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?

I absolutely agree with you. I’ve tried to convey this to my friends and family before but haven’t made much sense. You’ve articulated it perfectly.

I find this debate fascinating. I go into schools to observe children and quite often they are flagged as potentially having ADHD.
What I'm seeing is school environments that don't support children's holistic development.
I observed a Year 2 boy for an hour, at no point did his teacher speak to him. Work was presented on an interactive whiteboard. Reward points were pinged via an iPad. Story time was a YouTube video.
There was no human interaction. No co-regulating adult. How can children thrive in these environments?

I have OCD. It was already hard going to school in the 90s and early 2000s, but had it been anything like what children deal with today (smartphones, access to internet everywhere, multiple activities a week, such unbelievably high behaviour standards - remembering the right coloured pens each lesson, eye tracking teachers, all punishable with detentions and isolation) I would have absolutely crumbled.

I imagine that is even truer for a developmental disorder such as ADHD with core features of attention difficulties and impulse control difficulties. I feel so sorry for the ADHD kids in mainstream schools, no wonder more children are diagnosed as the ones who might have gone under radar before are not able to cope.

How on earth** is autism an "in" thing??? You mean because it's being more widely recognised as testing improves and adults are realising they likely undiagnosed?

I can assure you, Autism is not a fucking trend.
My grandparents were both born in 1900 & 1901 and one of them was very clearly Autistic. My 80 yr old mother has very clear signs of it and says she always felt different at school.
Neither is ADHD. I was diagnosed with that in 1988....!

The first recorded case of Autistic behaviours was in 1800! But sure, it's an "in" thing

This is your problem re: 'mild' ADHD. You can't have a little bit of a neurodevelopmental disorder.

You're not seeing the big picture or the whole person. In order to be diagnosed with ADHD you need to have had symptoms, since childhood, which significantly impact your functioning in several areas of life.

Just because someone 'appears' to be functional by the standards you describe does not mean they are doing so without significant negative impacts in other areas of their lives. It may take all that someone has on a daily basis simply to attend work, and they may not be able to do the other things outside of that which everyone else assumes everyone does.

You just can't make these kind of assumptions about other people's lives, experiences and challenges. If there was no significant impact on their lives, they would not have the diagnosis.

Very unlikely if they are an adult woman.

The increase diagnosis of ND disorders is due to more awareness of it and people coming forward.

Until this century girls and women weren't not commonly diagnosed with ASD and ADHD (regardless of what they were called before). Only boys and men were diagnosed with it.

@comoatoupeira ND disorders are a spectrum.

Think of having a cooker where everything is turned on. One knob is turned to the max, one knob is at the minimum while all the rest are at various levels. This is why aspects e.g. concentration, hyperactivity, emotional dysregulation effect people with the same ND disorder in different ways.

I agree with this. I was thick as shit at maths (so we thought) but it didn't really matter all that much, because honestly you didn't need to be a high-flyer to get a job you could live on. Nobody cared. My parents just accepted it. The 'family failing' my mum called it. At secondary school, dyslexia was just becoming a thing. Two of my cousins were diagnosed, only because one was so severe he had to go to a special school.
Dyscalculia was unheard of. I was diagnosed as a mature student when studying English Literature. They were testing a lot of students for dyslexia that had been missed at school and I had just happened to read something about dyscalculia, so asked to be tested. They were shocked at how bad my maths was. At aged 25 I had the maths ability of a 7 year old. The difference between my maths and my English was monumental. How could nobody have realised something wasn't right? (Think my secondary school maths teacher did, but that's another story).
The point is, there was no real pressure for me to achieve. My mother, who I suspect had similar, didn't even sit O-Level maths. On the one hand, I was written off, but on the other hand, whilst I felt like a thicko, it just wasn't a big deal. It was sort of OK to be shit at things IYSWIM. I was only ever good at one subject, but I got by in a way I think it's much harder to do now. You just can't be 'average to poor' and make a living wage. I moved out to a nice flat, no parental help with rent at aged 18 on a low-wage carers salary, later factory worker. Got a mortgage at 21. Couldn't do that now.

Armchair experts who dismiss ADHD, or anything really, as ‘trauma’ never elaborate.

I agree. If i look at things I experience now, i meet almost all the criteria of "women with ADHD".

Except i wasn't like this until smartphones were invented!

I have a real love hate relationship with mine now. It has killed my attention span & focus, ruined my sleep, made me less fit, enabled me to procrastinate at work.

Any productivity savings its constant connectivity could provide are offset by its negative impact on my ability to think and work.

It was sort of OK to be shit at things

This, i do think we don't accept a bit of harmless mediocrity any more. My friend has a very academic DC. He's basically a bit shit at sport & art (but who cares? Kid is brilliant at loads of valuable stuff). His mum spends so much time paying for a running coach to help him speed up, tryimg to encourage him to do drawing videos. Why can't he just... be a bit poor at art? Its not going to hold him back in life. It used to be people had theirs strengths and their weaknesses and that was ok, they just got encouraged to excel/seek a career doing things that suited them

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow my parents have said the same (school in 70s), "no one had any grand expectations of us whatsoever". I put quite a lot of pressure on myself to achieve highly in secondary education in mid 2000s but not everyone was like that, by the time I was teaching in late 2010s there were teenagers crying and fainting from the stress. It was just an onslaught for them, pretty much all of them wanted to excel in everything which isn't exactly how GCSE grading works ...

I can’t speak for that poster but I didn’t read it that way.

Of course clusters of symptoms that have come to be known ADHD and ASD have always existed. But you can’t deny that these diagnoses have been ‘trending’ on social media for some time now, along with psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder and dissociative identity disorder - all of which are frequently referred to as ‘superpowers’. I don’t believe the majority of these people have ever been diagnosed with such a thing, it’s just a way to make themselves sound interesting and quirky. Which, for those of us who actually living with these things, is fucking infuriating.

I hate this hunter gatherer "theory". I wouldn't have made a good hunter gatherer. Life was "simpler" and that would have been helpful in some ways (less to remember, less to do and fewer priorities to juggle, fewer distractions, and community help) but in other ways, life would have been much more samey and boring. And I don't think I'd have been a helpful gatherer, in that most days I probably couldn't be arsed to get started, and I don't think getting distracted constantly while I am meant to be gathering food would be massively helpful to my tribe.

I swear I read this really wild thing that said ADHD gatherers probably did better because they'd keep looking at different fruit bushes or something 🤔 😁 I'll have to try to find it again.

Imagine the dopamine rush of walking for miles and finding a bush full of berries!

The tech for hyperfixations/distraction has just got better. I used to binge books, now I get my dopamine via the phone. One option is regarded as much more cerebral than the other but they both do the same job in my adhd brain.

I can't get my knickers in a twist about bad technology and attention spans and unhealthy habits. We ALL know sleep, exercise, rest, nutrition, happy connected relationships, meaningful work, safe housing are important for happy humans. Sadly not everyone has control of these. The shame and disbelief around adhd is massive - but it's not helpful in the slightest

Actually, mental health diagnoses are just descriptions of certain patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour and say nothing about the cause. Mental health diagnoses do not hold up to scientific scrutiny. There are pros and cons to their use. I think it’s similar with ADHD.

To be clear, I’m not saying the difficulties and issues aren’t real. They absolutely are and people should have access to timely, effective and safe interventions. But the idea that mental health diagnoses are ‘medical facts’ is a myth when you dig deep into the science.

It's important to remember this. I have a close relative who was sectioned fairly recently and saw several sets of psychiatrists/professionals within a short space of time. They had a diagnosis in place from one but another disagreed and came up with a completely different diagnosis. I know people who have had their diagnosis changed as they've progressed through life and seen different professionals.

Mental health diagnoses do not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

How is this even true?

So MDD where someone is suicidal is not a diagnosis because it doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny?

Medicine is an art and a science.

Not everything including physical issues can be seen using tests.

There's no definitive test for any though are there? The symptoms may be treated with trial and error of drugs and therapy but there's no proof that anyone has a Certain MH condition. They are essentially made up to describe Certain sets of behaviours and may or may not be adopted into the diagnostic manuals. Certain diagnosis have fallen out of fashion and have become quite problematic, such a BPD.

Have they?

This just sounds like medical gaslighting to me. No you aren’t depressed/anxious as we have no test for it. Even though you may be suicidal or unable to leave the house through anxiety.

These names exist to describe a range of emotional symptoms. And sometimes they overlap. Just like physical symptoms.

There’s no definitive test for chronic fatigue or long Covid. They are still recognised through symptoms

Yes BPD is a problematic diagnosis that is falling out of fashion. It's not necessarily medical gaslighting. I think most HCPs can see the symptoms someone might have but as I said you can see 2 different psychiatrists within days and they might come up with different diagnosis. And also a person's diagnosis might change over time.