To think that the ADHD label is masking other things in society?

[comoatoupeira]

Disclaimer this is NOT about being skeptical ADHD is a thing, my brother is diagnosed with ADHD by a doctor as well as a close friend of mine.

Through my job I have been doing a lot of research about the impacts of tech and social media and so on on young people, and also on the elderly who are becoming the first generation of elderly people who are high technology users.

It has all been making me see so many parallels between behaviors associated with ADHD and behaviors that are becoming more and more difficult to control because of the attention-stealing environment we are in, and other aspects of society today like consumerism always available in your pocket, long working hours and both parents working, the difficulty of taking those restorative breaks that are what helps us focus and take a step back.

I'm just feeling like we are looking at some milder cases of ADHD too much as an isolated medical thing rather than a wider societal ill.

I feel like the same thing has happened with depression, framing it as some sort of imbalance that can be fixed by drugs, when it's so much about the societies we live in.

I feel uncomfortable about all of these labels being used especially by young people with mild cases of things, it seems to imprison them in a fixed identity or frame them as having something wrong with them, when none of us a perfect and we all have strengths and weaknesses, and life is about living with them and being open to change.

What do you think?

Social media encompasses messaging, WhatsApp, insta, TikTok private messaging etc.

It was a bit tongue in cheek - you gotta get down with the kids you know...

As far as I know the only one of those they use is WhatsApp, and that's to keep in touch with us.

I’m diagnosed. I know what you mean, OP. I think ADHD brains have always been there, but they’re incompatible with today’s lifestyle. If we had a simpler, slower life I’d struggle less than I do. I find medication a really useful tool. Transformative in some areas.

It’s a real thing. I’m not much into people using is as an excuse to be flaky, but it does make things that you wouldn’t expect really difficult. I was diagnosed in my 40s. It hasn’t held me back, as such, but some things have always been really hard. I don’t like to see people leaning into it too far, there’s so much you can do to help yourself and crack on.

I’m not really sure why it’s such a big deal. I could take myself off to the GP tomorrow and get myself a prescription for SSRIs, but getting ADHD medication is a year’s long saga.

obviously I’ve not read the thread before steaming in with my opinion. Sorry, it’s my brain

I agree but that doesn't mean we should stop diagnosing things all together, we are learning more and more each year. We now know that Asperger's is just autism, we also know that ADHD and ASD are mainly inherited conditions, maybe entirely. Rett Syndrome is not on the ASD spectrum among others...

Trauma, ASD and ADHD need to be treated differently so giving up diagnosing them and just treating the individual as the pp suggested would not help, you need to know what you are trying to treat the individual for before treating them is of any use. But also keep an open mind as to whether the diagnosis may be wrong of course.

The obvious thing people are missing , Neurodiversity is Hereditary! If someone is diagnosed with adhd there is an incredibly high chance one or both parents have it and then also their parents , who didn't live in our time now! Its just they probably wasn't diagnosed, like I wasn't untill my older daughter was diagnosed autistic, and now my younger daughter is going through process. My husband is looking into a diagnosis and it's obvious now looking at my husbands parents in their nearly 80s they definitely are on the spectrum with adhd or autism. Liken with my paents, unfortunately there is a group of people who belive ahdh isn't a real condition(ironically i was innthat group untill i had my daughter!) and that will effect how people see modern technology and adhd , and they will completely miss the fact it in fact a real thing.

Yup

In an ideal world we would be able to address all the challenges people face, all the time, everywhere. But in a world of limited resources identifying common "buckets" of challenges and putting a name to them might help matching these across to some simple solutions. The danger of course is that that depersonalizes what are very personal challenges and risks "labeling" those groups who can then become subject to prejudice and ignorance.

Exactly this. My grandfather had episodes in hospital and it’s clear that he had autism the same as his children, grandchildren and great grand children. The latter 2 generation being the only 2 diagnosed.What I find really interesting and sad is how much it blighted his entire life but my children having been diagnosed earlier than all of us will have a much better chance of coming to terms with it and getting the support they need.

My father is undoubtedly ASD and ADHD, very similar to my son.
He was able to stop school at 14 and start a very successful career that suited him. Life back then had more options for people who didn’t fit a particular mould, in fact I don’t think that people were expected to fit in any mould at all.
Nowadays many of those options are gone, education is very one size fits none all, so many people like my son can no longer cope. We had to go against the grain and create those options for him to enable him to thrive (along with lots of others now taking their children out of school).

My take from this whole thread are that there are some children whose difficulties arise from the way life is now. We fight for diagnoses which often don’t help or make any difference. In an easier world these children wouldn’t have needed a diagnosis.
There's also likely a whole bunch of children who have missed great developmental chunks because they’re plonked in front of a tablet rather than have normal pre-tech levels of human interaction (increased judgement on parenting, stress, CoL, and decreased family support make parenting so much more difficult).

So as well as having the children there who definitely need support and diagnoses and would have benefited from that 50 years ago, there is an added contingency of those whose needs are exacerbated/created by the stricter rules, higher pressure, lack of options and inability to escape sensory overload of the modern world, and those whose developmental differences are possibly caused by a very modern culture of tech use, which currently is being assumed to be autism/developmental delays/unnamed SN, but in years to come may be researched and found to be a form of neglect.

I don't actually belive professionals are handing out diagnosis like sweets! I think that's a way of thinking used by the last goverment we had , to dismiss the need to support people with Neurodiversity! I think if u can convince the public to not belive peoples needs as genuine then its easier to cut funding and treat them crap and let the public blame them for it. Pretty disgusting really.

Some people do not understand the difference between anecdotal evidence (not valid most of the time) and statistical evidence. I agree, that some children are diagnosed with ADHD from an early age and never even looked at a TV or a phone, does not disprove the connection between time in front of a screen and the inability to pay attention for long periods.

If you have met, worked with or heard about kids who are actually subjected to neglect (on child protection plans etc), you'd realise this statement just can't be true in any meaningful way. Even the most horribly abused and neglected children usually speak and don't have the kinds of profound disabilities you are speaking of.

The kind of neglect / abuse that emulates non verbal autism (e.g. that of the 'Genie' case) requires preverbal children to be cut off from society or locked in a basement and hearing almost no human language. It does not come from too much TV.

God I got enraged when my children were non verbal and diagnosed with autism in infancy when people would say "maybe you should talk to them more" or I see on here "how much screen time do they get?" My husband and I were desperate to have them speaking, and at least a part of that was down to the shame we felt from people like you. * *

Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said non verbal but delayed speech. There are many parents that I know of and that I've met through both a work and voluntary roles who barely speak to their children, let alone read or make eye contact, converse etc. Dummy in, screen on. From birth until they start pre school. Even when out and about the screens come with them, so they are not learning any basic interactions from other people. Children can not learn to talk from a screen or learn language from TV. They also miss key language development stages so they are delayed massively and it's incredibly hard to catch up. They are not physically neglected in the sense that they are fed and clean/clothed. They are not from 'abusive' homes and some are not even involved with SS. It's pot luck in each area whether they will have services 'one step below SS' to try to improve parenting. In my area they do but this won't be the case across the country. here is no way that this isn't affecting children's development. Every teacher and person who works with children knows it. Again, I'm not suggesting that screen use can cause autism.

Exactly. It’s the same science as gambling machines.

You are making assumptions and declaring that all ND families parent like this, they absolutely don’t.

Agree - what the PP is referring to - speech delay - occurs in some ND children, but also (per her description) in many many NT households through sheer neglect. In my community of ND children and parents (as every ND child I know has at least one ND parent, grandparent, aunt/uncle - and usually multiple ND relatives) NONE of them parent like this - they have been actively taking to speech therapy, parent and child programmes such as ‘music with mummy’, ‘rugby tots’, baby tennis etc. ie actively parenting and engaging, albeit with varying degrees of success/failure. Both my children had speech delay, so did I in fact along with a lisp, and I infer this is an ASD thing, but once that part of the brain finally engaged you couldn’t get them (or me) to shut up … because we also have ADHD.

I’m not saying that verbal/non verbal communication between parent/child is necessarily perfect in ND parent/child dyads - as an AuDHD parent myself from a very dysfunctional childhood (perhaps because it’s likely my mother was also ADHD, rather than bi-polar as I assumed until recently 🤔) - most of us are muddling through with fractured/impaired models of parenting and interaction. But this applies to NT families too.

So many of these PPs fall in the ‘tell me you know pretty much nothing about ASD or ADHD without telling me you know nothing’ category.

YABU, ADHD is not a label, it is a medical disorder that affects many people in their day to day lives, and just because their actions and behaviour don't fit your idea of someone with 'severe' ADHD or Depression doesn't mean its invalid or less important. Your idea of these disorders are probably a hyper 5 year old boy, or someone who cant get out of bed and is extremely suicidal, but in reality yiu are just uneducated about this topic and should learn more before speaking on it and calling it a 'label'.😡

Sorry, you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying parenting causes 'true ND'. I'm saying the sheer explosion of children with these types of delays that all essentially get mixed into the pot of SEN once at school (for want of a better description), in a very short time is not down to better recognition or sudden environmental/genetic factors. At least if it is someone needs to look in to it with absolute urgency. The fact that the incidences has been exacerbated by lockdowns does suggest the most obvious cause.

And most importantly not all ND children have speech delay.

I have had conversations with toddlers who are now much older children who are ND including having ADHD.

The last government also severely cut programs like Surestart.

I suspect if it was around then lots of the issues around children not being school ready would not be there. (Though there would still be issues at the with older children end due to how strict secondary schools now are.)

My own DD had to have it explained to her why some of her classmates in reception behaved as they did as she didn't see that behaviour at her childminder's and nursery. Some of the children at her nursery had disabilities including heavily suspected ND. A couple have now been diagnosed and a couple of others are on the path to diagnosis. (Unfortunately as the person in charge has died and others have left that experience has been lost.)

Once again - I have ADHD, my twin does not.
And yet, he was the gamer. A problematic gamer in his teens - he used to skip school to game his fast paced, violent shooting games. He is also the one with a normal adult life, and a long time successful career. He is very fast and knowledgeable when it comes to computer stuff after years spent on his various gaming PCs. He doesn't game anymore, so normal life is all he's left with.
Maybe I shoulda' gamed? 🤔

All the 'there is much more Neurodiverse traits around, so therefore it can't all be Neurodiversity ' just negatively impacts on a massive level all Neurodiverse families because ur basically saying well I don't believe u , and you all can't have special needs child and families feel dismissed and isolated even more than they already do! It's so damaging that this line is put out. Could screen's be negatively impacting children , yes absolutely but don't lump that into must be not as many Neurodiverse children as they say there is! It's so damaging!

And I have a non verbal , autistic, significant delayed child and the thought that children who presents as that, people could debate, that just be a neglected child is so infuriating to me. If a child has cancer or a physical disability there is no debate weather they r truely disabled?! If a professional has diagnosed them, then they are diagnosed with a condition, the general public dont get deicde they are not ! Why is it acceptable to debate if children who are are diagnosed, valid? And also to use a abuse like neglected as an acceptable alternative!

Also I think their is a group of parents who due to their undiagnosed or diagnosed adhd will be neglecting their children due to serve executive functioning ability, and their children can also be Neurodiverse.

Sorry, I was on a tangent here. Wasnt talking about ADHD, talking about social media addiction and how it is developed to play with feelings of excitement, satisfaction and yearning, just like gambling technologies.