The word “disorder” is loaded, but it is interesting to also look through the lens of the Social Theory of Disability. For the rise in diagnoses for autism, ADD, gender dysphoria, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia etc.
Just as we now view the historical labeling of women as suffering from “hysteria” as a systemic failure, not a personal pathology, we should interrogate whether current diagnostic regimes will look just as crude and institutionally convenient in 50 years
Many social and health-related challenges we label today as “disorders” may in fact be downstream responses to structural issues in how society is organized — education, labor, healthcare, media, food, and housing. It’s worth asking: what if we’re pathologizing reactions to a sick system?
Generations identifying as trans:
Gen Z: 2.8%
Millennials: 1.0%
Gen X: 0.3%
Baby Boomers: 0.2%
Silent Generation: <= 0.05%
A lot of it has to do not with the label itself but with the industry. Where someone in the past would be called a “tomboy” or “femboy” today they would have a different diagnosis, the DSM-5 would be consulted, etc.
Similarly with ADHD if a kid would have been called “rambunctious”, today they might be labeled as having a “disorder” and medicated with literal amphetamines, instead of for instance reforming public schools. (To be clear, I am talking not about exteme/acute cases but overdiagnosis of relatively mild cases.)
We can look at other examples (eg Finland’s schools where children can climb trees and have much lower ADHD diagnosis rate) as one way to compare.
Or in the past, anorexia and eating disorders were a form of body dysmorphia, and some such images were actually promoted by industries such as fashion modeling or ballet performance. And when I say promoted - I mean also heavily enforced within the industry itself.
Industry in USA works with government, together. For example the factory farms (overusing antibiotics, abusing animals) and ag-gag orders, criminalizing whistleblowing and exposing them. Or monsanto and intellectual property enforcement. Or pistachio farmers in CA and water shortages. Or bottling companies and clothing companies putting out metric tons of plastics and microplastics, while regular people are told they can’t have a straw or a bag, and must recycle (itself revealed to be mostly a govt+industrial scam, shipped to China etc.)
This is across the board. Obesity and diabetes are a major epidemic in USA but instead of questioning high fructose corn syrup, highly processed starches and sugars in everything, people are told they can fix things themselves with diet and exercise. Actually it has been shown that obesity and disabetes in mothers is correlated with autism in their children. It has been shown that there was a serious correlation between obesity, diabetes and covid morbidity but the latter was taken extremely seriously but the former is not.
Same with plastic recycling, etc. or going vegan. Or buying free range. Or whataver. The individual is kept distracted.
In USA medicating things downstream is the default. One in five middle aged women is on antidepressants. Teenage girls have the highest levels of “sadness” (most outlets don’t want to say depression) etc.
Of course when it comes to depression and gender dysphoria we get extra political sensitivity due to activism around those issues. Of the usual character: the INDIVIDUAL is the one that has to make all the downstream adjustments and cope with the SYSTEMIC upstream issues, which are not questioned much. The individual is even told to embrace their label and tell others it is great (eg “big is beautiful” for obesity, celebrating the result instead of reforming the system).
Until AI takes the jobs, the social compact has become: both parents have had to work for corporations, to afford the expenses that could previously be paid by one “breadwinner” in the family working for corporations. And they stick their kids in public schools and elderly parents into nursing homes. And then medicate them if they don’t like it, because the DSM 5, school administrators or nursing homes staff say that this is the best way. Everyone is afraid to speak up against the system, they would rather perpetuate it and cover their own ass.
There was a time when people derided USSR people for drinking a lot to cope with the failures of their economic system. But now with men on opiates, women on antidepressants, high rates of teen suicide ideation, elderly and kids being medicated — perhaps we should rethink our own economic system. There are a lot of “problems” that people are experiencing and it may be from upstream systemic causes. But they are kept distracted by govt and corporations with the idea that they can fix it by their individual actions, which include recycling, dieting, and placing a label on themselves that the industry then helpfully gives them medications to manage it.