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Antithesis: Mental health problems are (largely) due to harmful societal structures, from abusive relationships and the nuclear family all the way up to the nation state and capitalism itself, and should be treated by abolishing these structures. (Social model).

In a piece that’s very much giving stop buying avocado toast, Buzzfeed asks a financial planner for advice on how to get out of debt when you have ADHD.

Debt is framed simply as a result of “impulse spending”, and capital management expert Daniel DeWitt’s tips include things we’ve all been told a thousand times, like not using credit cards, cancelling subscriptions, and cutting back on that pesky expense, food.

It’s a classic American message of personal responsibility filtered through a diagnostic lens, the solution to economic hardship presented as learning better “self-management” skills to generate more wealth. I can’t help but think about the idea of false consciousness here — those structures or ideas that hide the real nature of a capitalist economy.

In this case, it’s the idea that a brain disorder is the cause of your money problems. The DSM is being used to obscure the real cause of economic hardship: exploitation.

Svend Brinkman has described diagnoses as “anchors” in a modern world that is constantly shifting and accelerating. They can be a kind of answer (see: the rock bottom to “it finally all makes sense!” trope in diagnosis stories), but they can also take all the politics out of our pain.

A biomedical view of ADHD explains economic hardship with a detached neurological lens that seems to exist somewhere outside of history. But debt isn’t caused by Bad With Money Disorder — it’s a tool of class warfare, and ADHD or not, we’re all being targeted.

i understand people have reasons for seeking a diagnosis formally, this is not about that. it's about the fact that even people who profess to love my work keep understanding autism through the lens of pathology and keep believing they need an authority figure to approve their identity, when all my work has been about disproving that idea.

It's super ableist and racist to claim that one substance is inherently morally superior to another. We are harm reductionists and substance neutral here. You as a Vyvanse user aren't any better than your neighbor who takes meth to be able to clean his house.

People who use substances in order to function have been demonized, arrested, stripped of agency, and treated as morally suspect for as long as the police state has existed. The people who advocate for incarcerating illegal drug users are coming for people with prescriptions too. It happened to people on opioid painkillers and abortion pill seekers and now it's happening to folks on ADHD meds and HRT.