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ADHD: Is the Label Liable to Libel Anyone?
Perhaps I had spent too many weeks proofreading drafts of my manuscript. Possibly a pending high school reunion fomented an aura of academic one-upmanship and directed my focus to finding misspellings and correcting grammatical errors. Maybe I work too much as a psychiatrist identifying and nurturing the positive aspects of individuals. Whatever the reasons, my ridiculously naive response to an on-line comment highlights the potential for stigmatization regarding ADHD and other psychiatric labels.
I had posted an announcement about a presentation of my “non-partisan”, psychiatric book about adult ADHD and Donald Trump. The first feedback to my post was “Nonpartisan,? Buy a dictionary”. Thinking that this man was correcting my punctuation, I replied “Thanks for the proofreading.”. I also agreed that my dictionary preferred that “nonpartisan” be spelled without the hyphen.
Everyone else who has read the comment immediately understood that this individual felt that by linking ADHD and Mr. Trump I had made a partisan attack on the president. The man’s subsequent actions to have my post removed from a group page provided strong evidence that their explanation was accurate. I should have known from his own punctuation that he wasn’t trying to correct my grammatical errors!?! Maybe my unfamiliarity with the conventions and attitudes of social media had…
