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While I never had the chance to meet Dr. Conners, and his obituary makes him seem like a lovely individual, I am afraid that I find his late life concerns about the over-diagnosis of ADHD to be a bit misleading. While he may have shared these concerns in some venue or another, and granted an interview to someone from the New York Times, I have not encountered any expression of these concerns in any professional or scientific outlet. Even if I had, I doubt that it would have had much impact on the ADHD juggernaut that Dr. Conners helped to put in motion. After having made his fame and academic reputation promoting the questionable concept of ADHD, and having produced rating scales and other instruments that are too often seen as the infallible litmus test of "ADHD", Dr. Conners finally recognized the harm done by this construct. This is too little, too late. Despite his misgivings, Dr. Conners' rating scales and other tests continued to be aggressively marketed to under-trained or misinformed individuals who use them to assign unwarranted diagnoses and justify the initiation of unnecessary and often harmful pharmacological treatments. After 30 years of practice and having seen the harm done by the ADHD construct to a generation of children, parents, and educators, and the corrosive effect that this construct has had on our culture and our research, I believe that one day in the not-too-distant future another generation will look back on the actions of the "leaders" in mental health of this era and regard them with the same horror and amazement that we now regard the lobotomists of the 20th century.
Re: Keith Conners
While I never had the chance to meet Dr. Conners, and his obituary makes him seem like a lovely individual, I am afraid that I find his late life concerns about the over-diagnosis of ADHD to be a bit misleading. While he may have shared these concerns in some venue or another, and granted an interview to someone from the New York Times, I have not encountered any expression of these concerns in any professional or scientific outlet. Even if I had, I doubt that it would have had much impact on the ADHD juggernaut that Dr. Conners helped to put in motion. After having made his fame and academic reputation promoting the questionable concept of ADHD, and having produced rating scales and other instruments that are too often seen as the infallible litmus test of "ADHD", Dr. Conners finally recognized the harm done by this construct. This is too little, too late. Despite his misgivings, Dr. Conners' rating scales and other tests continued to be aggressively marketed to under-trained or misinformed individuals who use them to assign unwarranted diagnoses and justify the initiation of unnecessary and often harmful pharmacological treatments. After 30 years of practice and having seen the harm done by the ADHD construct to a generation of children, parents, and educators, and the corrosive effect that this construct has had on our culture and our research, I believe that one day in the not-too-distant future another generation will look back on the actions of the "leaders" in mental health of this era and regard them with the same horror and amazement that we now regard the lobotomists of the 20th century.
Competing interests: No competing interests