In the 19th century canaries in cages were taken into coal mines to serve as as early warning signs of the presence of toxic gases. The metabolism of the sensitive birds revealed dangers before humans felt symptoms. The phrase “canary in a coal mine” has taken on common meaning as an early indicator of danger.
The practice was only slightly inhumane, as efforts were made to mitigate damage to the vulnerable little creatures. No one thought the exposure to gases like carbon monoxide was good for them.
The phrase came to mind as I read a long piece in this week’s New York Times titled, I’m a Psychiatrist. I’m Hearing Something New From Young Women.
The lede was: Patients used to dread being told that there was something, as they saw it, wrong with them. Now these young women were announcing their diagnoses — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression — almost before telling me their names.
Because it is analogous to many of the issues raised in the article, and the scores of comments from teachers, therapists, parents and others, I start with the SATs, the stressful gatekeeper to many opportunities in higher education.
Among the diagnoses mentioned by the author, several, especially ADHD, are used to gain extended time on the SATs and other standardized tests. There seems a cottage industry of affluents parents and willing practitioners who collude to gain these accommodations for students. The implication is that the SAT is “normal” and that some students are “disordered,” thus needing a little more time.
This is precisely backwards. It is the test that is disordered and the vast majority of students seeking relief are quite normal. The test is timed, which suggests that intelligence and academic potential fall along a speed continuum. An essay is no less cogent if crafted over four hours rather than two. A deliberate cognitive process that takes double the time to discern an algorithm is no less valid. Timing any test severely compromises its validity.
Students also have very different decoding skills - none more “intelligent” than the other. A certain sort of intelligence is assumed by the architects of standardized tests and this assumption is narrow and exclusive.
This armchair analysis applies to many, if not most, of the other self-diagnoses offered by young women using, as the author notes, “therapy-speak.”
Years ago I served on a panel of experts discussing ADD/ADHD in schools.I was the school representative and the others were the experts - psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists . . .
Hundreds of parents awaited the medical and psychological wisdom.
In my opening remarks I noted my dilettante status and then suggested that the problem was primarily school design and practice, not flawed children. Expecting children to be still and respectfully attentive is unrealistic. The fact that many kids can manage it does not vindicate the expectation. Medicating them to conform is, to allude to Frank Smith’s take on the science of reading instruction, an unspeakable act and unnatural practice.
The author’s observations about therapy-speak are based on her practice, so the sample of young women is selective - of course. But her wider views were confirmed by the hundreds of comments. It seems inarguable that girls and young women are suffering and that the therapy-speak only represents the easy availability of labels, courtesy of social media and popular culture.
Girls are inundated with unrealistic images of women. The standard to which many strive is unhealthy and often created through photo-shopping, make-up, restrictive clothing and careful selection. This alone can be a source of OCD, anxiety and depression.
I have a front seat to observe the pressure to conform. Literally. My wife and I wait in the pickup line at our granddaughter’s high school. The number of teenaged girls with waists the size of my neck is remarkable and alarming. I can’t know their realities, but the statistical likelihood of this being normal variation is unlikely. I suspect that it takes a toll on both the narrow-waisted and on those who are not. Again, any distress reported from either side is not abnormal. The social standard is abnormal and unhealthy.
The girls, of all sizes and shapes, are normal.
Girls and young women are navigating a culture which has reverted to a pre-1970s level of sexism, which they absorb by observing who has power and who does not. Feeling powerless or depressed in a world dominated by toxic masculinity is not abnormal. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 81% of girls and women have experienced some form of sexual harassment and/or assault. Toxic masculinity is abnormal.
The author wisely suggests ignoring the therapy-speak and self-diagnosis. Behind the labels are real girls who are suffering. They need to be listened to, not dismissed or argued with.
At least the canaries were removed from the coal mines before any permanent harm was done.
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