Neurodiversity Series: Are we dealing with disorders the wrong way?
Part 1 of my Neurodiversity Series
From burning people at the stake or putting them in mental hospitals, to medicating them in order to control the traits of their diagnosed condition, and to make them conform to societal norms; why are we so scared of neurodiversity?
Before you get the wrong idea, let me start off by saying: I’m not anti-modern-medicine. I’m not saying we should throw the DSM-5 out the window, take pills away from epileptic people or take antidepressants off of suicidal people. What I am against is how far we haven’t come in the last 2,000 years. Anti-categorising-every-personality-quirk-as-a-medical-condition, I guess you could call me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Modern medicine has come a long, long way. We can stop people having deadly seizures, when we couldn’t have imagined that before. We can stop diseases and treat conditions which used to be death sentences, and that’s amazing. But with each step forward that we’ve taken in one direction, there’s an equal and opposite lack of progress in another. For every advancement we have made in treating physical conditions, every advancement we have made in medical research and treatment of neurological conditions, we have taken a step back — or perhaps remained stationary — in mental and…
