[lbo-talk] let's argue about the cause of mental illness

[Joanna]

Every summer I spend a week at a U.C. alumni-based family camp in the 
Sierras. My bridge partner there is a pediatrician who has worked at 
Kaiser in Redwood city for 30 years. I asked him about ADHD and whether 
it's more prevalent now than it used to be.

He said no, he didn't think so. He said he hated labels and that his 
sense of it was that before "civilization" it was probably a very good 
thing for any group to have a couple of ADHD members who were 
hypersensitive to stimuli and could alert the group to dangers invisible 
to others. The only problem is that when you put those people in 
over-stimulating environments and make them sit still for eight hours a 
day, it drives them crazy. That's what he said.

Joanna