Avoid over pathologizing human emotions A concerning trend is the over pathologization of normal human emotions in children, with many being diagnosed with conditions like ADHD, oppositional defiance disorder, or being placed on the autism spectrum. This leads to a whole generation being convinced that they are unwell and behaving accordingly. There is a risk of introducing new symptoms and exacerbating existing ones, like turning normal sadness into depression and normal worry into anxiety. This trend not only medicalizes common emotions but also influences how young people perceive and describe their emotional states, where minor concerns now tend to be equated to severe mental health issues. Transcript: Speaker 1 So what mental health diagnoses do they use? Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, mental health diagnosis. That means a shocking number of little boys have been diagnosed with ADHD or oppositional defiance disorder. If they can’t sit in their seat or they’re yelling back at a teacher, they have oppositional defiance disorder. A shocking number of girls now have an ADHD diagnosis. They’re diagnosing all kinds of kids is on the spectrum or having anxiety or having to, now do some of these kids are, there’s no question a lot of these kids are sad and a lot of them are Lonely and a lot of them are anxious. But we are psychopathologizing a whole generation and convincing them that they are unwell, so they are behaving like they are unwell. Right. Speaker 2 Okay. So it seems like at least the father’s two problems that you’ve got. One being this over medicalization or pathologization of human emotions, some of which get into things like trauma, depression, anxiety, but others are just feeling sad or down or Lonely or fearful. Like that’s not necessarily something that the DSM would find, but it’s this concept creep. And then the other side of this is the treatments that are coming through and the way that people are dealing with that. Is that a fair characterization? Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 We are introducing new symptoms and making existing symptoms worse. Okay. So normal sadness becomes depression. Normal worry becomes anxiety. Nobody, no young people even use the word worry anymore. It’s all or nervous. It’s all I have anxiety. (Time 0:06:14)