Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – Medical malady or societal madness?

Abstract

I am an enthusiastic amateur musician. Not surprisingly, Mozart and Beethoven feature among my heroes, and I have even broadened my musical views over the past decades and added the Beatles to my hero list. So imagine my joy when I discovered that Wolfang Amadeus (Mozart), Ludwig (van Beethoven) and John (Lennon) shared a common disorder (1) that I have worked with over the past 20 years and probably is part of my personal problem list. In case the reader feels left out, some other names appear in the list of sufferers — Galileo for the scientists, Leonardo da Vinci for the artist and scientist combinations, and John and Robert Kennedy and Winston Churchill for the budding politicians. Maybe this is a good disease to have. But isn’t all disease bad — by definition? Disease is defined in Webster’s Dictionary (2) as “uneasiness, distress, any departure from health, illness in general, a particularly destructive process in the body, with a specific cause and characteristic symptoms”. Beethoven was deaf, Mozart probably died from kidney malfunction and as we know, Lennon and the Kennedys died from a more common 20th century ailment called murder. But they are all listed as having had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). True, the footnote to the list “Famous People and ADD/ADHD” (www.adhdrelief.com/famous.html) says that they were not all “officially diagnosed”, but “exhibited many of the signs of ADHD...”.