Reply to Adult ADHD diagnoses

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "Adult ADHD diagnoses "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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 [I]for decades[/I] 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.[/quote]

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!

[/quote]

ADHD is not like celiac. You cannot acquire it in your 30s after a lifetime of academic and professional success, maybe barring some kind of brain injury. [/quote]

One of the things that has happened with ADHD is that they keep moving the bar in order to get more people the diagnosis.

It used to be virtually impossible to get an ADHD diagnosis and access to ADHD meds as an adult with zero history of executive functioning problems. It was a childhood diagnosis and if you were diagnosed in your 20s and 30s, you'd need some kind of demonstrated history to show that the symptoms were there all along -- bad grades, other diagnoses like anxiety or depression as a child or teen, a clear pattern of poor executive functioning that had impacted your life well before seeking this diagnosis as an adult.

But then people claimed that even if you'd had no prior evidence of difficulties with executive functioning, in fact even if you had a long history of being extremely high functioning, this was just "masking" and the problems were there all along.

As someone with a kid who has ADHD and definitely masks sometimes... that's not what masking is! If my kid could mask in a way that would enable her to get great grades and succeed socially, we wouldn't be like "well, she's just masking, let's medicate her anyway." We'd be like "oh she doesn't have ADHD."[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics