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?

Yes and DH. He gave it her! He has a stable home life

Alao there’s more than one type of ADHD. My child is the dreamy inattentive type. How is that related to trauma!?

@Branleuse apologies I quoted the wrong post.

It doesn’t mean adhd is more prevalent, it means (like with ASD) society has taken away many of the safety nets that allowed for better executive functioning.

I agree with this.

I don’t think people’s brains are different than they were say 30-40 years ago. (Although I am worried about the effect of smartphones on developing brains but that’s relatively recent).

I do think that modern life is harder to deal with than life 30-40 years ago for a person with ADHD or autism. Busier, louder, more social, more public, more choice, more addictive distractions available. More expectation that everyone can cope with having all this stimulation chucked at them all them, without any downtime. And so these neurodivergences will cause more issues and show up more.

I genuinely hate posts about adhd on mumsnet as so many are clueless to the condition, adhd and autism has been around for ever ,as its Clearly hereditary, lots of mums are undiagnosed adhd or autistic or both due to their children being diagnosed and then they finding out the issues they had was due to same, it just wasn't talked about or understood when we was a kid, I think modern technology has helped and hindered adhd , but the people diagnosed would still be diagnosed now due to arewareness not due to technology making it worse!

Yes and also, having to operate at 100% all the time. In school, in work, online. Everyone needs downtime. ND need more.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX
The subject needs a book, not a post on MN, hence the simplification. To explain. Having been evolving as bipeds for 3m years, we have only been homo sapiens sapiens for the blink of an eye. For the vast majority of that time, life was consistent. Even the big 'leap' in the Neolithic didnt change our environment (in some ways - obv agriculture did... Again, needs a book) anywhere near as much as the technology of the last 30 or so years.
Species take a long time to evolve and we haven't had enough time to catch up with the ways in which we've changed the world.
As a PP said above, ADHD traits can be hugely useful. If we were living off the land for eg, my DD's endless energy could be crucial in gathering food, her empathy and consequent wisdom could allow her to be a shaman, a wise woman to help keep the tribe together, her hyper focus would allow her to learn new skills quickly, her hyper awareness would allow her to sense danger before others.
In the modern world though, these are skills which are not seen as quite so relevant, and which cannot as easily be used on a day to day basis.
So the 'excess' energy leads to stimming, the empathy leads to feelings which are too strong to contain (and thence to self -harm), the hyper awareness leads to anxiety, the hyper focus leads to 'not getting enough of your other homework done' (or whatever).
This isn't a comment on 'the good old days'. It goes far deeper than that and is fundamentally about ecology.
I don't know what can be done about it either. My DD takes medication. It pains me that her brilliance (and her 'ADHD' is one of the things that makes her brilliant) is something that has to be medicated to cope with society.
So I am not minimising or saying it doesn't exist or claiming it's only environmental, rather than genetic: in my view the usefulness of ADHD means that it must be based on genes. I'm simply saying that it is the world which is making it a disability.
And perhaps it would be no bad thing if we looked at how the world generally is impacting on ND, mental health etc, and thought about actually changing a few things.

There is actually no evidence to support the chemical imbalance theory.

I completely agree with namechange.

Traits are only useful or not useful depending on the environment we're in.

Many traits that are seen as 'bad' would be amazing skills in a different environment or context.

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

To: Previous society was masking ADHD.

My child also has adhd, and I think he does have trauma caused by the adhd and trying to navigate in a world that he finds difficult. He finds rejection and maintaining relationships really hard and he then feels isolated. He find time management very difficult and often becomes overwhelmed. He’s loved and adored too.. but my point is those interaction that have left him feeling lesser, particularly at school were caused by his adhd not the cause of his adhd, and it annoys me when adhd is dismissed as trauma.
@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

I think this is really interesting topic. In my professional experience, lots of ADHD diagnosed children have also experienced trauma, I think the onset of trauma likely contributes to the development of symptoms. Ultimately, the human body and brain wants to survive. Any predispositions are likely to ‘kick in’ as a survival instinct. I also think society now has contributed to particular ASD and ADHD behaviours. Even for me, I can see that excessive use of Instragram, short stimuli, has affected my concentration levels overall. The instant gratification and face paced life we’ve created has contributed to this I think.
The school system is also really bad currently. The constant pressure, rigid thinking and lack of autonomy doesn’t help also. For children who are a bit different, there is very little space to find coping mechanisms in day to day which probably leads to triggering the survival instinct which at times, can present itself as ADHD or ASD symptoms. That’s of course not to say that these conditions don’t exist but I think the psychological and environmental factors are much more entangled than the current MH system/systems generally, can understand.

But is this trauma? In trauma more to do with big events impacting home life and stability.

Becauae you are saying his ADHD is causing trauma and not vice versa?

or even: ADHD wasn’t a problem in previous society?

No it was an undiagnosed problem. Current society has brought it to the fore.

What do you mean by previous society?

I know adults in their 50s and 60s with ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. In turn some of them have male blood related relatives who were older than them who diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder when they were alive.

I agree in so far as I think too many people who certainly don't have ADHD are being diagnosed and given medication for it (I say this as somebody who is autistic and ADHD myself). It's a fine line between legitimate ADHD (which is impairing and will definitely have made your life more challenging) and ADHD-like symptoms or experiences which nearly everybody experiences to some degree (being messy, being late, being distractable or impulsive). Problem is compounded by the rise of predatory private diagnosis clinics who have a financial incentive to dx people.

@comoatoupeira

There is no such thing as 'mild' ADHD. My daughter will get a degree. She is very intelligent. She also struggles to cope on a daily basis, and often has to sleep for several hours in the afternoon just to cope with the efforts involved in going to lectures in the morning.

The fact that someone else might see her ADHD as 'mild' simply shows how well she masks in public, and how hard she works to develop strategies. It DOES NOT mean her ADHD is mild.

No one is saying ADHD is caused by trauma, it’s that symptoms in people who have experienced trauma can often struggle with the same sort of difficulties as people with ADHD, there’s quite a bit of overlap.

i also think we conflate the concepts of trauma and adversity, most of us experience adversity in childhood/life but it’s not the same thing as ‘big T’ trauma.

I'm with you on this.

I think autism spectrum disorder and ADHD are catchalls for lots of disregulated behaviour in our environments these days. I notice it in myself often and very much relate to people who have similar symptoms with ADHD but I genuinely believe mine is environmental and societal.

Too many behaviours are being medicalised/labelled rather than a holistic approach looking at life style and dietary choices.

Totally.
I also find it curious that when you take a child displaying behavioural symptoms to a gp, unless it’s clearly a neurological issue then most times you’re referred to camhs. Then you may be put on a pathway for asd/ adhd assessment.
But at no point will the gp routinely take bloods, or do any medical investigations, dietary questionnaires , food intolerance tests etc.

Yes I am saying adhd is causing trauma in children when their needs are not met.

Imagine the stress your body is going through trying to fit into a school system that isn’t working, where you are failing everyday because you aren’t good enough and you are being told to try harder and you can do better .. for years and years. I don’t think it’s ok to dismiss the behaviour as trauma.

I sit in panels where they talk about needing to lower the waiting lists because the lists is years long and the systems can’t cope, and I’ve seen cases be dismissed and labelled as trauma because the child can’t cope at school and has become violent. They get dismissed and removed from the waiting list. The child is unable to cope with an underfunded school system which has caused trauma to the child.

Oh, yes, I agree with that. There is a huge social contagion element and gentrification of disability, which is being glossed over or dismissed as bigotry. I listened to an excellent podcast on this recently: 'Does glorifying sickness deter healing?' https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415?i=1000569731362

My Mum said the only time I ever slept as a baby was when there was lots of noise. Maybe try white/grey/green noise.

We have this approaching having been brought up with this approach ourselves.

Going though diagnosis with eldest at minute - and it looks like a lot of what is considered normal in mine and DH family in wider population isn't.

There quite a few in extend family of boys in my generation who were diagnosed with classic ADHD - with our kids it more with inattentive ADHD and comorbidity conditions.

Sleep problem go back to early childhood way before screens and smart phones were a thing in their world and just got told by someone in field in prelim talks that it is a classic sign of ADHD. DD1 has been told she clearly has a lot of coping strategies and without these she'd likely be much worse.

I do think perhaps the wider world has made it harder to cope - certainly school environment post covid made it harder for my children. Also seen tentative research suggestions that perhaps it a section of population that isn't as good at clearing out some modern chemicals from bodies - but it is hard to say if we are recognising it more or if there is more of it or both and some people get very upset at any suggestion there may just be more happening rather that just recognising it more frequently.

Depression - well reactive depression to circumstances probably gets over medicated in our society - but actual runs in family depression despite good circumstances has always been around.

I had friend post pg who got diagnosed with pnd put on tablets and that was it - she actually had a thyroid condition picked up by locum who saw the goiter. My Dad had extreme vit D deficiency but had been fobbed off with wight and depression picked up by randomly being added to other blood test then emergency - and I know serval women who wanted HRT for menopause symptoms end up with anti depressant not hrt at my GP and spent ages going back to finally get hrt - so I think that can be misdiagnosis of depression going on as well.