Is a Bad Attitude a Clinical Condition?

Since when did having a bad attitude become a clinical condition?  Seems like a crazy question, huh?  But I see it so much in today’s youth.  Someone simply has a bad attitude, and they are labeled as having a learning disorder.

I know its kind of a joke to some people, but has society gotten to bad with the idea that everything is a clinical condition that something as simple as a bad attitude, which can easily be worked through, is terms to send someone to the therapist?  There are days I don’t want to wake up, for whatever reason, and there are days I don’t feel like paying attention.


I’ve had times in my youth, where I went for long stretches of not really caring about schooling.  In today’s society, would I have been branded with a clinical term, and gotten medication for it?  I can’t help but think that I would have been pressured into a therapist, especially in my junior high years.

I was a ‘different’ kid.  I was always kind of outcast, but at least I had my own set of friends.  But I was outside the clique scene.  I was technically a clique breaker, as in highschool I would talk to whomever I wanted to.  I found that some cheerleaders had interesting stories to tell, and some jocks were really down to earth.  The popular crowd had the same issues as the outcasts.  In my last two years of Highschool, I made a point to talk to teachers, and found them to be interesting people as well....

But in school, I was a loner, sat with the people that held themselves apart from everyone.  We became a cool type people, because we held opinions and embraced the freedom being outcasts provided us.  We all had issues, and looking back, I can see what is now clinical issues in every one of those people that sat at that table.

How different would our lives had been with people trying to label us clinically?  Or putting us into therapy?  I find it shameful that we have descended so far as to say that our own childhoods were fraught with all sorts of things that could have made it ‘better’ if treated.

Hate to say it, but I enjoyed my childhood, it made me who I am today.  I am someone who can cope with life’s issues, life’s problems.  I can survive this world, and all its ups and downs.  If I hadn’t had the childhood I had, full of ‘issues’ and such, I’d have never have been able to survive falling in and out of love, and became strong enough to fully enjoy the love I have now.

Yes, there are clinical issues out there, some that need treated, but most of what people claim are clinical issues aren’t.  They are the result of growing up, and we all felt that stuff.  Would you have grown up the way you did if YOU had a pill in your youth that took away the things you had to get over as a kid?

–Dan