I think it's much more likely that ADHD is N different things and Autism is M different things, where there is some overlap between N and M. I get what you're saying, I just think in order to really progress how we understand/treat these issues it will be important to figure out how to more accurately split them apart rather than grouping more things together.
You might find the "rdoc" an interesting approach from the National Institute of Mental Health. In contrast to the DSM, the rdoc isnt a way of splitting and labeling disorders as distinct entities (diagnoses). Rather, it looks at different dimensions of disorders to identify the best approaches to treatment.
Seems to me most psychiatry diagnoses symptoms not causes at present.
Imagine if you went to hospital with chest pains. They ask some questions then say "yeah, sounds like you have chest pains. Try this medicine it sometimes helps people with chest pains"
But was it a broken rib or heart attack? Who knows.
in a way these disorders are fake ... I'm ADHD diagnosed and I think also asd. not saying they aren't real...
I'm saying they're as real as an apple is really an apple as in would it be an apple if somebody didn't label it as one?
diseases of the body have very specific symptoms but also an underlying cause injury, cell damage, virus, bacteria...
mental health isn't just the brain...
we can't tie consciousness just to the brain...I mean it could be something in our entire central nervous system...
all these things are... are buckets...
imagine you're fishing and you throw in a bunch of similar fish into a bucket and separate them into two big buckets as similar as possible... you might still have 4 different species of fish per bucket...
that's all mental health diagnoses feel like ..a big bucket because everyone behaves differently in different circumstances under different stimulus...
were you exposed to lead recently and are more aggressive? are your hormones elevated or lowered than norms?
all these little chemical signals going through the brain shape the consciousness to a star or a square but it's not really a star or square... it just closer to a star and square and it's soft around the edges so you can push it into the star shape diagnoses hole even though it's different ...
my point is it's all a spectrum and you can't be on the spectrum with aids, cancer, COVID. you have it or you don't... you can have more serious cases or not but there's a definite... solidity to what is infecting you...
so personally I think it'd be better if we made smaller buckets that were more about labeling what our symptoms are... then treat those specifically better and maybe have a few broader treatments that treat maybe a trifecta of symptoms...
I'm not sure if my point is coming across... basically mental disorders are real but at the same time they're not... because it's an illness if the consciousness.. of thought... and emotions... and the smallest imbalance in even our gut which has brain cells can cause certain reactions...
