Why is adhd not as "respected" as other ND conditions?

[elliejjtiny]

I'm wondering if it's because autism can mean anything from what used to be called Aspergers syndrome and profound autism with profound learning disabilities and people with adhd are more likely to either not have learning disabilities or have learning disabilities with a separate diagnosis.

But Nigel Farage has been in the news again saying he is going to get rid of PIP for people with mild anxiety and adhd as their primary diagnosis. I don't think anyone gets PIP for mild anxiety, I certainly don't anyway. But adhd can be extremely debilitating and require PIP.

Precisely.

I find myself having to retrain/change sectors in my early 50s and I have been despairing just reading some job descriptions. Pages and pages of gobbledegook, or overly lengthy versions of the same thing but slightly different written over and over again.

Because IME poor performance at work usually leads to them telling us they suffer from ADHD, and we then have to bend over backwards to accommodate them and they still don’t perform. There doesn’t seem to be any treatment and we are left with underperforming staff who have a ready-made excuse. I question if it’s medical condition or just someone’s personality, that they need to seek to overcome, rather than taking a label and living up to it.

Most of my colleagues in mental health have a ND. Diagnosed later in life which means they suddenly can’t do their jobs to the same degree anymore, cancelling appointments etc as they are “too over stimulated”. Patients suffer, the staff without a diagnosis suffer. Reasonable adjustments are never enough, it’s draining

I'd hazard a guess it comes down to all the people that just decide they have it when they don't ☹️ it makes things harder for people that actually do have it

This is so true.

I don’t think I have ADHD in terms of meeting criteria for a diagnosis but I have throughout my life been late, disorganised and lost things a lot. I always assumed these are basically personality flaws but if neurodiversity had been offered to me as an explanation of these traits earlier perhaps I would have embraced it. In recent years I am a lot worse and it impacts my life more and more. Part of it is menopause no doubt but also the changes in society.

I never had an option to scroll endless on social media or play shitty games on my phone for hours in the past but now I can’t seem to resist it.

At work since everything is electronic now it’s upped expectations of the depth and speed of work that I need to produce and I can’t cope with the endless information to assimilate or decide when to stop. I’ve always been a perfectionist and now there is always more I could find out relatively easily. It’s slowed me down no end.

People now can call me, message me, email me, Teams me, write to me and often do all of the above. It feels like being attacked from all sides and everyone wants an instant answer.

When I started my career mobile phones and email were a new innovation, fax machines were still a thing and remote working and teams I never even dreamt of. Paper documents took a while to get passed around and the info you had was limited to what’s in that bundle, in your brain or in one text book. I really find it so hard to adapt to the information overload in the world today.

Well there is treatment for ADHD. It is medication and it has been around for decades and it is very effective although there are a minority of people who can’t take it for medical reasons. Mine is amfetamine-based and it puts my resting heart rate up by about 10 beats a minute, so this alone would make ithis particular medication unviable for some, although theee are several medications to choose from, including 2 main ones which are stimulants.

It is a physiological condition, not a personality issue. A year or so ago, some scientists published some research about the brain differences they can see on MRI scans - unfortunately they are too subtle and too variable to use as a diagnostic tool. Also we have known for many years that people with ADHD have different brain chemistry- in particular lower dopamine activity. The stimulants help to increase the dopamine activity. This is why women around 50 tend to get ADHD diagnoses because falling estrogen levels impact on the dopamine activity and make their ADHD worse.

What a load of tripe.

I spent nearly 40 years coping, I've lost £1000s pounds due to lack of executive functioning but also therapy and self help. I've been on all number of anti anxiety medications and really tried to help myself with a number of coping mechanisms. However, when you have a successful career, a home to run, children to raise and other things life throws at you doing it as a single mum with lack of executive functioning and I attentiveness, it takes it toll. When I was finally diagnosed and medicated, it's made me a functioning person, I am able to be productive and not self sabotaging.

This is an excellent point! I asked my ADHD doctor why my O-Levels went well and my A-Levels didn’t and she said it was probably due to the greater demands on executive functioning (needed for planning, organization, focus etc).

As with autism:, a person with ADHD can thrive in the right environment but modern 21st century life is often provides precisely the wrong environment.

There are constant distractions witb emails flowing in and phones pinging, open-plan offices make even more distractions, there a very few manual jobs any many and lots of office jobs which require us to sit still, information overload etc etc.

People with ADHD tend to thrive in fast paced environments where there is lots of novelty and creativity and they can move their bodies: Eg emergency sevices, graphic design, landscape gardening

This is offensive. We know there are physiological differences in people with ADHD.

Incientalky it is known that people with ADHD are more prone to several physical health conditions eg Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, diabetes.

It's sadly become the next OCD or anxiety. Every condition ends up being watered down and diminished, which does a massive disservice to those living with these disabilities every day. Adhd is just the topic of the moment, soon to be replaced by something else, not helped by the social media rhetoric of 'I'm a bit scatty me' and all this dreadful 'neurospicy' speak.

Are some of them female at the age for perimenopause or menopause? Lower estrogen levels reduce dopamine activity on the brain and thus make ADHD worse. There could also be other factors in their work or home lives making it more difficult to cope.

‘Is ADHD’ could = ‘is attention deficit hyperactive disordered’
’is ASD’ could = ‘is Autistic Spectrum disordered’

You can ‘have/has’ a disorder or you can ‘be/is’ disordered.

Agree! That puts to rest “you can’t “be” adhd”- There’s always someone on threads about adhd etc who pops up to trot this out. Adds nothing to the discussion.

I think because so many people say they have it. Same with autism. Of course you can't ask whether the person has been diagnosed or self diagnosed. Even if 'diagnosed' did they pressure/pay someone for that?

Unfortunately it is hard to know the genuine cases when so many people use it to justify all sorts of things, which is a shame for those genuinely affected.

I really take offence to the idea that someone would pressure (?) or pay for a diagnosis. Firstly you are paying for an assessment, not a guaranteed diagnosis. Secondly the reason so many have to turn to private help is because the NHS is on its knees. Do people not have any respect for the professionals that are trained for years to be able to carry out these detailed assessments? Lastly, self diagnosis is fine is someone cannot afford private or the wait on the NHS. As long as they are learning about themselves and making adjustments to manage their lives, how is this affecting anyone else?

This is all conjecture that you are presenting as fact. There are no scientific trials that actually show this. It’s a theory at best. It’s an attractive one. I’d love it to be true for myself (it’s far more attractive than my disorganisation, procrastination and lateness just being my own fault) but I am a scientist and I would need to see a lot more proper evidence before I believe that this isn’t just the current fashionable narrative

I agree with this i have anxiety disorder and am doing much better now but I had agoraphobia for 2 years and have never been so ill and I have bipolar and eupd and at that time my anxiety was worse then the other 2 put together. I was under cmht and my cpn was round daily the crisis team where regularly round so it does piss me off how now everyone apparently has anxiety as it massively minimizes it

I have it and I don't consider it a disability or learning issue. Though I guess I can't concentrate properly on certain things. I wouldn't want someone to treat me like someone who has ASD. If they treat people like that different that is.

It Is well-known the menopause impacts on ADHD. My ADHD consultant psychiatrist also told me that and insisted on reviewing my HRT.

“A 2021 studyTrusted Source found that decreasing levels of estrogen and progesterone during perimenopause can cause ADHD symptoms to become more severe.
Dopamine and serotonin, two brain chemicals that are known to play a role in ADHD, can be affected during perimenopause. This may lead to worsening of ADHD symptoms.”

copied and pasted from this:

https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-and-hormonal-changes-in-women?utm_source=chatgpt.com#menopause

@dizzydizzydizzy

physiological differences?

I had a complex childhood. Childhood emotional neglect. Abandonment. I was also bright, an air head and achieved zero GCSEs due to my lack of concentration.

The reality is, I had barriers to learning due to my environment and ACEs. If a neuroscientist scanned my brain OF COURSE there would be physiological differences. Your brain is literally shaped by the way you live your life. There are differences in depressed brains, it doesn’t mean the depression “came first”. Depression is often a result of life circumstances.

The life circumstances came first. Brain differences come second. There’s also neuro plasticity - you don’t need to accept a diagnosis. Your brain can change again.

I chose to do the hard work. I healed emotionally. I worked on my distress tolerance. I engaged in mindfulness and yoga to increase my tolerance for sitting still. I had therapy. I exercised daily to discharge energy. I could give you SO many examples of how I healed my “ADHD”. Relying on stimulants wasn’t an option for me.

I would never tick those diagnostic boxes now but I most certainly would have done in my childhood/adolescence and early adulthood. So I stand by all of my original comments. They are not offensive. Some of us just see the label for what it is, particularly if we have lived experience.

Plenty of young people have disturbed attachment systems even if they had “good parenting” and come from affluent homes etc. Take postnatal depression for example. It often hinders a mothers ability to attach properly to her baby. There’s no blame here, it just is what it is. People never want to truly look within, or at their upbringing etc. It’s easier to dismiss and label it purely as a “physiological, neurodevelopmental difference”.

I find this truly fascinating @BurnoutBee I am at present doing all these things you mention, doing the 'hard work'. The exercise, the therapy, etc etc. But, I am also on stimulant medication and anxiety medication. I fully accept all my diagnoses but do the work too, can they not co-exist? I don't rely on my meds, they are part of a bigger toolkit to keep me alive and functioning. Why do you put adhd in quote marks?

As we’ve seen with self-ID in other areas, it leads to a dilution which is harmful at a wider level. It has wide reaching effects. Schools at the moment are an absolute shit show with “neurospicy” kids causing havoc with little to no consequence. Many people do not quietly label themselves and get on with life- we know this from other similar navel-gazing self-ID nonsense.

Yes - physiological differences.

ADHD has a number of comorbidities and also runs in families which indirectly suggests physiological differences. Eg Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, diabetes, asthma, migraine, obesity, sleep disorders, depression, probably ME/CFS.

Scientific info on studies into brain differences in people with ADHD (obviously not an exhaustive list - there are very many).

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-identify-brain-connections-associated-adhd-youth?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5933934/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Because everyone claims to have it and believes that it excuses failure. It also leads oftenhighly able people into believing often wrongly that they are crap human beings.