Category: Health and Wellness
Awhile ago, I heard that ADHD is now considered a disability. This honestly bugs the hell out of me. A disability is something that can't be cured, at least not yet. By definition, a disability is something that affects every aspect of your life, both physically and emotionally. Now how do mental illnesses fall into this category?
These problems can be treated with medications, counseling, or both. In time, the prognosis for most of these people is good. Even when people suffering from depression, ADHD etc. are at their lowest functioning, they can still blend in with society without too much difficulty. Now, I do see how schizophrenia and some personality disorders could be exceptions, but even so, people are more apt to fear and judge people like that rather than pity them, which is the case with blindness, paralysis etc.
Getting back to treatments, things like blindness can't be cured. We have to live with this until some medical breakthrough happens, which could be soon, or not depending on the specific conditions, but the point is that it's downright insulting to be compared with someone who just might need a mood stabilizer to correct a chemical imbalance.
As a person who has suffered from depression for most of my life, I am in no way downplaying the seriousness of mental illness. however I really don't think it's right that a person who can blend in normally with society, whose affliction isn't noticeable at all to people just walking by on the street, is not entitled to sport the label of disability. In fact, do they really want to? Mental illness in itself carries a lot of stigma. Would it really even be helpful to place yet another highly feared label on it? I think that a disability is usually visible, and has many effects on a person's life that can be devastating without the proper support. So what do you guys think?
I think to qualify mental illness as a disability to exempt someone from doing some sort of work is not only insulting to the rest of us, but not doing that person any favors. How are the mentally ill being helped by staying home being stuck in their problems and not being productive at all? Where I live it seems so easy to get disability checks based on "mental illness", yet a man I know who suffered a brain injury in an accident at his gym had to provide detailed documentation to get his short term disability check that week.
I personally know a woman whose "disability" that gets her a HUGE pension from your tax dollars and mine...the United States Postal Service, her former employer...is alcoholism and aversion to authority. ?!?!?! She hasn't been drinking in awhile. While she doesn't look very hygienic...dirty nails and no bottom teeth...there should be some kind of work she could do. This woman actually has money on her pension to keep and pay for boarding for a horse that she never rides in New Hampshire.
I knew another whose "disability" from the local cable company was mental fallout from a very passive aggressive divorce. Evidently she suffered panic attacks for a time and couldn't drive very far because of it. Mental illness is treatable, and how is she being helped by staying home?! She also takes meds I know average overweight baby boomer Americans take, for example high blood pressure med. Maybe if she quit smoking she wouldn't need these? Anyway there are plenty of people who need regular meds and they still go to work.
An online pal I haven't seen in awhile was once married to a Massachusetts native who claimed disability for, get this, migraines. I get migraines, I still go to work. I don't know why I'm surprised by these examples, it seems MA has gone from being a place of Puritan work ethic to one where people scramble, hustle, con to get any handout they can. They seem to want to live like people once did in Castro's Cuba, even getting vouchers for food when they can clearly afford more luxury items, but that's another subject.
I don't believe people should get more than short term, temporary leave disability for mental illness, and any doctor who would approve a long term claim for such a claim, except maybe for schizophrenia...one of these meds you either have to be 1) wealthy, or 2) qualify for Medicaid to even get. I can understand that, but alcoholism? Anxiety following a divorce? ADHD? A big negatory good buddy to longterm disabilty claims for those...