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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Threads like this are why I won’t tell people I have ADHD. Congrats on your shaming ignorance. You all suck. [/quote]

You should be mad at the people claiming to have ADHD who don’t. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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 [I]in a way that inhibits normal academic, professional, and social functioning.[/I]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

This sounds like bipolar manía and/or personality issues. That’s the problem with calling everything “ADHD.”[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.

"[i]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. [/i]" 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.

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