Part II What is normal? The popularization of the term “adult ADHD” belies the conclusions of the medical research reviewed below. If this research had been as well publicized, we may not be having the present conversation. Here, I swim against the tsunami of “ADHD” hegemony. Valid diagnoses get lost …

Part I Attention deficit is what I consider to be one of the “sacred cows” of psychiatry along with Borderline Personality (discussed in another post). They are both misunderstood, overdiagnosed, and poorly validated especially in adults. Here I will focus on underpublicized, underappreciated, and forgotten clinical studies that have yet …

Here’s the Hard Part for Clinicians – How to recognize what is NOT a “major depressive disorder” It has been documented since Kraepelin’s classification in the early 20th century to the present, that up to 60% of all mood illness presentations are really “mixed states” or “mixed episodes” i.e., not …

“Melancholia is the beginning and part of mania…The development of mania is really a worsening of the disease (melancholia) rather than a change into another disease.” -Aretaeus of Cappadocia ca. 100 AD No, they are not the same. Kraepelin’s original unifying concept of recurrent depression plus what is now called …

The origin of science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance. ​ – William Hazlitt (1778? …

Understanding the historical development of the terms will shed some light onto the origin of the term ‘disorder.’ Robert Spitzer, MD was the guiding force behind the sea of change of the 1980 DSM-III.  Spitzer, initially trained in psychoanalysis as per the psychoanalytic hegemony in the mid-20th century, quickly decided …