In a New York Times Op-Ed entitled “Diagnosis: Human”, written a few years ago but still pertinent, author Ted Gup responds to an article about how large numbers of our children are being medicated by physicians and, especially, psychiatrists. In his beautifully crafted commentary, Gup recounts how he jumped on the medication bandwagon regarding his young son’s behavior which, he says, in another day and age would have been labeled “rambunctious”. This grieving father believes that early medications for “ADHD” sent a destructive message to his son who was found dead of an overdose at his college dorm. The young man was 21 years old. This is a poignant, revealing story about the culture we inhabit. It’s a serious indictment of contemporary psychiatry, from someone who paid a severe price for his compliance to this narrow view of what it means to be human:
