Well, there are a couple of factors here. One is that the IQ system is pretty flawed, aside from the racial bias there are a lot of questions of if it favors certain types of intelligence (capacity to retain over capacity to process). This introduces other factors, like the correlation between being white and having depression and an inverse correlation for minorities, so if IQ tests favor white people then one could naturally infer they would have a slightly higher rate of depression. There's also a question of the mental disorders in question, I know issues have been raised over a supposed over-diagnosis of disorders like ADD among minorities, so perhaps if they seem to have a disorder but remain undiganosed it can agian be inferred that this is because of the statistical imbalance in the number of diagnosises between certain minorities and caucasians. That also brings up the question of if white people are under-diagnosed or if minorities are over-diganosed, or is the best way to treat these conditions by prescribing drugs? This could lead to the philosophical question raised by Foucault of the division of madness, that by observing those who deviate from what is accepted to be normal behavior we're automatically subjectively defining them where he suggests we might need to simply get past such divisions.
This, of course, is all macro level, I'm sure that by going down to the micro level you could make all different kinds of observations about psychology, environment, upbringing,and find certain constant threads. Based on my experiences, though, there's not a substantial correlation between intelligence and higher brain function, bad wording, I know, but wait before you jump on me. What I'm saying is people are talking about these people with higher speeds of synapse firing and that obviously gives them an advantadge, but what I'm saying is there are also very many people who don't have such brain functions and are still very intelligent. They reach a certain level of intelligence because they dedicate themselves to working, attaining knowledge, studying, and such. Perhaps this has something to do with how they developed intellectually, do their study habits early in life affect how their brain functions? Possibly, good question I think. This also ties in to how you define intlligence, I've known people who could multiply any huge number in their head, but when it came to social interaction or philosophical thought were completely inept, and the other way around. That, plus even a savant will stagnate if not given proper outlets, even if higer brain function is inherent or even just beyind our current understanding we are still social creatures and if we don't develop whatever inherent skills we may or may not have we will never reach any potential. So basically I think the question should be is there an unusually large concentration of large IQ's in a group of people with these specific disorders, and not if there is a large number of people with disorders in teh group of high IQs.
Lastly, I'll jsut say that grouping such disorders in broad categories is a very confusing generalization. Some of the mental disorders that typically cause low IQs, such as autism,can at timesshow higher brain function in the sense that you're talking about, the problem is that parts of the brain dealing with communication are damaged. Mental disorders can be so complicated that it's not really right to just group them in such broad categories.
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