Is Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) Real or Made Up? A Researcher Responds

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]There are studies on this. I've been told that PDA can only exist with autism, but a professor told me it's just made up. [laughter] Okay. [gasps] All right. So, I have a doctorate degree in political science. So, I spent six years in a PhD program.

[00:00:20]And one of the main things I learned is about the production of new knowledge and how that happens. But what you realize if you're an academic, feel free to chime in here, is that everything starts with identifying where is there a gap in our knowledge? Where is there something we don't know that much about or where is there a debate or an empirical puzzle like something that doesn't make sense? And then we can hone in on that and then we start to develop hypotheses, right? And then we test those hypotheses by experimenting, collecting data, getting more information, whether it's through quantitative data or talking to people.

[00:01:03]That's what interviewing and surveys are. Okay? And then we gather more knowledge. And that's what we're doing right now on pathological demand avoidance, right? We're in the beginning of the production of new knowledge.

[00:01:16]We're in the we have a hypothesis based on people who identify as PDA based on patterns we've observed with thousands of children and we're developing hypotheses that we can test with data and so of course it hasn't yet made its way into the conventional wisdom because of the stage we're at in the scientific process. So, when someone discounts something as not existing because it hasn't yet made its way into the DSM5 or they didn't learn about it in their professional program, they're not acknowledging that there is a lag.

[00:01:57][laughter] There is a lag between collecting data and analyzing it, finding findings and then publishing.

[00:02:04]And then we have the peer review process. And then we have to have these debates and we have to have lots of other people participate in studying the phenomenon like pathological demand avoidance and then there's all the politics and that determines whether it gets into the DSM5. So this idea that like a natural phenomenon doesn't exist until it's in the DSM5 is just absurd. I mean autism didn't exist until 1980.

[00:02:35]You think autism wasn't around to me?

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