Do We Need a New Psychiatric Diagnosis for Sluggishness?
An ADHD-adjacent condition deserves attention, but maybe we should take a slow approach
Professional medical organizations currently define a few hundred different psychiatric conditions. Yet researchers are pushing for the addition of one more.
Four decades ago, astute researchers recognized that some people who appeared to have symptoms of inattentive ADHD displayed a distinct subset of symptoms. These dreamy, docile, withdrawn kids thought and spoke slowly. Psychologists labeled their condition Sluggish Cognitive Tempo. More recently, they renamed this collection of symptoms as Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (CDS), to more accurately describe the core element of the condition, but also to provide a more palatable label for potential patients.
We make diagnoses, in psychiatry as in the rest of medicine, to help understand a condition, to provide general predictions, and to guide the selection of treatments that are likely to provide relief.
How well does Cognitive Dissociative Syndrome fit those criteria?
Cognitive dissociative syndrome
For 40 years, psychologist Russell Barkley, one of the most respected researchers in the field of ADHD…
