How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

[Guest guest]

Big pharma has some new customers. Not complying with authority is

now, in many cases, labeled a disease.

 

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet

Posted on January 28, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/75081/

 

For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against

authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental

illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.

 

Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and

other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them " care

less " about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions,

thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical

antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing

drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans,

even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic

symptoms.

 

Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional

defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an

official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for

children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new

term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.

 

Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing

illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness

called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric

Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it

as " a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior. " The

official symptoms of ODD include " often actively defies or refuses to

comply with adult requests or rules " and " often argues with adults. "

While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't

respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet

many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.

 

An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt

defiance is some type of passive defiance.

 

John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive

strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on

plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out

that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still

satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity " by putting on a

mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are,

by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and

ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved

bodies. "

 

Holt observed that by " going stupid " in a classroom, children

frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and

creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some

sense of potency.

 

Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease

explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay

attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In

other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in

control, the " disease " goes away.

 

There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been

medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people

who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse,

depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their " symptoms "

had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive

environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric

survivors.

 

While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and

emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is

one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental

health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health

professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to

authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and

achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless

hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional

compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant

M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these

doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive

compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing

normal human reactions.

 

Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize

it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era

that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S.

governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American

psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized

anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a

centralized federal authority as having an " excess of the passion for

liberty " that " constituted a form of insanity. " He labeled this

illness " anarchia. "

 

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to

authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans

Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright

reported his discovery of " drapetomania, " the disease that caused

slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of

" dysaesthesia aethiopis, " the disease that caused slaves to pay

insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD

and ADHD?

 

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was

drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's

lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a

powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

 

In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be

the " bohemian bourgeois " who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books,

music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine

anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that

they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these

genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that

inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a

Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the

state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism,

pathologizes it, markets drugs to " cure " it and financially

intimidates those who might buck the system.

 

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an

authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse,

Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster

with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill

pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?

 

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of

Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy,

and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green, 2007).