Monday, August 16, 2010

Excessive and instant gratification and the rise of ADHD

The last fifty years have been decades of unprecedented prosperity. This has had a profound effect on the way we are bringing up children. Our children are growing up in homes where they are constantly placated and amused. Whenever some situation ceases to provide them satisfaction and they feel bored they can instantly go to something else on their PlayStation, computer, television, or just phone a friend or text him. Their every need is instantly acknowledged and fulfilled.
This state of affairs is perhaps at least partially responsible for the explosive rise in the incidence of ADHD. I see an intimate connection between instant gratification which has become the norm in bringing up children in today's culture and the proliferation of the disorder of Attention.
Obtaining constant success through their endless toys they develop a very high rate of dopamine secretion and a mental makeup that seeks pleasure continuously and instantly. When such children attend classrooms and have to learn tasks that are rarely a matter of instant gratification they quickly lose interest and attention.
A child who grows up in a culture of instant gratification is used to getting immediate success. If one toy ceases to give pleasure his modus operandi has been to move on to the next one. If one show on television does not keep him amused he changes the channel. His video games have allowed endless shooting of the bad guys and therefore quick successions of dopamine secretion.
Tasks required at school are neither highly rewarding, at least not immediately, nor do the rewards occur
 frequently. One must go through a number of stages of hard work before attaining success. Consequently, the secretion of dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter, does not happen that readily. The task has to be painfully mastered before pleasure happens. The child who has grown up in a culture of instant gratification loses interest quickly at hard tasks that school demands and starts daydreaming of scenarios that promise instant pleasure. He is also fidgety because in his unconscious he is conjuring up scenes where he would rather be instead of where he is at the moment. His body, without his conscious knowledge, squirms, and moves to get out of his seat. This is the "hyper" part of ADHD.
If a child comes from a background where taking on the challenge of hard tasks is considered worthwhile because there is a big reward at the end, in other words where there is a great desire in the child, constitutionally or because of upbringing, to please parents and teachers, he may overcome this need for instant gratification. Otherwise, he starts developing defiant attitude towards authority if they keep on pressuring him to pay attention to the task at hand rather than daydream. This is the oppositional defiant aspect of ADHD.
Of course, there is also another very important factor in the cause of oppositional defiance of ADHD children. When a child goes to school and finds that other children perform better because they can pay attention to what is being taught while he cannot - the same humiliation also in all likelihood occurs at home where siblings without ADHD do better than him - revengeful rage is generated. This rage finds expression in defiance, failure to perform tasks, stubbornness, arguing, and doing just the opposite of what is demanded. Later, obsessional defenses emerge to control this rage.
Dopaminergic drugs work by keeping a constantly high level of dopaminergic activity. This removes from the child the motivation to be some other place doing tasks that will boost up his dopamine secretion. Since it is already artificially high from the dopamine pills the child does not have to daydream nor fidget to be "elsewhere" where there is better promise for immediate gratification. This enables him to pay attention to what is being taught.
Also, the function of dopamine is not so much to give pleasure as to use the generation of pleasure as the stepping stone to pay attention. Whatever situation gives us pleasure we learn to focus upon it.   The high rate of dopamine activity brought on by the dopaminergic neurotransmission enhancing drug gives the illusion to the ADHD afflicted child that what is being taught is what is giving pleasure/satisfaction, so he focuses upon whatever is happening right then and there instead of his attention to wander away into his fantasies.

1 comment:

  1. I never looked at ADHD in this way. I definitely agree with your ideas in this article.

    Also, I think it is nice to keep in mind that our brains were used for tens of thousands of years for activities that you see modern day monkeys participating in.

    Our brains were most active when we were climbing, running through wild terrain, smelling everything carefully, wrestling, and throwing poop.

    Maybe we are most happy when our brains are stimulated in those manners, and sitting in a desk reading paper and chalk boards for 8 hours just doesn't completely cut it.

    Maybe the rise in ADHD can also be attributed to the fact that there aren't enough ways to use our bodies and brains like they once were, so we resort to video games, and television, for our "entertainment," as you said.

    I do like complex thinking like this though, and being able to share the complex thoughts..... but I have some poo to fling at my teachers right now though. be back later.

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