the envelope with behavioural boundaries, are naturally curious and will get into anything, and only need be told not to do something to take that as a challenge to their abilities. It's normal to find out their own limitations and capabilities. For parents, for teachers (the real boogeyman link in this), that disorder seems chaotic (and is) but it is ordinary enough if those behavioural limitations are imposed by discipline, and the curiosity is relieved under more controlled circumstances.
It is that same sense of curiosity, of pushing boundaries which has been inherent in the greatest innovators, scientists, and explorers, people who fell more than two standard deviations from the mean on the bell curve in some aspect, who did great things and made discoveries which we all benefit from (even if by being a good bad example). To quash that, to medicate it out of existence, it to bring human development to a halt.
LIFE is disorderly. If you think it isn't, that it can be regulated or contained to the degree that there is no disorder in your life, you are either wealthy enough that you can insulate yourself from the world (even that has limited success), or you are sadly deluded.
To desire to control the events and interactions around you to the extent that all is predictable, well, isn't normal, either, even though some days the thought may have appeal.
Whenever you attempt to impose order on an intensely multivariate system, (and every day of human existence is a multivariate event chain), it is exceedingly rare that some influence does not intrude on that system and cause imbalance, even deflection from original intent.
It might be a gnat or eyelash in your eye, inconsequential except for timing (trying to get to the right lane to exit the freeway in crazy traffic), the random actions of other humans, mechanical failures, power outages, a button popping off, weather-- pick something-- anything, and it can disrupt that semblance of order, even create dangerous chaos.
Sometimes you can take those lemons and make lemonade,sometimes, not.
I am leery of those who think they (smugly, no less) have everything under control, because they really don't. Not possible. Nor can they impose their desired order on that multivariate system any more than they can control the motions of the planets or the tides, which are far more orderly than any human's day.
For most of us, this is where our belief in an all powerful, all knowing, Creator comes in, giving us the ability to (sometimes, anyway) gracefully accept those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and move on, adapt to the changing situation, and get on with our day. Chaos is, to some degree, the norm, not an outlier, despite the best planning.
Which is why we have contingency plans, sometimes layers upon layers of them. The fewer 'plan B, C,D,E' ideas you have, the more stressful life is, because you feel you have only one shot to succeed, and the margin between success and failure is paper thin. So plan, play 'what if?' and come up with options or ways to avoid situations which leave none.
'The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray'/'No plan survives contact with the enemy'/'Murphy's Law'/'Theory works just fine--in theory, anyway', etc., all bespeak a reality well documented in our culture and those before it, that life is full of variables.
But, in kinship with the insanity of the environmentalists who think they can successfully preserve the dynamic systems of nature as a static display, there are those who think they can preserve human existence, (a dynamic, multivariate, event chain), as a static set of parameters, when to live thus is the real abnormal state.
What determines sanity versus insanity, as a practical matter, is the range of reactions to those random stimuli. Within certain levels that we consider 'normal' reactions, we consider people sane.
Significantly more or less animated responses are deemed outside the social norms, and 'insane' or 'troubled' or the thinnest of all 'at risk' (what isn't?), and those norms vary from culture to culture; there is no absolute which applies to the entire human race.
(For instance, in Western Culture, if my daughter is walking home alone and attacked and raped, I would give her all the support and love I could, and do what I could to bring her attackers to justice.
In other cultures, they would kill the daughter for bringing dishonor on her family (Islam).
The latter is outside the parameters we accept as sane in Western Culture.
So who should be allowed to define "normal", for whom, and what makes them the expert anyway?
If 'normal' is a statistic, how many people in any study group conform exactly, even closely with a statistic, which is derived from a range of values, no matter what is being measured?
In situations where the data cover behaviour, are we confusing 'normal' with what model the researcher is willing to accept?
Who says their parameters are correct for any individual or culture?--and why should we believe them?
Is putting abnormal chemicals in someone's system (they would not be there otherwise) a way to make them 'normal'?
That's what needs to be questioned.
Then, there is an enormous profit motive in pushing these substances, billions of dollars a year, and for that, there are those willing to deal with 'acceptable losses'. But a million children is hardly acceptable, and begs the fundamental question of how that many might 'need' such treatment, and especially why, and whether or not the 'problem' is just a symptom of a sick culture, and not sick children at all.
(Sorry I rambled, it's my off time and some jackass cold call telemarketer woke me calling from a spoofed number.)