Prometheus 6

Oppositional and Defiant–Or Critical Thinker?

I’m working on a piece about undergraduate academic freedom that relates changes in campus culture to changes in the culture of schools. One area of particular interest is the medicalization of youth relations with authority. AlterNet’s Bruce Levine, a clinical psychologist, argues that “teenage rebellion has become a medical illness” with the 1980 introduction to the DSM IV of “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD):

Many talk show hosts think I’m kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder. After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness — an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers — they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case. Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as “a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior.” The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

A diagnosis of ODD can result in medication with powerful tranquilizers like Risperdal and Zyprexa. Numerous experts have worried about overdiagnosis and overmedication of young people, and critical educators frequently worry that the problem is not lack of compliance by American youth but its precise opposite, an epidemic of compliance.

Norm Diamond, for instance, argues that many of the so-called defiant “symptoms” are in many cases “part of establishing independence and developing critical thinking. Equipping children to argue back is part of good parenting and good teaching.” Nonetheless a massive therapeutic industry of behavior modification, including pharmaceutical companies, now targets parents, promising cures for “defiant children.”

One of the most pervasive ad campaigns draws on the rhetoric of homeland security to label youth defiance “The War at Home,” urging a corrections mentality on the family: “The focus of treatment should be on compliance and coping skills, not on self-esteem or personality. ODD is not a self-esteem issue; it’s a problem solving issue.” .