I know this doesnt really have a whole lot to do with New Zealand Music - but this is the Bar so hey...
Anyway, while I was sitting here mindlessly allocating invoices at my dead-end creatively repressing job, my boss struck up the conversation about sydromes - such as A.D.D. At first I sat there ignoring him and his meaningless dribble until he actually started at anger me. He was claiming that sydromes are nothing but an excuse to label your bad personality traits and that people do it to slack off and bum out. Now in saying this - not only did he make my feelings toward him increasingly worse but he also made me wonder how many more insensitive people felt this way toward people who are "blessed" to be born with chemical/hormonal inbalances in their brains? Now I do understand that in some places *cough* America *cough*, these sydrome are often passed around freely and kids with learning disabilities are quickly becoming labeled with an attention disorder, but in all fairness, who here does consider these sydromes an illness? Or who sides with my wanker pig-fucker of a boss and thinks that they are solely doing it out of laziness?
Just interested....
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Technorati
Oh and one more little note of ...
Oh and one more little note of happiness - he feels the same about girls/boys that suffer from anorexia/bulima - that they only do for the sake of getting attention which may be a viable arguement - but he thinks that it has nothing to do with any sort of phycoloigal problem, that they could stop any time they wanted to - just that they are selfish and want people to take notice of them.
god i hate him....
Syndrome:- a group of signs and ...
Syndrome:- a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular abnormality
For example Downs Syndrome or Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome. Both very real and not just an excuse for slacking off ...
Most syndromes are well documented and while some may not really be an illness as such (carpal tunnel syndrome is a result of overuse for example) they are generally very real and often debilitating.
I would say that your boss is quite wrong in his "definition" of syndromes. That is not to say however that there are not people who try it on. I have seen co-workers claim that they have OOS. Crap! Overuse implies that you have actually used the muscles etc to do something. And there are people who claim to have Chronic Fatique Syndrome when all they are is lazy. But for the most part these syndromes are well recognized conditions that are readily diagnosed.
I have a friend with CFS, and she gets ...
I have a friend with CFS, and she gets told she's lazy all the time. She goes through stages when she can't have a shower and make herself a snack without being exhausted at the end of it. She needs an entire day to recover from a trip to the doctor.
The biggest problem with syndromes lies with the definition (as given by Big_Stu) - they are defined by the symptoms, not by cause. Some syndromes have a guaranteed indicator - like Downs Syndrome and AIDS, but some don't - ME/CFS, and ADD for example.
A big problem my friend has had was that doctors were hesitant to diagnose her with CFS. It's acknowledged as a genuine condition, but there's nothing you can point to that will show the difference between actual CFS and (for example) some random psychological condition.
ADD leans the opposite way - I think it's pretty well agreed that a lot of children diagnosed with ADD just have too much sugar in their diets. Ultimately this results in a backlash of opinion regarding the validity of ADD as a genuine condition.
Bummer.
Oh, and I resent people with that whole ...
Oh, and I resent people with that whole 'harden up, poofter' attitude towards psychological conditions such as anorexia and depression. I suffered from depression between 19 and 22. I even had that attitude towards myself - that I was just being a whinging self-centred little wimp.
The best illustration I think I can give is about nail biting. I'd bitten my nails since I had nails to bite; My mum would tell me off for biting my nails, my piano teacher would rap my knuckles; I'd tried to stop many times, but I never could. One day when I was 24 (twenty-four!), I realised that my nails had gotten quite long, something that I'd never noticed before. I cut them. Three weeks later they'd gotten really long again. For some reason, I'd stopped biting my nails. I still have no idea what it was that caused me to bite my nails, although it was around I'd finished tackling some personal issues in my life, and the time my moods had started levelling out.
Anyway, my point is that you can't just tell an anorexic person to 'just eat up' or a depressed person to 'look at the bright side'. You have to find the root cause of these conditions, otherwise they'll never go away. If it's a psychological cause, it takes a hell of a lot of stress and anguish to find and remedy the problem, and I admire anyone who has gone through that and come out the other side. If it's a physical cause, obviously noone can say that it's all in their head.
I've recently been diagnosed with CFS, ...
I've recently been diagnosed with CFS, though I'm nowhere near as sick as your friend. I found a doctor who was pretty switched on about it, if you friend is still looking for someone who knows what's up I can give you the doctor's details.
Awww, thanks Anthony, but my friend's ...
Awww, thanks Anthony, but my friend's in the UK. Not only does she have to live with the condition, but she also has the added joy of living in London and grappling with the NHS on a regular basis.
Oh well. Hope it picks up for her....
Oh well. Hope it picks up for her.
Hope it picks up for you, man. I'm ...
Hope it picks up for you, man. I'm glad you found a worthy doctor.
Cheers, slow but sure wins the race, ...
Cheers, slow but sure wins the race, you know?
In regards to Chronic Fatigue, I have ...
In regards to Chronic Fatigue, I have been seeing a specialist who deals in undiagnosed illnesses and CF. He said a little while ago, a NZ woman found that CF sufferers have a different shaped type of blood cell then those without. So...it is a large step closer to finding a type of drug treatment for it.
//Ultimately this results in a backlash ...
//Ultimately this results in a backlash of opinion regarding the validity of ADD as a genuine condition.
Well, I'd consider myself in an interesting position to comment on this. As a child, I was repeatedly diagnosed with ADD. Now, this was over 20 years ago, before kids were raised on sugar pops and playstation. I was evaluated at the ages of 4, 6, 12, 17, and 23, and each time I was told I had classic ADD (which is different than ADHD, and much different than the symptoms which define ADD today). Each of the times I was evaluated as a child, the doctors recommended medication. My mother always said, "There will be no medication until she's old enough to decide for herself."
My mother was a damn saint. I was a handful, to say the least, but my mum did her best. There was no sort of behavior modification therapy available (and still isn't to this day), and so we simply tried things. My mum and I soon found that if my hands were kept busy, then my incredibly random and sporadic mind could stay on track; thus I learned to knit and fold paper at a very young age. Teachers, however, didn't understand. Many times in class I was reprimanded for not paying attention, and at seven years old I'd have to explain that the pile of paper monkeys I'd made was actually _helping_ me to concentrate. So I gained a reputation for being full of sshit.
When I got older, and was able to decide for myself, I still decided against medication. I became a smoker. It kept my hands busy, and it kept me seated and on task as I started to become a writer. (That was one of the biggest obstacles to quitting smoking... would I still be able to concentrate without it?)
College was difficult with ADD. Most people grow out of it by 17, and so it's generally seen as a children's disorder. Only about 7% of people with classic ADD retain it through adulthood. But at the University is where I first began to actually study my disorder. I began looking through medical and psychological journals and reading professional studies.
What I found was that ADD hadn't been studied much. The treatment trend really seemed to be "medication or nothing," and since I didn't want to be medicated, I stuck with what little I'd worked out for myself.
Then I became a teacher. I had 180 students, all 13-14. Now, when I was a kid, I was the only ADD kid in my class. Now, fifteen years or so later, I had 26 out of 180 that were being medicated, and 11 who'd been diagnosed but their parents had chosen not to medicate. Of these 37 students who'd been told by medical professionals that they had a 'disorder' and should be put on drugs, only ONE OF THEM exhibited the same symptoms as me, symptoms of classic ADD. The rest were all just little shits with behavioral problems.
I really think that society is training people to have short attention spans these days. Yes, there are people like myself whose brains are actually constructed differently and function in a different way, but most kids today are just being conditioned by television and a lack of parental input, and an excess of sugary input.
//most kids today Wow. That just ...
//most kids today
Wow. That just made me sound really old.
//Wow. That just made me sound really ...
//Wow. That just made me sound really old.
No, not really old. Just realistic.
And it is nice to see someone who has had to put up with these so-called ADD kids acknowledge that in many cases they are just badly behaved children who are more than likely suffering from a lack of discipline and parental attention. For the last six or seven years my wife has worked as a teacher-aide in a local school and as a child care worker in a private day-care centre. As a teacher-adie she worked with "special needs" kids. In some cases the kids had genuine problems as a result of some verifiable cause. But in many cases the kids had "behavourial problems" and the teachers simply couldn't cope with them along with teaching the rest of the class. All of these kids simply fell into the little shit category ... they lacked any sort of personal discipline. I cannot comment directly on the causes of this, because I simply do not have all the facts. But I have a sneaking suspicion that in most cases this lack of discipline stems from the circumstances in the home rather than any deep seated psychological issues.
yeah definaitely - as I said in one of ...
yeah definaitely - as I said in one of my posts above, they are just handing out ADD as an excuse for anything these days, just so they can file them through, label the problem and shoot them out with a bottle of pills at 5...which completely takes away the sincerity of those who actually suffer.
I watched an episode of Oprah once which documented children in America who had been diagnosed with ADD. These kids, as young as 4, were being prescribed chemical/hormonal repressing drugs because some jack ass in a white coat had decided that because these children were "hyper-active" or acting out, that they were suffering with ADD. Now it wasn't until these children had become anti-social, aggressive and depressed and with the help of everyones favourite talk show host Oprah, the parents decided to get a second opinion. They found that at least half of the children that had been attending school, were suffering from nothing other than learning disabilities, but instead of moving the kid in a reading programme they had children of seven living their life in a semi-coma like state, depressed and completely withdrawlded.
But good on you for finding your own way to at least keep it at bay. One of the girls I work with suffered from CFS when she was 13-14, couldnt even go to the loo without feeling exhausted. She soon weighed 34 kgs and didnt have enough strength to cough, but her parents refused drugs and fought with her and even though it was hard for both of them but they over came it just through exercising - the one thing which she couldnt do. But they pushed her to her absolute limits and now shes fitting fit, shes still blimmin' tiny - little mouse - but she plays sports like three times a week now...she gets tired if she parties too hard out for like three days in a row, but she over came it.
Drugs are completely over rated and power of the mind is under rated.
I think a ban of all drugs and medication should take place and we should all have compulsary (paid for) mind enhancement and yoga classes.........but Im just a damn hippy.
I've meet alot of people in various ...
I've meet alot of people in various hospitals with different syndromes, and it's terrible the slack they get from not having an "illness." I knew a girl with Tourette Syndrome and she got hell for it.
Sure, some people do self diagnose or have a group of symptoms like big_stu said that they think shows an abnormality where in fact it doesn't, but the majority of people with some sort of "syndrome" are not lazy or slow-they have a genuine problem.
Your boss sounds like a wanker to me.
ADD is a different story though, I ...
ADD is a different story though, I agree with Heather- //alot of children diagnosed with ADD just have too much sugar in their diets.// Doctors are too quick to give a name or diagnosis to an underlying problem and are happy to hand out pills to get the patients the hell out of their office.
I have seen numerous specialists on the last year and a bit and all but 3 have wanted to give my chest pains, bouts of unconciousness, fainting, numbness etc a name-and all because they don't want anything else to do with me. They figure as soon as you have a diagnosis then you'll quit harassing them.
Undiagnosed illness's are similar to syndromes in a way, that people can't understand them. People think if it hasn't got a name, or if it's just a group of symptoms that it isn't there. That's obviously not true, with my illness for example, I have had eeg and ecg readings that assure the doctors that my heart is fucked up and my brain wave patterns are a bit screwed.-It's there, it's just not named.
oh he is.....a big one...
oh he is.....a big one
I'd agree with that....
I'd agree with that.
Syndromes/illnesses/disorders with ...
Syndromes/illnesses/disorders with unverfiable causes are always going to be a hassle, as touched on earlier.
This is because
1. It can be hard to tell whether they really exist (e.g., Multiple Personality Disorder -- almost all cases are in switzerland and the US, and the bulk are diagnosed by very small subset of psychiatrists).
2. Even if they really exist, does a person actually have it.
3. Different professionals vary in the extent to which they believe it exists/is prevalent (e.g., I believe there was a doctor in a certain small south island town who had a large proportion of the town on ritalin)
4. People vary in the amount to which they want to have a label. For example, a friend of mine much rather wanted to have CFS than be depressed ...
If I had ADD as a youngster my mother ...
If I had ADD as a youngster my mother would just beat that shit out of me until I calmed down with the attitude. I remember being a bad ass as a kid, but I remember being smacked around like a pinata and then one day I wasn't a bad boy doing all these naughty things... I just snapped out of it.
If a doctor tried to convince my mother that I needed drugs for ADD, she'll beat the shit out of him too...
[ external link ]