In the UK, it is estimated that 10,000,000 individuals are “neurodivergent”, that’s around 1 in 7 people, and that diagnostic rates are woefully insufficient and reflect an inherent sexism in medicine with a massive under-diagnosis in women, according to some researchers.
Campaigners demand more action is taken and more clinical services and diagnosticians are made available. It is often portrayed as a national crisis/disgrace.
There are invariably unintended consequences to what appears to be well-intended action. As with so many psychiatric labels, there is an ever-increasing watering-down of what constitutes “neurodivergence,”, and when everyone is divergent, no one is divergent. The limited mental health resources are overwhelmed to the degree that those who suffer the most must share equal services with those that suffer the least.
20 years ago the population resisted psychiatric labelling, diagnosis and categorisation. Now the population demands it.
I can’t help but think a child is lucky these days if he makes it to adulthood without a label/diagnosis and psychiatric medication.
The mass medication and psychiatric adjustment of society campaigned against so vociferously by the anti-psychiatry movement and groups like the Radical Therapy Collective has come to fruition.
Ironically, self-acceptance today appears to require a multitude of labels, and all too often, a variety of psychiatric medications, and “therapists” once opposed to the intrusion of psychiatry into everyday life now welcome and encourage it.