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Comment by jacalata | Hacker News Reader

Something like 8% of men (~5% of population overall) are colorblind, do you object to calling that a disorder? If not, what's the cutoff: anything over 10%? Myopia is up to 30%, does that make it not a disorder?

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Clearly defining a psychological disorder is far more nuanced than colorblindness and myopia, and there is good reason to believe certain of them are diagnosed too frequently. We can acknowledge this without denying the existence of psychological disorders.

It becomes a disorder when it's detrimental to regular life. Many who have ADHD are incredibly frustrated at their apparently lack of willpower. It's not the rest of society pressuring them to come closer to the norm, they want to get themselves to the norm too. Perhaps it is overdiagnosed and overmedicated in some settings, (I realize you're trying to get conversation away from the more black and white physical conditions... myopia has always seemed a good analogy though, so I'm going to continue using it temporarily) but you wouldn't tell a shortsighted person that they're not that far off of the bell curve, just squint your eyes once in a while to make up for missing detail.

I was aware of this definition, and I have sympathy for those who are frustrated with some of their personality traits. Nevertheless, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that this frustration could arise because of circumstance, rather than as the result of some "organic" problem with the person. The idea is that it's more of a mismatch between the person and his or her environment, rather than a problem with one or the other.

I didn't suggest that it was easy or that it is always properly diagnosed, just that percentage of the population is possibly not a good metric to use for whether it's a disorder or not.

Understood. However, I think the commenter might have been making the point that we expect a certain degree of variability in personality traits, and that classifying such a large percentage of the population as having a disorder where the diagnostic criteria are somewhat vague makes him or her skeptical about the existence of the disorder. A person might also reasonably argue that hyperactivity and a broad attention span are advantageous in certain environments, just not the environments where we tend to educate children. Contrast this with myopia and colorblindness, where the diagnosis and disadvantages in every environment are unequivocal. I don't claim this myself, I just wanted to clarify a possible point of difference.

Is it a disorder to have no hearing? Too have so much hearing that your neighbors keep you up at night?

Is being very short a disorder? Being very tall? Having short legs with long arms?

'Disorder' will always be a nebulous concept because it's an abstraction that encapsulates a dissatisfaction with the fitness of a person's psychological complexion in the context of the person's environment. Hyperactivity and a short attention span might be a disorder for a student who must focus deeply on a single concept, but an advantage for a hunter-gatherer who must integrate a large number of shallow ideas simultaneously. Thus I will humbly refrain from taking a strong stance on your questions; I can imagine situations in which each would be advantageous and in others the opposite.

It'd be just a trait. You can have better vision than 20/20, does that make 20/20 vision a disorder? Truth is some people have below average ability to focus on far objects, but to go outright saying there's something wrong with their eyes or minds, I think is getting one or two steps beyond truth.

> Truth is some people have below average ability to focus on far objects, but to go outright saying there's something wrong with their eyes or minds

Well yes... that's why we have glasses.

People use sunscreen in the sun, take anti-ageing medicine, go bush walking with walking sticks, too.

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