Szasz, T. Chemical straitjackets for children. About twice as many children between the ages of 2 and 4 were given Ritalin, Prozac, and other so-called psychotropic drugs at the end of that period as at the beginning of it. It is about as surprising as finding the proverbial fox feasting on chickens. To grasp the enormity of the stupidity that informs these so-called diagnoses, we must be clear about the difference between a diagnosis and a disease. The concept of diagnosis is contingent on the concept of disease.
Diagnosis is the name of a disease , just as, say, violet is the name of a flower.
Manipulating things is difficult, sometimes impossible. Violet may be the name of a flower, or a color, or a woman, or a street. Similarly, a disease-sounding term may be the name of a bodily malfunction, or the malfunction of a car, a computer, an economic system, or the behavior of an individual or group. In conformity with traditional medical practice, I take the root meaning of disease to be a bodily lesion , understood to include not only structural malfunctions but also deviations from normal physiology, such as elevated blood pressure or depressed red cell count. By identifying diagnosis as an opinion , the OED recognizes that it refers to a judgment.