Sunday, March 18, 2012


Now I am just copying an dpasting things :) No time to really blog but really want to share. But does any body still read this thing?? Probably not, so more like I really want to preserve....

A psychiatrist tells the truth -- it's OK not to be 'normal'

By Dr. Dale Archer




The American Psychiatric Association invented the term "ADHD" in 1980 to give kids with hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span and easy distractibility a diagnosis.


William Evans, Ph.D., with the Journal of Health Economics found that a huge predictor for the diagnosis of ADHD was the age of the child with respect to their grade. In other words, younger children in a given grade, have more ADHD symptoms than older ones. No surprise there- younger kids clearly are more restless and less able to concentrate on a topic, or sit quietly in a classroom all day long. According to his research, “approximately 1.1 million children received an inappropriate diagnosis and over 800,000 received stimulant medication due only to relative maturity."

Let me quickly point out that I’m not opposed to medication to treat those with severe symptoms, but does 1 out of every 12 kids really have ADHD?

I wish this was just about ADHD, but that’s just what I’ve chosen to illustrate my point. I could have chosen bipolar disorder, OCD, generalized anxiety, social anxiety or many others because this is about the over-diagnosing, over-treating and over-medicating of psychiatric problems throughout America The first psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-I, in 1952 had 106 disorders listed. The revised DSM- IV in 2000 had 365!


The only word for that is “ludicrous.”

A disorder of any kind is by definition something wrong, screwed up, malfunctioning. A mental disorder is an irregularity in the functioning of the brain. If the brains of one quarter of the U.S. population are disordered then something is very, very wrong with the human mind.

Or with our mental health system.

In a Wired magazine interview in January 2011, Allen Frances (lead editor of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental disorders –IV) blamed the DSM- IV itself. “We made mistakes that had terrible consequences,” says Frances. One of these consequences, the article notes, is that diagnoses of ADHD have skyrocketed. Greenberg writes: “Frances thinks his manual inadvertently facilitated these epidemics— and, in the bargain, fostered an increasing tendency to chalk up life’s difficulties to mental illness and then treat them with psychiatric drugs.”



My profession has not only redefined mental health by over-diagnosing and over-medicating an ever-expanding number of diagnoses, we are also taking away the hope of human nature by telling our patients that they are inherently "abnormal" and need to be fixed.

The psychiatrist’s office has gone from being the place no one would be caught dead the place where a pill could fix anything. And psychiatry itself has gone from being stigmatized to glamorized.


On a scale of 1 to10, what separates an ADHD 7 from an ADHD 10? Who gets medicated…..and why? How could one person use a set of "symptoms" as a springboard for success while another with the exact same symptoms needs meds and therapy? How are CEOs like Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines), John Chambers (Cisco), and Charles Schwab able to parlay their ADHD into tremendously successful careers, while others are searching for a magic pill and a cure?

David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue has said that if he found a magic pill to make his ADHD go away, he wouldn’t take it. Creativity and innovation are hallmarks of those with ADHD. When a child first presents with symptoms, why aren’t we telling them that they are 3 times more likely to form their own business, will thrive in disruptive situations, will embrace adventure and are adept at multitasking, as opposed to giving them a diagnosis and a pill?

We must stop thinking about how to give the “patient” what they think they want and start taking a look at what's good about what they have.

We must empower individuals to think it's ok to be "not normal" and change the mindset that everything can be "fixed" with a pill or a few therapy sessions.


It's time for a new order of business in mental health, based on the premise that when you try to conform to a perceived "normal," you lose your uniqueness—which is the foundation for your greatness.

Dr. Dale Archer is a psychiatrist and frequent guest on " Live." He is the author of the new bestselling book "Better Than Normal: How What Makes You Different Can Make You Exceptional"For more, visit his website:

Friday, March 9, 2012

No Carpe DIem

My mom send me this and I FINALLY just got a chance to read it. I LOVE it. So much that I woke my sleeping blog to share. Josh and I stayed up til 2 am talking last night. Me mostly crying. Feeling like I am the worst mother. Feeling like I should be enjoying this more. I told him, "I LOVE my children. But sometimes I really don't like them." I want to not yell at them. I want to not be frustrated with them. I want to love every minute. But I don't. After reading this I thought, hey maybe that's ok. I glad I had a moment to read this today, especially after a tearry night with the exact same thoughts. Here is the link, but I'm pasting the entire article here in case some day the webpage disappears into cyber space. I want to archive it forever :)










That's not exactly what I wanted to say, though.










Here's what does work for me:








Carpe a couple of Kairoses a day.

Good enough for me.