> I don't believe in cancer. Leukaemia can't be a real disease, because it's just the blood not working the way it should. Likewise, diabetics are concerned about their weight and people with nut allergies are just finding excuses for not liking them.
> [snip]
> Depression and ADD *are* chemical imbalances in the brain, and there are drugs that tweak these chemicals and make people better. This is as much a fact as the Leukaemia example.

Point taken. But I wouldn't classify ADD and depression in the same category as a viral desease, genetic condition, or anything like that. I don't know as much about this subject as I'd like to, but I believe it compares to the computer world, at least in one respect: hardware and software. Your heart, liver, bones, and brain are hardware... They're physical body parts that you can see and touch (that is, if you really want to). But your mind, personality, and thought processes are like software. In the case of ADD and depression, the brain is physically intact. The computer, if you will, doesn't need fixing. But these mental illnesses mess up the software, the thought processes inside the brain. It's like a buggy computer program: it doesn't break the CPU, but it doesn't work right, either. It's true that there are chemical imbalances in the brain, but I don't think that they are the source of the problem. More like a buggy computer program making the image on the monitor go berzerk. The monitor is not the source of the problem, but it's the only hardware that seems to be acting up -- so a tech guy might first try to fix the monitor before realize that the true problem was in the software. So ADD and depression really shouldn't be treated as if they were normal medical problems, with drugs and whatnot. Drugs mask symptoms and provide temporary relief for the ailments, but don't do anything to weed out the source of the problem.

My theory is that both ADD and depression (and other similar "illnesses") are caused by the world around us and how we behave in it. Basically, our circumstances. Usually, but not all the time, these are our own faults. So my beef is with people who just blame their condition, whatever it may be, instead of acknowledging that they goofed up and drove themselves to that point. Or again, that ADD kids end up that way from bad parenting. This isn't their fault, but it IS the parents', and too often ADD gets blamed as the culprit when it's really just the byproduct of a bigger problem. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people blaming their woes on nature, genetics, a disease, or something else when it's really their own fault. Of course, sometimes this blame is well-founded. But I get bugged when it's not.

I see a very interesting trend in ADD kids that I've met. Those who have ADD are often in bad home situations. They may live in a single-parent household (this one's common), or not get disciplined for bad behavior. When a kid is raised without respect for parents or other adults, he's liable to feel too powerful at too young an age and run rampant. This develops into ADD. Of course, I don't know every ADD kid in the world, and there are bound to be exceptions... but I do know a decent number of them around where I live, and they're ALL in bad family situations. This has *got* to be more than a coincedence.

Anyway, that's my theory. If I ever get some money and some free time, I'd like to study it further.

-useless"King of the soapbox!"ness