AIBU to wonder whether ADHD is normal and society is the issue

[LadyBeatriceBeaHiggins]

No offence intended

Discussing about Adhd with a friend who has Adhd and we wondered what if Adhd is naturally a part of being human and its the way society trys to make humans into machines that is the problem ?

so figured id open up our debate for fellow mumsnetters

Yes I heard this 30 + years ago. Also ADHD is a useful trait in an agricultural society. Lots of energy and creativity required and lots of discrete tasks to complete.

however I’ve also heard that a lot of apparently ND traits are a response to trauma. Which I guess is why part of the assessment for autism is so forensic about maternal experience, early life events and so on. (I was surprised that this is still so heavily weighted in the assessment when I recently had to complete a ‘close person’ form for someone undergoing assessment, as although I was asked these questions for my son’s assessment, I wasn’t for mine, although I was an adult, he was only 3).

100% agree with you

I don't think people realise all the symptoms of ADHD. It's not just getting distracted, forgetting things and losing concentration. It's really debilitating.

Correct, because that is what was considered autism many years ago. Then it all became lumped in under one category which makes no sense at all

Its quite offensive for people who are actors or singers or CEOs or whatever to say they are disabled by autism when other people with autism need full time care and cannot look after themselves

Someone who struggles socially and has various ND traits may have some difficulties and comorbid other conditions but it needs to be recognised as something different.

I think many people get their understanding of Autism from late diagnosed, university educated Autistic friends/ colleagues / relatives or from social media advocates or from fictional characters. They then often look up checklists and self diagnose based on very dubious online resources.

The understanding of what we're not allowed to call profound Autism is very, very limited and in some circles mentioning children like your son is quickly shushed with insistence that that's learning disabilities not Autism. Which is pure ignorance of course.

Uta Firth has pretty much been cancelled for suggesting that what is now diagnosed as ASD isn't all one condition and the spectrum isn't a spectrum in it's current form since the criteria have been broadened in successive editions of the ICD, but more than one condition.

She has spent decades researching Autism - her whole career has been in Autism and dyslexia research, but now the social media advocates are trying to cancel her by pointing out the irrelevant (ageist, misogynist) fact that that she's an older white woman, as though that invalidates the fact she's a professor whose been at the forefront of research for so long!

The people suggesting she's fit only for deplatforming generally haven't read even the over simplified, second hand TES article, let alone the papers she's published in the last five or six years leading up to the TES article.

Yes to ADHD having autoimmune similarities! There is emerging evidence of a crossover with ADHD, histamine oversensitivity, acid reflux, hypermobility, orthostatic hypotension... not something that can just be caused by phones

I don't think ADHD is caused by screens.

I know that a lot of people self diagnosing with ADHD now would not have met criteria in previous iterations of the international classification of diseases.

I do know that children with the type of ADHD that met the old criteria would have had a significantly reduced chance of surviving to adulthood. Children meeting the hyperkinetic syndrome criteria are very severely disabled by it, to the point of not being able to learn basic skills - not an evolutionary advantage.

Retro diagnosing historical figures in a flight of romantic whimsy isn't something original you and your friend invented over a bottle of wine - plenty of journalsts and pseudoscientists (as well as the odd psychologist like Bahren-Cohen in The Pattern Seekers) have been doing for years and is just historical fiction.

A lot of self diagnosed people might still not meet the criteria .

Yes this is definitely true. A good friend of mine was convinced she had ADHD but that it had only become noticeable at peri menopause. She paid for a private diagnosis and didn't get diagnosed, which suggests it wasn't even boarderline. I'm pretty sure perimenopause is the issue, not what's brought a different issue into the light! Perimenopause is a bit shit.
Most people in her position don't go and seek diagnosis, they just self diagnose.

Random fact about ADHD. The risk of having a very narrow palate is massively increased in ADHD and it may well be that airway problems from the narrow palate and poor night time sleep because of it and the airway issues it causes leads to hyperactivity and focus problems in some children with adhd.

In fact expanding the maxilla with maxillary expansion devices in mid childhood before the maxilla fuses can improve symptoms. That's why it may be a good idea to have children with adhd assessed by a specialist orthodontist to see if airway could be contributing to their symptoms.

People with ADHD as children are 40% more likely to be obese and adults are 70% more likely to be obese than neurotypical people. Obesity can worse airway problems, which may be why ADHD prevalence has gone up over time as society has become fatter and people with a propensity to airway constriction (I.e. narrow palates) have more constriction due to carrying excess weight.

Obviously this isn't the cause for all children with adhd, but may be the cause in a subset. Often people with narrow palates show a smaller number of teeth when they smile and can have changes to the shape of their smile.

• Oh and oestrogen affects airway tissues, which is why symptoms may become more pronounced at the time of perimenopause

id say more educated guesses based on their psychology profile / personality profile eg da vinci was our main one

Absolutely. My daughter was diagnosed with coeliac disease around 18 months ago. Before diagnosis she was on wait list for ADHD assessment, after a few months off gluten her focus, sleep, emotional regulation was so much better to the point we asked for her referral to be cancelled.

Yes, phones absolutely do not cause true ADHD, overwhelming evidence is that it's genetic in cause, like autoimmune conditions. But the use of certain apps and overuse can cause poor focus which can lead to incorrect diagnosis of ADHD.

Unfortunately a certain Austrian painter probably would have met the diagnostic criteria too..

true, and may explain part of his erratic behaviours

I hate these threads. They're always full of people desperate to minimise ASD and ADHD. It's so shitty.

Im sorry
The aim is never to minimise anyone's struggle. It's to question if we could all live differently as a society, and if that might make peoples struggle less.

I am a teacher. I teach 10-y olds. I look at my class this year it's sad how many if them struggle in school. Adhd kids being asked to sit and listen for large chunks of the day. Dyslexic kids being given endless small group help to read and write. Autistic kids spending their days in a room of 30 people, noise and uniforms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of them, but the system they are being asked to exist (and succeed?) in doesn't fit them.

As a thought experiment, I imagine what this group of children would be like in a medieval village situation. The Adhd kids would be the leaders. The dyslex kids would be successful. The social construction of my class flips on its head of you take formal literacy and numeracy out of the equation.

I have dyspraxia which means I have traits of most ND conditions plus extra clumsiness as well. I think most people have some traits of one or more ND conditions but that doesn't make someone disabled. To be diagnosed with adhd or asd you need to meet the strict criteria.

I struggle with adhd symptoms and I find strategies aimed at people who have adhd really helpful. I don't have adhd though. People with adhd struggle way more than I do.

indeed

research the books by john gatto taylor and his philosophy

I also think this.
In Asia, at school and at home, children do focus exercises and learn to focus on a task. I think we do none of this generally speaking particularly in the UK and when you add in modern lifestyles with screens for babies; YouTube/streaming and completely overwhelming choices everywhere it’s no surprise to me that people struggle to focus and avoid distraction.

The disadvantages of ADHD are overwhelming. It is known that a disproportionate number of prisoners, drug addicts and alcoholics have ADHD; people with ADHD have, on average, poorer health due to a numb of comorbid physical and mental health conditions, and they do less well in school and in their career.

Day-to-day, there can be a few plus points such as creative thinking, pattern-matching skills and fast decision making. They are minor in comparison the disadvantages.

In the end, having clinically significant struggles are part of the diagnostic criteria so I would expect anyone with a diagnosis to be experiencing very significant disadvantages.

Sorry but I think this is a load of rubbish. It doesn't make any logical sense in terms of evolution. If something was adaptive at that time of our development as a species, it would be present in the majority of people, not a minority. Something being a minority generally means that it's a genetic mutation or extreme end of a norm which isn't disadvantageous enough to have screened itself out of the population. Russell Barkley also points out that you can get de novo ADHD (where there's no parental history, so it's just a fresh mutation) and this would explain the prevalence rate over time.

Not everything genetic is an adaptation, and classifying ADHD as being high energy and hyperfocus is a huge oversimplification. (Also quick decision making? Have you met an inattentive ADHD person? )

Of course you can frame it as advantageous if you're going to single out miniscule parts of the issue, but it's about as accurate as saying everyone with autism is good at maths. Plus there are already roles in our society which fit this stereotype - in fact, many of the roles which are like this (emergency workers for instance) have a higher number of people with ADHD - and yet they are still diagnosed with ADHD, and being diagnosed means impairment. If ADHD goes away when you have the right job, then it should not be possible for people to be diagnosed with it if they are in that situation that they are supposedly perfectly adapted for.

I don't know where this idea comes from that everyone works in a job which is sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day - there are relatively few jobs like that, certainly there are plenty of jobs which are NOT that.

I suppose many are looking at this thread and how life back in the past was better for those who are ND from the higher functioning end of ND. Those who were late diagnosed or able to cope in mainstream or able to cope in education provision with the right support in place.

There have always been those on the more severe side of ND. Unfortunately those people would have been in asylums or squirreled away from the outside world in the past.

I would say there was more space and job opportunities for people with higher function ND in the past than nowadays. There were lots of jobs working solely with animals - caring for farm livestock ect. Lots of jobs that required minimal human interaction or only purposeful human interaction. Lots of repetitive jobs that once learned are easy to do and don't require lots of multi tasking. Small cottage industries which had small workforces with often only the family working in them - cloth making. Plenty of jobs where heavy work is integrated as part of the job - lifting/ pushing/ pulling ect in turn providing that sensory regulation. Lots of jobs had a predictable routine to them that the modern "fast pace work environment" doesn't. Making jobs in the past more ND friendly.

Life was slower, more predictable and quieter. There were less people around in the past.

I have heard this too and it makes sense to me. Also, the ability to ‘multitask’ possessed by some people with ADHD can make us really useful. I can get an awful lot done in a very short space of time if I’m motivated enough and hyperfixated. I’m also freakishly calm in a crisis- like almost nothing surprises or shocks me- I don’t know for sure that’s a feature of my ADHD but I’ve read that it could be.

I can’t work in an office environment for several hours a day. I can’t focus in that environment and very quickly become distracted.

I can also get glued to my sofa for 4-5 hours staring at a tiny screen so I would say that smartphones are one aspect of modern life that can make things harder for people like me.

So I do think some ADHD traits can be exceptionally useful but that our modern world isn’t really structured in a way that’s helpful or manageable for people with ADHD.