A demand to avoid demand avoidance?

A growing interest around Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) has been reflected in letters to this magazine, discussing possible explanations for PDA, specifically as a form of autism or attachment disorder. Nonetheless, the main PDA discourse portrays it as a distinct syndrome that is part of the autism spectrum. Yet PDA is not in the diagnostic manuals and there is a substantially poor scientific case for the construct. I thank the editor Jon Sutton for his helpful suggestions in the production of the piece.