It's not a disorder, it's just bad behaviour

Exactly, great post.

Saladin, my brother, I respect your opinion, but I do have to point out that ADD, and ADHD, is a very real condition.
It's a current whipping boy of commentators suspicious or ignorant of science no doubt, because it is relatively new on the scene.
The original break-through neurological research for it only dates from the very late 1980's. And, contrary to several facile, but poorly researched pop culture articles, if anything, the diagnosis and treatment for it is still well under the actual understood prevalence of it in the general population.
I'm not for medicating all and I don't have any connections to Big Pharma or to doctors prescribing anything for the condition, I just wanted to point out, there are some real conditions out there regardless of our understandably but still sadly, knee-jerk opinions about how the world should be, rather than how it actually is.
My suggestion is that you contact a few professionals in the field for a casual chat on the prevalence of ADD/ADHD in the population and efficacy of its various forms of treatment.
Best,
Amp.

Amp, my girlfriend is majoring in psychology and I know that there's a lot of shake-ups in the field about ADD and ADHD medication.

People aren't arguing that it doesn't exist, rather that it shouldn't be called a disease. Children are hyperactive by nature, some far more so than others. Even if that wasn't true, medicating someone for the "disease" with seriously risky mind-altering medication for LIFE is a treatment that's more insane than the symptoms.

I know first-hand that it exists, my friend has been on medication for it since he was 12. But now he has to take anti-depressants to deal with the ADHD medication and his body has developed a need for both drugs such that if he were to stop it would do serious damage to his mental well-being. I don't know what to do about that, but something is clearly fucked up there ya know?

Saladin,
I think the key to understanding this issue is to look to the origins of ADD/ADHD.
There are specific observable differences in the brains of individuals diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. These differences are profound and have life-long consequences in learning and behavior if not treated.

A central fact in refuting the idea that ADD/ADHD is merely a common or transitory personality quirk, not requiring treatment, is it's genetic basis. ADD/ADHD can be observed occurring in three successive generations of family now.
Medication for any condition is difficult and subject to change from person to person, and of course, subject to the knowledge and skill of the physician. Being a neurological condition, ADHD involves a "constellation" of effects that can differ from person to person.

Few would now call dismiss a person with autism as just being just "difficult" or "slow."
As the origins of ADHD spring from the same neurochemical roots, some symptoms of autism are often found in individuals diagnosed with ADHD.

Given the excesses of Big Pharma in this country, and the perceived eagerness of some doctors to medicate for borderline or even questionable conditions, I know it's the fashion to dismiss almost any medication as being "unnatural" and unnecessary.
That's often not the case in reality.

Mostly what I want to do here is to speak to the anti-science posters who don't bother to become familiar with the science and reality behind an issue before expressing an uninformed opinion.
I know you are not one of those, and I know you heart's in the right place to be concerned about issues of over-medication or misdiagnosis. But, to leave those opinionated but uninformed posters completely unchallenged can have eventual serious consequences in the real world.

I definitely understand where you're coming from and I addressed the anti-science problem with the article with my first post, but I'm still not convinced that ADD or ADHD's genetic basis makes it a qualifier for being labeled a disease. Ambition, intelligence, shyness, aggression etc. are also all personality traits with some degree of genetic inheritance and some of them might even be based on serious brain abnormalities, but they are not similarly diagnosed and medicated.

First, we must mention that no matter what we say, there is an inevitable degree to which the labeling of mental diseases is a subjective discipline based on social norms.

Even the most objective form of mental disease classification, neuroscience, relies on a modern standard of what a "normal" brain should look like. Modern scientists have even speculated that MRI's taken of people who lived in ancient societies would likely be almost universally schizophrenic looking to us.

In that regard, I do -not- question the validity of ADHD as an actual condition of the brain which (typically) negatively impacts peoples' lives.

I also don't dispute that the medication of these individuals has significantly improved some of their lives.

What I -do- dispute, is the notion that ADHD is a mental disease in the same way we might consider depression, autism (as you mentioned) or paranoid schizophrenia as mental diseases.

ADHD is only labeled a mental disease because it represents a typically undesirable set of behavioral characteristics in young school children or adults who work in offices. Much how other character traits, say the ability to overcome stage fright or homosexuality, might have genetic components and usually are the result of a physical abnormality in the brain are not considered mental diseases and of course do not require treatment.

The other thing I dispute is that permanent heavy medication is a remotely sane or even desirable way to treat ADHD.

A lot of modern psychologists have taken over cases of children who have ADHD and have found that solutions to hyperactivity and lack of attention can often be solved as easily as enrolling the child in an intensive sport and spending lots of extra time paying attention to and nurturing them.

I hope that came across clearly, sorry it was so long.

Well said.
As to adaptability of ADHD I've always told my friends that some energetic individuals with ADHD (bright, perceptive, catch a-fly, or any movement for that matter, out-of-the air attentive, with rapid, sometimes over-the-top responses), would make absolutely excellent pirate captains.
Who knows, in the farther flights of fantasy, perhaps ADHD is the next stage in human evolution.

"Criminals are criminals. They do not have some "disease" or "mental disorder" which "caused them to act irrationally". And they MUST be made to take responsibility for their actions; not blame it on something else, drug them, and send them back out on the streets. Not cool. Not logical."

Far less than 1% of criminals actually get off on the insanity plea and going through a mental rehabilitation or an asylum is NOT a picnic. It's not as if there's some rampant problem with criminals running free.

We currently incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, chew on that for a minute before you cry foul about prisoners who are supposedly running free, because they aren't.

And there are, in fact, a number of psychological or basic physical conditions which on a basic level could not make a person responsible for their crime. As I mentioned above, Texas had to be stopped as it was executing prisoners who were proven to be mentally retarded, who had the functional capacity of toddlers.

Also, I'd advise against calling something "not logical" if you couldn't even define what that's supposed to mean.