Anonymous wrote:Threads like this are why I won’t tell people I have ADHD. Congrats on your shaming ignorance. You all suck.
You should be mad at the people claiming to have ADHD who don’t.
This. Not one person on this thread has claimed ADHD isn't real. The question is why/how people who have a demonstrated history with high achievement that can only be accomplished via sustained executive function are suddenly getting ADHD diagnoses.
And it is sudden. Even 10 years ago, this wasn't a thing. Now I know a dozen people diagnosed with ADHD in their 30s and 40s, all with impressive resumes and graduate level educations. Of course people are going to ask questions about that trend. It doesn't make sense.
One issue is how you define “high achievement.” Someone can look like they are high achievers from the outside, but you have no idea what’s really going on.
What does that even mean?
If some successfully graduates from high school, college, and law school with good grades, passes the bar, and works successfully as a lawyer for a number of years, they have achieved difficult academic and professional accomplishments that require a fairly high level of executive functioning.
ADHD is a chronic, debilitating disorder that disrupts executive functioning via some combination of the symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. ADHD exists on a spectrum with some people struggling more than others, but in order to qualify as ADHD, these symptoms must combine to actually impact the individuals ability to function normally. While all humans may experience these symptoms in some level and combination at some point in their lives, a person with ADHD has them persistently in a way that inhibits normal academic, professional, and social functioning.
Thus, if you are able to function not only normally but at a high degree of difficulty in your academic, professional, and social life for decades, you do not have ADHD. You may have other issues. You may be burned out at work, dealing with depression, anxiety or other mental health concerns, having a midlife crisis, or simply in the wrong career or relationships. But unless you have struggled to function at school, work, and socially due to ADHD symptoms for your entire life, you don't have ADHD.
On paper, my mom is a high-achieving professional (world-class) with family and friends. But in real life, she is such a freaking mess and has always been. She is extremely cognitively gifted and hyperfocused at work. My sibling and I, are less smart, and our ADHD is much more obvious, but we've been always "googd kids", and you'd never guess that mom is a all over the place at home. When younger, there were days when she just did not come from work because she was so hyperfocused on some interesting task. I won't list all the impulsive crap she did over the years, but I was much more tame as a teenager than she was at 40. Again, none of that would be obvious, and I'd never tell a soul. My dad is also a good partner for her, he forgives her impulsivity and goes along with her ideas. That is to say, my mom struggles everywhere, but you won't know based on the achievements.
This sounds like bipolar manía and/or personality issues. That’s the problem with calling everything “ADHD.”
The problem is in giving diagnosis on the internet. She is was diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety by a professional at 60. And, given that my sibling and I were both independently diagnosed with ADHD, I’d rely on the professional opinion, not yours.
DP but as we've discussed, it can be exceedingly easy to be diagnosed with ADHD "by a professional" these days.
If your mom was diagnosed 15 years ago, I buy it. If it was within the last 5 years... it's a super trendy diagnosis and the idea of someone being diagnosed with a disorder that definitionally presents in early childhood makes me skeptical.
Who am I to pass judgment on your mom's diagnosis? No one. But don't go discussing it on the internet if you don't want people to weigh in.
Yes, my mistake of making an example of my mom. Yet, I don’t see where I invited anyone to weigh in her diagnosis?
Speaking of tbe diagnostics, the area made a big progress in ADHD detection and treatment in the past 15 years. Would you want to be examined for cancer using the current instruments or the ones that were used 15 years ago? Same here.
There has been virtually no advancement in "ADHD detection" in the last 15 years. Search for biomarkers? Failed. Comparing this to cancer is a joke. Of course cancer detection is better now than it was 15 years ago, cancer can be tested for via physical tests on bio material, and cancerous growths can be seen on scans. ADHD is diagnosed using a questionaire. Do you think today's questionnaire is groundbreakingly better than the one they used 15 years ago? It's not. In theory, a good diagnostician would also do a behavior analysis and a complete workup that examines whether there may be another medical explanation for the symptoms, but this virtually never happens when people are diagnosed as an adult. You do see this when kid's are diagnosed and it's common for physicians to observe the way the child behaves in the exam room and collect information from the child's parents about their behavior at home and at school. But with adults, doctors (or NPs as is often the case, usually people with no specialized knowledge about ADHD) simply take the word of adult requesting the prescription.
Treatment for ADHD is somewhat better than it used to be (far more options for both stimulant and non-stimulant medication, and pharmaceutical advances in how the medication is released into the system) but still very problematic. Stimulants do work but longterm studies indicate that the benefits dissipate with time, and other studies show that the side effects of stimulants are meaningful in the long term and lead many ADHD sufferers to skip or drop their meds altogether. There is also a trend of people choosing selectively to take meds when they "need" them and avoid them when they don't, which raises questions about what it means to have ADHD.
Can you point me at the discussion of the failed biomarker reasearch? I believe they found biomarkers but are not at the stage of usign them at scale.
What's wrong either the "ADHD detection" expression for you to put it in quotes?
I did a three-hour battery of tests followed by a bunch questionnaires and therapist report to get diagnosed with ADHD by a psychiatrist. I was 29.
"Stimulants do work but longterm studies indicate that the benefits dissipate with time, and other studies show that the side effects of stimulants are meaningful in the long term and lead many ADHD sufferers to skip or drop their meds altogether. " This contradcts by what my psychiatrist told me, and she's a research-practitioner.
People dropping their meds is a common problem in mental health treatment. Nothing specific to ADHD.
There are no biomarkers for ADHD. Lots of people have looked. They have studied radiographic, molecular, physiologic, or histologic markers. The only ones that returned any possibility of diagnostic value was the radiographic markers (brain scans), however subsequent, larger studies did not find discernible differences in the brain scans of those diagnosed with ADHD and those without. Likewise, early molecular and physiologic studies found that there might be biomarkers in blood cells, but the results could not be repeated on a larger scale. Scientists remain hopeful they will find a biomarker for ADHD but despite multiple studies, there is no reliable biomarker and it's certainly never been used in diagnostics at ANY scale.
And while you may have undergone a "three-hour battery of tests" conducted by a psychiatrist when you got your diagnosis, that's not required to get an ADHD diagnosis and in fact almost no one does that. I'm guess you were tested for a variety of neurological disorders at the same time. But at the end of the day, the diagnostic screening for ADHD is a fairly brief questionnaire that relies on patients self-reporting their symptoms, and the diagnosis can be made by anyone capable of writing a scrip for ADHD meds. There is not some magically improved way of diagnosing ADHD versus 15 years ago that would explain the explosion in diagnoses.
In terms of the long-term impact of ADHD medication, follow-up studies on kids with diagnosed ADHD and prescribed stimulants consistently show that symptoms recur at higher rates past the two year mark. Researchers disagree over what this means. Some believe it shows that the positive impacts of meds diminish or disappear after two years. Others believe the studies are unreliable because so many kids stop taking their meds or take them unreliably as they age, plus researchers don't trust the self-reporting of both medication habits and symptoms in these follow up studies. Either way, it appears that kids don't experience the benefits of their stimulation medication after 24 months.
You might say, well okay, that's kids. Adults are better at taking medication and more likely to truthfully report their symptoms and medication habits. Sure, maybe. There's never been a longitudinal study of adults and ADHD medication so who knows. Into this blank space has rushed a broad variety of companies and pharmaceutical companies who are happy to profit off the general malaise of the population by selling them ADHD diagnoses and drugs. I guess that doesn't bother you. It bothers me.
What bothers me is the abscence of citations in your post and many false statements. It all points at you using AI to help you craft the argument Tell your chatgpt that biomarkers are not used for clnical diagnostics but it's misleading to say there are biomarkers for ADHD. Chen, H., Yang, Y., Odisho, D., Wu, S., Yi, C., & Oliver, B. G. (2023). Can biomarkers be used to diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?. Frontiers in psychiatry, 14, 1026616., for example - the first article I found since 2020.
I suspect they got a lot of that from the NYTimes, which did a big piece that said exactly that — they did a Daily podcast about it too. It said something else too, that PP didn’t mention, which is that dx’ed ADHD individuals feel a lot better about their work/life/themselves, and they feel significantly more functional.
Anyway the research is still emerging. It’s interesting, and I’ll bet there’s more to come.
I think it is BS. I'm sorry, but if you did well in school, did well socially, got through grad school, and got through the first 10 years of a career in a tough field like law or medicine, all without an ADHD diagnosis or any medication, you don't have ADHD.
I actually think what is happening here is that people who have always achieved and been successful hit their 30s or 40s and struggle with something. Anything. Maybe they have a job where they aren't the top worker. Or they just get burned out. Maybe they have a hard time with dating. Maybe it's infertility or postpartum depression. And as people who have always succeeded at everything they do, in part because they are smart and capable and also often in part because they've had a lot of support from family and good financial situations, they cast about looking for an external reason why they aren't nailing it. And ADHD is an extremely convenient scapegoat.
I also think the medical community collaborates in this by constantly suggesting ADHD as a possible cause to any mental health problem they can't fix. I know several woman for whom ADHD was suggested to them as a diagnosis by doctors and others who don't specialize in it (GPs, therapists) when these women came to them complaining of symptoms that could be a lot of things -- anxiety, trouble sleeping, difficulty in relationships, etc.
I think it's total BS. I think they are just struggling with what a lot of us struggle with. Juggling kids and work, midlife malaise, social anxiety that sometimes gets worse as you age, etc.
And yes, ADHD meds will help you focus even if you don't have ADHD. This is why there is a black market for ADHD meds on college campuses that spikes during exam periods or when papers are due and then goes away. But as with people who actually have ADHD, the benefits also decline over time.
Looking forward to getting yelled at here. Just want to say in advance that the reason my post made you so mad is that you are worried it's true.
Not mad here. I actually understand why people think it could all be bs. It does seem like diagnoses are increasing in women. But it's hard to understand unless you are actually in it. Be grateful you're not experiencing it, PP. If you were, you would be able to see it's not bs. It's really, truly, much worse than just struggling with the day-to-day and midlife issues.
You still have not explained how a person who has clearly been extremely high functioning for their entire life with absolutely no academic, career, or social issues would suddenly have a diagnosis that is supposed to present in childhood and where the diagnostic criteria include difficulties in those areas.
How can someone who has clearly demonstrated a high level of executive functioning for several decades suddenly have a disorder that is defined by a lack of executive functioning? Explain it.
How about you give us an example of the person who had "absolutely no academic, career, or social issues"? You go first.
NP here. Find me a middle aged person WITHOUT ADHD who has had absolutely no academic, career, or social issues. You go first.
I sometimes wonder if the standard for "successful functioning" has become so high that most people can't meet it once their attention becomes divided by external circumstances - i.e. once they have kids with complex schedules AND a job, for instance. The idea that if it's really hard for you, there's something wrong with you, because for some reason you think everyone else is doing it easily, means there's something wrong with a LOT of us.
Or maybe I do have ADHD, despite being pretty successful academically and professionally when I was only worried about myself. Sure, I'm anxious and awkward too, and I need a tile to find my keys or phone on a daily basis. But i just don't really believe there's a group of people who makes it through working parenthood and middle age with ease, and the rest of us have a disorder.
Anonymous wrote:I called a lot of things bs until it happened to me too.
Feel fortunate, OP. Perhaps you won’t ever have to come to that sort of realization.
What happened to you? What is it that happens to these women who are leading objectively successful lives into their 30s, that suddenly they get these ADHD diagnoses and we're supposed to believe that actually they were struggling all along even as they managed to get through school, tough careers, and successful social lives? I truly don't get it.
I have a BIL who was diagnosed with ADHD in his 30s but when he was diagnosed it seemed obvious that he'd been struggling a long time. He didn't do great in school, had trouble making and keeping friends because some of his ADHD behaviors (which were deemed "quirks") were really off-putting, and he had a hard time holding down a job. He didn't get diagnosed earlier because he grew up when people really focused on the "hyperactivity" aspect of ADHD and didn't really understand the other ways it could present. But he had real impacts of his ADHD on his life and now he's doing much better on med.
I cannot square that with people who have been wildly successful in every aspect of their lives for decades but then claim to have ADHD. This theory about perimenopause triggering "latent" ADHD sounds like pseudoscience, I want to see some actual evidence that's a real thing.
Wait till you find out that I’m not truly celiac, but I’m so sensitive to wheat that my allergist says to act as if I am. AND it didn’t start until I was in my 30s. So I’m that person saying I have a gluten allergy even though I don’t because my body manages it that way.
Chemistry and brain structure is wild. Things can change over time. Also, it can be that some individuals manage things fairly well until an extra thing gets thrown into the mix then the coping mechanism as they used to no longer work. you can hyper focus for certain things, but be completely nonfunctional for others. Hormones, screens, aging bodies all of this can factor in
No one needs to prove or square up anything to you. You can’t understand it and that’s OK!
Off topic, but the same thing happened to me in my 50s. The explanation I was given is that wheat (and things that are made out of wheat in US) is a big offender on many fronts, not just gluten, so gluten free is just a good proxy for “no wheat”. And it is quite possible for your digestive system to get less tolerant to certain things as you age, dairy is another common one.
Anonymous wrote:I got diagnosed at 37. Things made much more sense. Found the root of my anxiety/mild depression, mood swings,high intelligence but low production. I took an adderall and my mind was so quiet I took a nap. My life would’ve been so different if I had been diagnosed as a kid. I’m still pissed about it.
All the people on ADHD meds just raise the bar for everyone else who is also struggling. Are we all supposed to be on stimulants now just to get through this hell called modern life?
Anonymous wrote:I got diagnosed at 37. Things made much more sense. Found the root of my anxiety/mild depression, mood swings,high intelligence but low production. I took an adderall and my mind was so quiet I took a nap. My life would’ve been so different if I had been diagnosed as a kid. I’m still pissed about it.
I think it is BS. I'm sorry, but if you did well in school, did well socially, got through grad school, and got through the first 10 years of a career in a tough field like law or medicine, all without an ADHD diagnosis or any medication, you don't have ADHD.
I actually think what is happening here is that people who have always achieved and been successful hit their 30s or 40s and struggle with something. Anything. Maybe they have a job where they aren't the top worker. Or they just get burned out. Maybe they have a hard time with dating. Maybe it's infertility or postpartum depression. And as people who have always succeeded at everything they do, in part because they are smart and capable and also often in part because they've had a lot of support from family and good financial situations, they cast about looking for an external reason why they aren't nailing it. And ADHD is an extremely convenient scapegoat.
I also think the medical community collaborates in this by constantly suggesting ADHD as a possible cause to any mental health problem they can't fix. I know several woman for whom ADHD was suggested to them as a diagnosis by doctors and others who don't specialize in it (GPs, therapists) when these women came to them complaining of symptoms that could be a lot of things -- anxiety, trouble sleeping, difficulty in relationships, etc.
I think it's total BS. I think they are just struggling with what a lot of us struggle with. Juggling kids and work, midlife malaise, social anxiety that sometimes gets worse as you age, etc.
And yes, ADHD meds will help you focus even if you don't have ADHD. This is why there is a black market for ADHD meds on college campuses that spikes during exam periods or when papers are due and then goes away. But as with people who actually have ADHD, the benefits also decline over time.
Looking forward to getting yelled at here. Just want to say in advance that the reason my post made you so mad is that you are worried it's true.
+1000 I was sucked into the ADHD whirlpool years ago - got put on meds, paid a therapist -I was totally talked into it when I probably had some mild depression - its a big business. Everybody wants perfection and a scapegoat for not being number one. It's ridiculous.
Anonymous wrote:I called a lot of things bs until it happened to me too.
Feel fortunate, OP. Perhaps you won’t ever have to come to that sort of realization.
What happened to you? What is it that happens to these women who are leading objectively successful lives into their 30s, that suddenly they get these ADHD diagnoses and we're supposed to believe that actually they were struggling all along even as they managed to get through school, tough careers, and successful social lives? I truly don't get it.
I have a BIL who was diagnosed with ADHD in his 30s but when he was diagnosed it seemed obvious that he'd been struggling a long time. He didn't do great in school, had trouble making and keeping friends because some of his ADHD behaviors (which were deemed "quirks") were really off-putting, and he had a hard time holding down a job. He didn't get diagnosed earlier because he grew up when people really focused on the "hyperactivity" aspect of ADHD and didn't really understand the other ways it could present. But he had real impacts of his ADHD on his life and now he's doing much better on med.
I cannot square that with people who have been wildly successful in every aspect of their lives for decades but then claim to have ADHD. This theory about perimenopause triggering "latent" ADHD sounds like pseudoscience, I want to see some actual evidence that's a real thing.
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Tell your chatgpt that biomarkers are not used for clnical diagnostics but it's misleading to say there are biomarkers for ADHD. Chen, H., Yang, Y., Odisho, D., Wu, S., Yi, C., & Oliver, B. G. (2023). Can biomarkers be used to diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?. Frontiers in psychiatry, 14, 1026616., for example - the first article I found since 2020.