Why Anti-Authoritarians Are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

This comment below the article triggered something deep inside me: "So a 7 year old who refuses to read or practice reading is healthy anti-authority individual?". Let me tell you that when I was a kid I loved to read, I read voraciously everything I could find, and I did because nobody made me do it. I can assure you that if a teacher had sat me down and forced me to read something boring at that young age, I…

The whole concept of authority fascinates me. I've had a lot of troubles with this, although I'm not disobedient at all. In fact I'm kind of a goody-two-shoes, am eager to please, and often wish I were bolder and more concerned with my own agenda. Yet I've been told multiple times in the past five years that I'm undermining authority. By both management and peers. (Sometimes admiringly, by colleagues who think I'm the only person who isn't subject to the…

I have a 13-year-old brother with ODD. And let me tell you, there is more to it than a healthy does of anti-authoritarianism. We adopted my brother when he was 15 months old, and in his first year of life we suspect he was frequently neglected, leading to attachment issues. Basically, when an infant's needs are not met, they get distressed, and the more often this occurs, the more those neurological pathways become ingrained in their brains. Which means that…

Treatment (medication specifically, but other invasive procedures exist) still leaves the patients worse off than whatever “symptoms” they were experiencing. The only difference is that the modern techniques are superficially more humane than the history of gruesome surgical interventions. Of course, the only opinions and interests that truly matter in these events are the people who are involved with the patient, not the patient. The patients opinions have already been adjudicated defective and are therefore…