None Dare Call it Acting Out

Recent headline (November 11, 2010) in the Memphis Commercial Appeal newpaper:  "Survey: 1 in 10 U.S. children has ADHD."  One in ten.  Imagine that!  "Biological" psychiatrists believe that ADHD is a genetic and/or neurodevelopmental disorder.  I can't think of any other such disorder that effects 10% of the entire population.

The survey was performed by the U.S. Goverment.  According to the newspaper article, this represents a "sizable increase from a few years earlier that might be explained by growing awareness and better screening."  Specifically, the number represents an increase of 22% from 2003 to 2007.  The actual numbers of affected kids would be 5.4 million children - an increase of about one million in that period of time. Two thirds of the children were on medication.

Of course, the study seemed to just assume that the diagnoses were all valid.  Surely there are more parents aware of ADHD than ever before, so the "increased awareness" part of the story is undoubtedly true. 

The statistics for the "incidence" of childhood bipolar disorder (also called pediatric bipolar) are even more striking.  Prescriptions for powerful psychiatric drugs to young children for this disorder quintupled in less than four years.  The graph below shows the amazing increase in private office visits for bipolar disorder in children under twenty. 

Source: Pharmed Out

Of course, real bipolar disorder often first manifests in sufferer's late teens, and rarely occurs in children - as reflected in the number of office visits shown in '94-95, before pediatric bipolar diagnosis became a fad.  For decades, the incidence of bipolar disorder was pegged at about 1%, but now suddenly it is almost 5%.  This figure includes many who are diagnosed as "bipolar II" or "bipolar NOS" (see my post of July 24, 2010, Counting Symptoms that Don't Count for a discussion of how the designation NOS has been misused in defining bipolar disorder).

The dramatic increase in diagnosis of both ADHD and pediatric bipolar (without any change in the gene pool) is more strong evidence for the main thesis of my book, How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders.  An upspoken and unholy alliance between pharmaceutical companies, biological psychiatrists, and overwhelmed and guilty parents has led to the disappearance in many mental health circles of the use of the term acting out in children in favor of a brain disease model for out-of-control children. 

As defined by Psychcentral.com, acting out is performing an extreme behavior in order to express thoughts or feelings the person feels incapable of otherwise expressing. Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts out may instead throw a book at the person, or punch a hole through a wall. When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and often helps the individual feel calmer and peaceful once again. For instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of acting out when he or she doesn’t get his or her way with a parent. Self-injury may also be a form of acting-out, expressing in physical pain what one cannot stand to feel emotionally.

Heaven forbid we should look at the problematic parenting trends described in detail by parenting columnist John Rosemond or the staggering incidence of child abuse and neglect in creating acting out.  How much more comforting for parents to think they bear no responsibility for how their children turn out.

Do We Have Free Will?

A recent headline in the Psychiatric News (6/18/10) proclaimed, "Imaging Studies May Someday Help Predict Behavior."  Sounds a little scary, no?  They are talking about a form of mind reading using brain scan technology.  1984, albeit at least 26 years behind schedule.  Actually, when you read the article, it sounds like about the best that police and military interrogators might be able to obtain at some point in the future is a relatively fool-proof lie detector.

It seems a German neuroscientist (A German!) named John Dylan-Haynes has been seeking to "observe the point at which a subject has made a decision" about a simple sensory-motor exercize but "before he or she is aware of it."  The tasks about which decisions are made are of no emotional significance to the subjects.  Using brain scan technology, and with some people, he has been able to predict the decisions the subject makes up to a whole seven seconds before the subject acts.  He admits he may just be seeing the person's bias or tendency rather than a full blown decision.  Plus everyone's brain reacts slightly differently.  It seems highly unlikely to me that scientists will ever break the full minute barrier in the crystal ball department.

Besides, if the experimenter and the subject were both made aware of the brain scan finding at the same time, seven seconds should be more than enough time for the subject to change his or her mind and do the opposite of the original plan.  I think we can be safe from the fear that the government will be able to predict exactly what we are going to do before we do it any time soon.  That is something only seen in Tom Cruise movies like Minority Report, and we know what an expert in psychiatry he is.

Still, psychological determinists who don't seem to believe that we have any real free will or choice in how we behave have had a lot of traction in the field.  On the one hand are radical behaviorists like B.F. Skinner and radical family systems theorists who believe we are nothing more than billiard balls on the pool table of life.  This type of behaviorist thinks we are entirely pawns of environmental rewards and punishments, while family systems extremists believe we are at the mercy of collectivist mandates from large social groups.

Of course, if these folks were right, then their theories were not the result of any objective scientific observations or well-reasoned thinking they may have done. They would have come by their theory because they were rewarded for thinking this way, or because they were mindlessly adopting a family myth. In that case, their theories could easily be wrong, so we should not believe them anyways.

On the other hand, radical "biological" psychiatrists believe we are completely at the mercy of our genetic makeup and must do what our genes dictate we do.  Any real neurobiologist worth his salt knows, however, that the idea that a gene or group of genes can code for specific complex behavior patterns is utter nonsense.  If we did not have the inherent capacity to quickly adapt to environmental contingencies, our species would have been killed off long ago.

Since the radical gene freaks know they are on shaky ground, they are now usually willing to admit that environmental factors do play at least some role in determining future behavior.  They have now endorsed what I'd like to refer to as the radical middle ground.

In my post of March 2010, The Heritability Fraud, I explained how so-called biological psychiatrists misuse twin studies to try to determine how much of a psychiatric disorder is created by genetics, how much is created by the "shared" home environment (as if siblings are all treated exactly the same by their families), and how much is created by "unshared" environmental influences as seen in identical twins raised apart. In the studies, the prevalence rates of disorders are compared in identical and fraternal twins raised together and raised apart.  Another fraudulant way that the statistic is used is that the study reporters just assume that the disorders in question are 100% determined by these three factors. 

How this leaves free will out of the equation can be readily appreciated by looking at heritability studies done on specific behaviors like school truancy rather than on entire disorders.  Again, the three factors are just assumed to add up to 100%.  The percent of these behaviors that are caused in heritability studies by personal decisions, thinking, anticipating potential outcomes or rewards and planning accordingly?  ZERO percent.  By this reasoning, the designer of the studies must not have used any reasoning in figuring out how to do heritability studies.  Even the guy who did the very first one.  Well, come to think of it, maybe that is true in the case of people who do heritability studies.

I guess I like to think that I have free will. I just don't know about you.