To be unsure what neurotypical is anymore

@Thursst0n if you go to the King's College website, the actual quote from Dr Collins is more nuanced than reported by the BBC:

"The best data we have suggests that there has been no meaningful increase in ADHD prevalence, but most of the research is too biased to draw conclusions from."
Dr Alex Martin, Lecturer in Psychology at King’s IoPPN and the study’s first author.

They go on to say:
“What we cannot account for, which is perhaps the biggest outstanding question, is why there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of people seeking help for ADHD.”

Meanwhile, the BMJ report an 18% increase in medication prescribed for ADHD between 2019 and 2024.

You could also say that autism was massively underdiagnosed since it was first identified as an ND, not just in females.

I guess my point is, if all ND is underdiagnosed then are the majority of the population ND in some way?

I am ND as is my whole immediate family, one immediate and one wider family quite severely in that they can't live normal lives and need a lot of support. One of my kids is ND. One seems NT now and is not like her sibling but time will tell.

DH and most of my friends are NT. This is from the outside and I've often tried to copy these things. I would say they fit in well, some are introverts but never seem to say the wrong thing and strike up conversation so easily and listen well. They always had friends at school. They seem to quickly belong, behave the expected way and make friends wherever they are and don't have constant doubts. They like a lot of the same things their peers do and if they do have different interests they are never very surprising ones and they don't usually have encyclopedic knowledge of or obsess over those interests. They don't seem to have big strengths or big weaknesses, they are more even. They cope with things well and aren't over stimulated or irritated by mildly bright lights, background noise or seams on clothing.

I think we're pathologising personalities. Being an introvert is now getting medicalised.

My DH has recently diagnosed autism, OCD and anxiety disorder. I'm finding it interesting because I'm a classic awkward scientist, so we share a lot of personality traits. However, I think I'm NT rather than ND because in general I can control or mask those traits and get myself out of holes. He can't. If I'm in a poorly suited environment for a long time (like a bad job) I start looking much more ND because I reach my coping limit, but there are more situations where I'm comfortable than uncomfortable. I think everyone has situations that are a bad fit for their personality. A NT extrovert who needs clear boundaries and structure would look v ADHD in an unsupervised lone-wolf science job!

Re autism it has been massively under diagnosed in women and girls due to ignorance in female presentation and a male focused diagnosis procedure. Professionals are better informed now.

Re ADHD to quote the BBC article.

The review, led by King's College London, looked at 40 studies in 17 countries and found no clear evidence rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) had risen since 2020, despite reported rises in diagnoses and longer waits for assessment.

Lead researcher Dr Alex Martin said it was likely to be a case of under-diagnosis of the condition in the first place.
"ADHD prevalence in adults and children has remained largely stable since 2020," she added.
In the UK, around 3 to 4% of adults and around 5% of children and young people are thought to have ADHD. Experts believe there are similar rates in other countries but only a fraction of these have been diagnosed.

I always found the claims that ADHD is the most easily treatable condition (we were told this during training) peculiar, especially considering the rapid increase in diagnoses and prescriptions.

@Thursst0n whilst I am not disagreeing with you, do you not wonder at the extraordinary rise in all the ND diagnoses? In 2018 a study found that there were eight times as many new autism diagnoses in 2018 as in 1998 (Ginny Russell at UCL). Further up the thread I noted the BMJ reporting that there had been an increase of 18% in ADHD medications between 2019 and 2024.

Are all of those people really meeting all those thresholds? What were they all doing previously? What has changed so dramatically?

They really don’t, it’s threads like this that do. People that actually diagnose know full
well that there are high thresholds to meet to get a diagnosis and having one or two symptoms isn’t going to get you anything. It’s also known to be under diagnosed particularly in women and girls and better less male focused diagnostics alongside better information re female presentation is a good thing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5vp62dnnro.amp

They really don’t, it’s threads like this that do. People that actually diagnose know full
well that there are high thresholds to meet to get a diagnosis and having one or two symptoms isn’t going to get you anything. It’s also known to be under diagnosed particularly in women and girls and better less male focused diagnostics alongside better information re female presentation is a good thing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5vp62dnnro.amp

This. Nailed it.

No it isn’t. As I said in the US it is used to indicate levels of support needed with the recognition that this can change. 4 recent NHS diagnoses in my family, none have been levelled, thankfully as all would be very hard to decide a level for support needs.

I understand, I am ADHD one thing to understand, ADHD is from birth but I think the symptoms of ADHD are constant, here is the problem. All children can show some symptoms at some point, this is why I think its actually over diagnosed in children although that is changing and to be honest when anyone goes through mental health and adhd assessment now, consultants know exactly what to look for and ive been told can tell in minutes if they are dealing with an ADHD or Autistic individual or not. However, I also think its under diagnosed in adults to do with the same reason where adults just shrug it off as “just how I am”.

ADHD can have pros i guess but mostly, its a nightmare, it really is. Medication has worked for me, but I spent a long time in denial when after months of mental health assessments and statements from my father and other family members, the signs were there even from birth, constant crying as a baby, severe emotional deregulation as a child for example. It seems, unfortunately, trendy and I hate to use that term, to identify as neurodiverse and I can see how people self diagnose which adds to a feeling of everyone being somewhere on the spectrum. The reality is, they arent - but I do get why it feels that way.

Yes, I agree with this. My daughter is almost exactly like I was at her age, except she can’t cope with school (EBSR) - one significant difference is her school is about three times the size mine was.

She is diagnosed with ASD, and I sort of assume I must have it too - we are very similar. (And my mother!)

I think about 50% of my university friends have children with ASD with varying degrees of struggle from probably not living an independent life, to quirky and easily overwhelmed but mainly coping. In my daughter’s primary school friendship group we are now on 4/5 with disgnoses of ASD, ADHD. And I guess if I were the parent of the 5th child, I’d get them tested 😂 The stereotype of neurodivergent people finding each other really seems true in my life.

I wonder if I would have struggled and been diagnosed if I were growing up today?

I have an autism and adhd diagnosis and for both I had to demonstrate impaired functioning since childhood. Traits of adhd and autism are human traits but it is the severity and frequency that impacts us. Losing keys for example- I will have my keys then all of a sudden not have my keys and I don’t know where they suddenly went! This happens several times per week. Long term consequence of poor attention-losing keys but also struggled in school and never reached my potential as I switched off, couldn’t revise or retain information.

I can very clearly tell when I’m talking to someone who is NT and that is the majority of people. I can usually spot the ND ones too as they are the only ones who will talk to me twice!

I was diagnosed as Asperger’s, which was classed as high-functioning.

I believe it a relatively recent classification. Level 1, not very long ago, was Asperger's syndrome. Then it became 'high-functioning autism, and now it is called level 1 autism.

I agree. When people I know IRL are pursuing an ADHD diagnosis but they hold down steady jobs, have immaculate houses and are always super organised spinning a dozen plates at the same time. I just don’t get where the adhd is?

I think it really depends how much it affects your life.

I'm undiagnosed, but I've struggled socially my entire life. My sensory issues affect my day to day existence. My piss poor organisational abilities affect me daily. I lose things all the time. I've forgotten to pay bills. I go out wearing one sock. I struggle with chores. I get overwhelmed and end up in hysterics at work. I make spreadsheets about my latest obsession then drop it and never do it again. I have OCD, which I think is related to my neurodivergence.

Ofc we all lose things sometimes. We all get behind with chores. But for me it significantly impacts my life and well-being, which I think is the difference between NT and ND.

I think the key thing is that go be diagnosed with a condition under the ND umbrella it needs to be having a significant impact upon functioning and have been present since early childhood. I do think a lot of people could be misdiagnosed as adults as trauma or stress can present as autism and/or ADHD with people struggling to function and people are being diagnosed without evidence of their childhood development.
Comparing ND to NT also doesn't work as ND conditions are so varied. An autistic person will have difference in social communication, a person with ADHD or dyslexia may not. A person with dyslexia will have difficulty with reading/writing, a person with ADHD or autism could be brilliant at reading and writing.
I'm not sure there really is 'Neurotypical' and I don't think lumping a number of conditions together as neurodiverse is helpful as they all have a different diagnostic criteria and need different types of support.

Or ironically, maybe a person with ADHD who has been coached to always put them in one place as soon as they get home!

15 - 20% of people are thought to be neurodivergent so it's not surprising that it feel like they're everywhere - that is 1 in 5 people.

I have a lot of ND in my close family, 3 relatives with dyslexia, one with ADHD, one with ASD and two with dyspraxia. I also have a number of older relatives that I believe went undiagnosed and have had very difficult lives involving drugs, alcoholism, long term unemployment and even suicide.

The example of losing keys that you mention is typical of someone with poor executive function. And a lot of people with ASD/ADHD struggle with executive function. No one is going to be diagnosed on that alone though.

I don't think it's possible to list traits of NT people because everyone is different. I don't think it would be possible to have a meaningful list that was in anyway helpful. People with ASD though often have a lot of red flags and their life is really impacted - ds spent every lunch time of his seven years at secondary school alone.

I think this is a good analogy actually - everyone will have some traits, but for most people it doesn’t reach the threshold of a “disorder”. Just as everyone feels anxious some of the time, but that is not the same as having GAD or OCD.

Which explains why everyone does those online quizzes and thinks “oh that could apply to anyone” when they aren’t autistic.

A friend of mine (she has ADHD I have ASD) has a theory that 80% + of humans are ND, but the world is being run by a small number of psychopaths putting more and more pressure on us for a laugh to see when and how we break. She told me this over ten years ago, and I thought she was bonkers. Not so sure now.

I agree totally OP. My reply isn’t meant to shit on anyone who struggles but I want to sum up how it makes me feel as someone who’s neurodivergence has ruined my life completely.

The criteria for diagnosis and treatment of ADHD and autism is that the symptoms must have a significant impact on you being able to live your life day to day. If they do not, regardless of “where you are on the spectrum”, you do not get a diagnosis.

i have failed in school and college multiple times, lost far too many jobs to count due to my lack of attention to detail and ability to stay engaged and focussed. It’s so bad that I have tried to kill myself twice because no one could tell me what was wrong with me and I thought I was too stupid and mentally ill to live a normal life.

EVERYONE can show traits of ADHD, but not everyone has their life ruined by it constantly, however I think a lot of people with minor traits and who struggle slightly but actually cope perfectly well day to day watch these reels and decide they must also have ADHD as a fun quirk and something that gets them concessions at school and work. The issue with that is it totally diminishes just how bloody hard it can be for people who it really impacts because now “everyone has it”, it overwhelms the very services that are there to support the people who rely on it to function day to day so they are suffering while waiting for appointments and medication, and it complicates what can be encompassed within the spectrum of ADHD and autism which is actually much narrower than it’s made out to be (e.g. losing your keys occasionally and having to write lists while disliking one food item doesn’t even get you close to the spectrum, nevermind on it)

I can’t say that this doesn’t piss me off because it does. I spent years and years struggling through school while my peers swanned through life, only for some of them to now be harping on about how they are a “little bit OCD” or “poppies it’s my ADHD”. No it’s fucking not Sharon!

That said it is also completely open to interpretation and the general lay person like me, even with how badly it impacts me, isn’t qualified at all to make the distinction for others. The only people who should be interpreting whether “everyone” suddenly has ADHD are the people who are actually qualified to diagnose it.

Neurotypical people experience adhd like symptoms when they have stressful events in their life, they will struggle with executive dysfunction; once the stress passes so does the ADHD like symptoms.

People with ADHD suffer with executive dysfunction consistently, the severity may fluctuate but the symptoms will always be present.

Because of posts on social media, everyone thinks they have ADHD due to the above, as they can relate to ADHD symptoms at some points in their life. If everyone was to be assessed a lot would not get the diagnosis.

This makes it difficult for people struggling to come forward with ADHD as “everyone has it”. It’s unfair, ADHD can cause significant damage in someone’s life if not managed.