To wonder about the huge rise in people being diagnosed with ADHD?

[Starryskiesinthesky]

I am genuinely curious to understand why so many people are now being diagnosed, or self identifying with, having ADHD.

Is it just being recognised now with an awareness in neurodiversity or is everything labelled these days?

My son has dyslexia / a specific spelling difficulty and I suspect he has ADD/ADHD but wouldn't be severe enough to warrant medication. At what stage do we move from differences / traits to diagnosis? It does feel a bit like many aspects of our behaviour become medicalised.

I guess my AIBU is to wonder if too many people think they have ADHD/are neurodiverse these days?

It’s extremely unlikely. Also, disability benefits don’t require a diagnosis regardless so having the label would be zero help..

I think there are more autistic people than I ever was aware of as a kid as well. Not sure if it’s because it was under diagnosed back then or more prevalent now. It’s interesting.

My son has dyslexia and adhd. Dyslexia diagnosed a few months ago and adhd about 2/3 years ago. He is 16 so probably should have had him assessed sooner.

The reason for us getting a diagnosis was to help him in school. He has a time out card and other interventions, including extra time in tests so the diagnosis has really helped him tbh.

I used to be really judgemental and think that ADHD was a label given to naughty kids as an excuse but my son isn’t naughty at all, he just has a hard time focusing and sitting still.

Look at the numbers of kids getting extra time in exams at private schools in particular. I know diagnosis are not easy to get but surely the pull of extra time (or whatever) is going to encourage SOME to get a diagnosis where before they may have gone undiagnosed.

The experience in our family was that adult ADHD can fly under the radar a bit when the person is constantly on the move and keeping busy but as soon as lockdown hit it was undeniable.

Maybe neuro”typical” people are the ones who have the issue and people with so called neuro diversities are the norm!

can’t wait for the armchair psychologists and child behavioural ‘experts’ to let us all know their thoughts. Again.

Are they not allowed to engage their brains and reflect then? & maybe some of us are professional psychologists or child development professionals. Fancy that.

This has been my experience too.

I found my symptoms worsened significantly when I had to start juggling work and managing a house, then harder too when I started to live with partners and then had a family.

My difficulties were already medicalised as I was told I was one of the 1 in 4 with a mental health issue, in my case bipolar disorder. Like myself, a large proportion of society don’t want to take pointless anti-depressants or other MH meds, they want to know the root cause of their issues so they can address them.

There’s no doubt that ADHD has been greatly under diagnosed in the past, so it’s not surprising that as awareness grows there is a flood of people seeking assessment.

I think it’s also highly likely that modern life makes ADHD symptoms worse.
Johan Hari has written a book called “stolen focus” about the effects of modern life on our attention and focus

PS his extra time in tests is used differently for him. Sitting there for even longer wouldn’t help so he has breaks where he will go for a walk / move about and is in a separate room with less distractions.

I'd be less concerned about extra time if my dyslexic children were able to produce legible handwriting, let alone the quantity required to display their knowledge.

The world had changed and fortunately children like they are no longer dismissed as lazy, put in non-academic pathways and enter a world of manual work at 15 wasting their range of thinking skills.

It's more recognised now but also I think it is more common. Our attention is so often split between different things, especially since mobile phones / screens/ social media etc. I don't think that children develop attention in quite the same way they used to.

I also see it as Societal. Mt Grandson has ASD with associated Learning Disabilities but i know that 100 years ago this would not have disadvantaged him as he could easily of worked on a farm, or other manual labour job and everyone would have just thought he was a bit slow on the uptake.

Even 50 years ago life would have been so much easier for him there would have been so many jobs he could have done.

Now due to his slow brain processing speed he is unlikely ever to be able to drive so that puts him at a massive disadvantage in today's society. He will not get any GCSE's so with the loss of small employers to big corporations where they demand English and maths, he will find it very difficult to get any kind of job and will need supported employment etc - for all of this he needs a diagnosis.

I just feel people need these diagnosis's nowadays in order to have reasonable adjustments made for them in employment and to get the benefits etc they will need if employment is going to be difficult. If you are finding it simply difficult to cope with our modern extremely unnatural society, you are going to be looking for reasons why.

I have a diagnoses of bipolar and there are a lot of crossovers in symptoms with adhd so I’ve been doing a lot of research into it and it’s left me with a lot of questions. I think it would really explain my eating disorder and executive function issues. Trying to get assessed for something when you have a diagnoses of something else is a nightmare though. You get fobbed off a lot.

@TeddybearBaby The diagnostic criteria became wider in the 1990s meaning significantly more people began to meet the medical criteria for autism. Before this autism had been viewed as childhood schizophrenia rather than a difference in social, communication and sensory neeeds.

I know for sure that I have ADHD. My life would by no means look terrible from the outside looking, a have always managed to stay employed and have a roof over my head but in truth I leave a trail of chaos and destruction wherever I go.

I am of above average intelligence yet only have four GCSEs. I failed to complete and hand in coursework in almost all subjects.

I drift from job to job only staying until my lack of concentration and attention to detail start causing issues. At this stage I usually invent a reason I am struggling and resign. Often a vague story of illness in the family.

I live my life using a series of learned coping strategies which often involve lying to people I love just to delay suffering their judgement until the another day.

I am constantly on edge waiting to be found out for something that I may have even forgotten doing. I am terrified of my postman and phone calls from numbers I don’t recognise.

I have little impulse control, no time management skills and very little sense of what the future consequences of my actions are. I owe HMRC tens of thousands of pounds.

As yet me and multitudes of people just like me are undiagnosed and the majority of us are miserable and living only part of a life. I’ve been living this way for more than 40 years. I make new friends constantly as I need replacements for those who inevitably give up on me and fall by the wayside. My sense of self worth dissipated years ago.

i fucking hate threads like this one and the self satisfied people who flock to post on them.

This!

My almost 20 year old DS thinks he has ADHD and is seeking a diagnosis a now he's at Uni. I must admit I was surprised as nothing has been said at school throughout his childhood. He is quite different to my other kids. I do sometimes think he is trying to find a reason for his procrastinating which I had previously put down to laziness !

I think it's related to increase in screen use.
Especially for those like my generation and younger who had the TV on a lot as a small child.
Wouldn't surprise me if in a few years time early dementia rose too

Thank you for this. I didn’t realise that at all but makes sense!

It's the pandemic. Many people managed fine with daily life. They'd adapted to the rigidity of routine, timetables, and worked out their own coping mechanisms, mostly without even realising they were doing it.

Then lockdown came, and people's routines were upset. They lost the routine that masked the difficulties and then realised that they couldn't cope in the uncertain world, be it work or school. This why waiting times for assessment have gone through the roof.

I also agree with PP that ADHD is massively underdiagnosed. In fact I think we need to rethink what NT and ND actually mean, and what typical is these days.

I also think that many of these issues arise from trying to shoehorn people into categories and being forced to work and live life in a particular way. If the world was set up for people with ADHD they would probably manage just fine. It's only when they have to conform to external expectations and pressures that the issues come about.

Saying it's over-diagnosed is damaging, and coming from a place of real privilege.
It isn't just feeling anxious or depressed.
I have ASD, ADHD and GAD. There is so much to it, but I suppose the quickest way to describe how it is, for me, is a constant battle in my mind. I'm always overthinking something, I struggle to cope, if at all, with sudden changes in plans, socialising is a minefield as I can't usually tell how people are feeling unless they say it outright, and I miss most social cues (probably more that I don't notice, it's only if DP, for example, tells me afterwards that I realise I wasn't 'getting' something someone was trying to put across).
I have told 5 people I have these conditions, DP is one and parents are 2 of the others and I never have and never will claim any financial support for them. Sometimes it just helps to know what's wrong and if there is any support to help you manage it.

... Eh?! Screen use does not make you ND. 🤦‍♀️

ADHD isn't diagnosed because of how you are now. You're diagnosed on the basis of what your whole life has been like, leading up to now.
There are a lot more women now that are being diagnosed because it was often missed in young girls and its not until they reach adult hood that they realise something isn't right.

For me, personally, it's that I never shut up. I interrupt people (unintentionally) I get overwhelmed with my thoughts (my brain never switches off)& often zone out when people talk to me. My concentration isn't great and I have to read a sentence more than twice to get it into my head. I'm also very fidgety and cannot sit still. I wish I was diagnosed as a child, then I wouldn't be suffering with depression and anxiety as a result of it. Its not about being labelled, it's about realising your are different and learning how to cope with that. Without the label, you can't find peace.
ADHD often comes from a parent too. In my case, it's my father. My brother is autistic but was diagnosed 30 years ago.

Short attention spans due to devices and computer games. Kids find it really hard to concentrate for periods of time. Dunno about the adults though! I suspect I have it myself. Here I am supposed to be working being endlessly distracted by Mumsnet, Facebook, messaging my mates etc etc.