Bob CollinsThe Monday Morning Rouser:
Maggie Koerth-Baker considers the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder “epidemic” and writes this week that it’s not hard to figure out why nearly 11 percent of children 4-17 have received an ADHD diagnosis.
The incorporation of A.D.H.D. under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1991 — and a subsequent overhaul of the Food and Drug Administration in 1997 that allowed drug companies to more easily market directly to the public — were hugely influential, according to Adam Rafalovich, a sociologist at Pacific University in Oregon. For the first time, the diagnosis came with an upside — access to tutors, for instance, and time allowances on standardized tests. By the late 1990s, as more parents and teachers became aware that A.D.H.D. existed, and that there were drugs to treat it, the diagnosis became increasingly normalized, until it was viewed by many as just another part of the experience of childhood.
Writing in the New York Times, she says “education policies, disability protections and advertising freedoms all appear to wink suggestively at one another.”
There is a biological basis for the diagnosis, but she says the sociological ones — “what happens when kids are expected to be miniature adults” — is responsible for the explosion in the diagnosis.
More science: Should Disabling Premenstrual Symptoms Be A Mental Disorder? (NPR)
2) THE PROBLEM WITH DEAD BODIES
Here’s a quote you don’t hear every day:
“I can’t store bodies in my home, and that is where we are running into problems.”
It’s Cass County Death Investigator Kriste Ross, lamenting the fact there’s no morgue in Fargo. She examines all unattended deaths in the county, but works out of her home, and it’s an unpleasant proposition, the Fargo Forum reports:
The coroner doesn’t have a vehicle, so Ross drives her own car when she is called to the scene of a death. Then the body has to be kept in an ambulance while Ross contacts one of the three funeral homes that act as the county’s morgues: Boulger and Hanson-Runsvold funeral homes in Fargo and West Funeral Home in West Fargo.
If the funeral home can’t take the body or doesn’t want to because of the smell – the bodies cannot be embalmed if they are part of an ongoing investigation – then Ross is left scrambling to find a place for the body. It’s a problem that happens at least once a month, she said.
“We have to put these bodies somewhere until we can make every effort … to get a hold of these families,” Ross said. “That means that somebody’s got to hold a body for us because we don’t have any of those resources to do this on our own.”
3) THE BUCKET LIST: LEARNING TO READ
Archie Willard, no 83, was a class officer in high school in Iowa. He played played football in college. He got married, had a daughter, and worked at Hormel for 31 years, according to the Winona Daily News. He even served on his community’s city council. He did all of that without knowing how to read.
He finally learned when he was 54. “My life has been a negative, and it turned around into a positive,” he told the paper. “By sharing my life, I want to let others know that you can find happiness, have a better life and find hope.”
It wasn’t long ago that employers were hard-pressed to find enough people to work for them. Those days, of course, are gone but MPR’s Annie Baxter has another story that makes one pine for the old days.
She profiles an increasing tendency of employers to make would-be employees jump through hoops to “audition” and, in the process, give them creative ideas they don’t have to pay for.
She found people who have spent weeks putting creative presentations together, only to see the job go to an internal candidate. What do you suppose happens to those ideas?
A few years ago, the New York Times raised a red flag about this practice, finding that employers sometimes stole the work of job candidates.
“I remember, in particular, one well-known publisher I interviewed with had a Web site and gave me a homework assignment — ‘Go home and tell me what would make us more profitable and successful,’ ” one man told the paper. “I invested four to five hours in it, turned it in and never heard from them again. About a month later, I saw some of my ideas on their Web site.”
In 2011, Abenbola Somoy and her five-year-old daughter Konnisola fled Nigeria’s growing violence. Somoy’s husband was already dead. Her brother-in-law beat her daughter. So she used paid smugglers to get her to Toronto. Three days after applying for refugee status, she collapsed. She had advanced colon cancer.
There was nowhere for her daughter to go. That’s when an oncology nurse stepped forward.
This CBC documentary runs 27 minutes, but it might just be what Monday ordered.
Bonus I: Coffee for the cancer patients.
Bonus II: In the UK, a parent complained to police after gory Halloween decorations on a house scared their child enough to make the kid cry. So the cops told the homeowner to take the decorations down (SkyNews).
Bonus III: Return of hunting jacket — cash and wallet intact — proves ‘still good people in the world’ (West Central Tribune).
Bonus IV: Is divorce contagious? (Pew Research Center)
Bonus V: Supporters of a student bullied in school confronted his bully outside of school demanding an apology. He got an apology. (KATU)
WHAT WE’RE DOING
Daily Circuit (9-12 p.m.) – First hour: The Political Junkie — Ken Rudin — with post-shutdown analysis.
Second hour: The problems with the U.S. foster care system.
Third hour: Talking Volumes with young persons author Rick Riordan.
MPR News Presents (12-1 pm): James Goodale, former New York Times attorney giving a recent Silha Lecture at U of M: “The Lessons of the Pentagon Papers: Has Obama Learned Them?”
The Takeaway (1-2 p.m.) – The state of the Affordable Care Act. A look at the health exchange roll out and why so many are finding it so hard to sign up for insurance.
All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) – Curtis Gilbert profiles Jackie Cherryhomes, who was once the powerful president of the Minneapolis City Council. More than a decade after narrowly losing her seat on the council, Cherryhomes is now running to be the city’s next mayor.
Conservation Corps and Nature Conservancy workers will remove about 100 cedar trees from the bluffs of southeastern Minnesota and use the trunks to help stabilize the banks of the South Fork of the Root River, which has suffered a lot of erosion this year. The process is used to help stabilize rivers in other parts of the Midwest. MPR’s Elizabeth Baier will have the story.
Sales this year could reach $2 billion in the U.S. And without FDA regulation, the market is a free for all. NPR looks at the debate over e-cigarettes: public health remedy, or problem?
