CLOSED, GO AWAY!

Post Reply New Topic

Maybe what's screwing up my life is actually just a psychosomatic phantom. Wouldn't that be hilarious!

Yes, it's really a disorder, given what a disorder is. It causes people real problems, and often real pain. ADHD often leads to comorbids such as depression and anxiety because getting things done is so difficult that one is left facing failure over and over again. It means not being able to organize your life and your home in ways that you might want to. It means that those who drive are much more likely to get into accidents, and those accidents will cause more damage, more injuries, and more fatilities than accidents NTs get into. While I think I understand what you're saying about society stigmatizing difference, I think ADHD is most emphatically not the place to place your pulpit and sermonize from.



Medications don't make me more normal. They make me more capable. As in with medications I can finish what I start, I can clean up my living area. When I first started Ritalin I got so many things done in one day that typically it would have taken me at least a week to work through the list. Taking these meds isn't being "drugged up." Nor does treatment involve "brainwashing."



But why express that disrespect in a fashion that minimizes the real struggles people with ADHD face. ADHD is a massively impairing condition, more than just about any other disorder treated on an outpatient basis. Trying to paint those diagnosed with it as victims of a psychiatric profession overly enamored of stigmatizing and pathologizing people seriously misses the point.



This is vastly oversimplified. ADHD is not just a difference, or at least it is a difference that causes significant problems for those who have it.

Something can be a disorder and a natural variation at the same time. Lots of disorders are that way--they aren't the result of damage; they're just the extreme end of a range. Like, there's a range of reading ability, all the way from the kid who learns to read at two, to the person who can only barely write his own name as an adult. And, even in the "dyslexia" end of that reading-ability range, most people don't have brain damage, nor do they have some sort of genetic disorder; they are just on the really low end of that natural variation in reading ability. Autism is another example: Most of the time, there aren't any genetic disorders or brain damage; you just have a continuum. The extreme end of the continuum of cognitive ability is the large proportion of cases of mental retardation--a low IQ, problems in daily life--that come without any associated genetic disorder or brain damage. ADHD is, most likely, the extreme end of a spectrum of executive control ability; it doesn't represent brain damage or a genetic glitch, but it's just the extreme end of the range--so extreme that it causes impairment and thus is a disorder.

We tend to think of people as either "healthy" or "sick" but in reality it's not as simple as all that. It's more like: There's a lot of variety, and some combinations of traits cause more problems than others. The ones that cause enough problems that you need outside help for them, those are the ones we call "disorders". However, they are still part of human diversity, and diversity itself is a good thing.

What people with ADHD have, everybody has to some degree. That's why people so often respond to an ADHD person's complaints of distraction and disorganization with, "Yeah, that's normal; it happens to me too." The difference isn't a matter of the presence or absence of those traits--it's more a matter of degree. Once they get bad enough that you need help, we call that ADHD. In one way, maybe that's a good thing because it gives the NTs a little bit of insight into what it's like to have ADHD when they realize they've locked themselves out of their house, are getting stir-crazy at the office, or double-booked themselves for appointments. On the other hand, it can backfire when that NT assumes that someone with ADHD has the same level of trouble they do, when in reality of course it's much more intense and much more of a problem.

What if you taught yourself to read at 2-3 but can barely write your name as an adult?

I say it is simply over diagnosed because as a parent, I've seen so many kids who only have trouble in class, or only in one subject, or only with one teacher, be taken to the doctor for ADHD meds at the suggestion of the teacher.

It's also absurdly easy to get dx'd with ADHD in many places. When my oldest son was dx'd with it, all I did was fill out a form and have his teacher fill out a form. Then we got the script for Ritalin. This was in a large city at a pediatrician's office who was affiliated with the medical school, not some backwoods place like I'm at now. With my youngest son, I told the doctor that I thought he had it and said I'd like to try something to help him.

There is a difference between trying a med to control a reported symptom and a dx, but in both cases, the dx was written down on the chart. ADHD and the meds for it have become, in many places, the "trouble with school" treatment. I don't think it's laziness on the part of the parent or the teachers in most cases. I feel that they truly do want to help the kid concentrate better and reach their full potential, and they do feel that meds can help. I don't in any way put it in the same catagory as "Give Johnny a Benadryl so he will take a nap and I can relax and watch my stories".

When my younger daughter was having lots of trouble in school, and my younger son was trying ADHD meds for the first time, her teacher (who had had him the year before and knew he was trying meds) suggested that we try her on them too. She said that it can run in the family. So we did. All that was involved was going to the nurse who we saw at the time instead of a doctor, saying "Hey Miss Jane, she's having some trouble in school too and I want to try the meds on her". She promptly wrote the script, took it to the dr to sign, who signed it without ever seeing my child clinically - only seeing them around enough to know who they were - and so it went down on her chart. It also didn't work because she doesn't have ADHD. I d/c'd the meds after a couple months because it was obvious, and that was that. Until I switched doctors several years ago.

I never liked taking my kids just to the nurse (ped CRNP), instead of a ped, and when we got a new neighbor who opened an office here who was a GP, meaning he had experience with peds as well as other areas, I made an appt to talk to him and did, then decided to switch. I finally had a choice in doctors. The first time I took them there, he asked about both kids ADHD. I told him that on DS the meds made him nervious but he was doing ok without them, and that DD didn't have it apparantly. Not long after that, I read about Vyvanse so I took DS back and asked to get a script for it. Works great. But ADHD is still on DD's chart because the CRNP wrote it down. Dx'd without having it.

There are also lots of mothers around here who take their kids to the dr, say they have ADHD, and ask for adderall IR. They get it. Of course at first it's 10mg, then it's titrated up after a month or two and eventually the kid is "on 30mg". When the kid is not. The mom keeps one out and gives the kid a quarter of it before his ADHD clinic visit every three months so it shows in the urine. They usually sell them or take them themselves. It's very, very common, and the kid has an ADHD dx on the chart. With younger kids they only get up to the 10mg but with teens, they can get up to 30's twice a day after a while. I don't have the heart to inform my neighbor of this, I think it would dissillusion him and he's ridiculously happy in the rural setting and has all sorts of unrealistic assumptions about the people.

Yes, the cosmic joke, as it were, would be on us.

What I really need is 22 hours of sleep a night and a security job at a cardboard fabrication plant. Then I could go without meds for ADHD; no problem.

Psychomasomachism? I honestly have no idea what the hell that is and I'm too hungover to do any research right now.

Psychosomatic: It means, "of or pertaining to a physical disorder that is caused by or notably influenced by emotional factors."

It's a technical way to say, "It's your imagination..."

-When you step out of your car in drive(not put in park) and it runs down the block, driver less...........

-When you repeat back-shout out the house alarm security code to someone standing outside at the curb,(because the alarm didn't set), so the whole crime ridden neighborhood can write that code down........SSSSSSSHHHHHH WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU!

"Next time someone tells me you are smart, I'll telling them YOU'RE NOT!"

-When you try to do anything at a given time, the steps are morass of confusion. Overload and Meltdown time.

I know better than that^^ but what really happens here????????

It's serious business. I liken my life to Tommy Boy. If you don't develop a good sense of humor, you're heading to the loony bin.

Last edited by Mdyar on 24 Feb 2012, 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

A vast majority of humans.

I'm sorry, but "society" being imperfect and your brain being donkeyed up are two relatively unrelated things...they certainly don't relate in the way and to the degree you're describing here.

For a person with serious neuropsychological issues, reading/writing a rant like this surely feels good and cathartic...but if you take a second to think about it, it makes very little sense.

...This stuff is getting pretty heavy, I might close this topic...

DISCUSSION OVER.

I don't think you need to close it. Nobody is being mean about it. Just ask a mod to keep an eye on it if you want.

My son's both have/had it and I know it's real. I know the problems my younger son has with it. He even has those problems out of school. I really think that the people who say it's not real, are people who have mainly seen kids who are just badly behaved or allowed to do whatever they want and the parent/school/child/etc blames the behavior on ADHD. Some things it's very hard to control with an ADHD child. Some things are possible to control with an ADHD child.

I think the whole "not real" idea came from the mass jumping on the bandwagon of meds for kids who are having trouble in school. I think that a lot of trouble in school is blamed on ADHD when it's not ADHD. I think a lot of bad behavior out of school is blamed on it too. I don't think that ADHD neccessarily means "bad" behavior. There can be a lot of frustration with it, which is the main symptom my son has, other than not being able to focus or concentrate on things that don't interest him, and also not being able to focus that long on things that do interest him because he gets frustrated with how long it takes. Rude behavior, talking back constantly, being mean to the other kids, petty criminal behavior, those aren't really always signs of ADHD, but if that behavior is shown in schools, or if parents already suspect ADHD, then they are ready to blame it for the behavior or medicate the kid.

Yeah, the meds help you concentrate. It's speed. That's what speed does. If you give a non ADHD kid some speed he will concentrate like hell on one thing for a long time. He's gonna tweak on that one thing. That doesn't mean he has ADHD. Anybody without ADHD will do that. I've spent hours and hours on one unimportant thing, obsessively, that I wasn't really interested in, if I took some ADHD meds to help me get my stuff around here done on a low energy day. (See my post above where I talk about other moms getting and selling Adderall - my son takes Vyvanse, which isn't sellable really and I wouldn't even if it was because it helps him so he gets it every day, school or not.) Speed will make you concentrate, so therefore when they see their kid absorbed in something for hours, they assume that it must have been ADHD. Nope, that's just tweaking. Look at the overall behavior of the kid. Is he able and willing to switch from one task to another easier than before? Is he able to finish a task that is not only boring but also frustratng? Does he seem to have more patience? Can he concentrate enough to grasp all the details of a project? Does he act out from frustration overload less than before? Speed buzz doesn't do that to you.

There are many kids and adults who have ADHD and who can benefit from the meds. I think it's all now a matter of it being the norm for a parent to ask for it because they think the kid has it, or he's having trouble in school, and so they give it and it goes down on the chart. Filling out one form or asking for a script does not an ADHD dx make. There are many, many docs who do assess the child and dx them, or not dx them. The ones I've seen just don't do that though. I think that an ADHD dx should require more of an assessment than what's currently being done in many places. Although of course the parents information and perspective must be taken into consideration, as well as the teachers, some observation and testing of the kid needs to be done as well. Or the adult.

Also, some kids are just hyper and not ADHD. I was hyper. I'm still hyper. I do not have ADHD. I can focus on boring things, I can finish them. I don't do well with frustration about some things, but I can do well with it about other things. It's the AS that causes that and I get frustration overload. I think a lot of people are confusing hyperactivity with ADHD. Some kids just can't sit still. I couldn't, but I did great in school with no meds.

Well?

Why would you want to close the topic? We aren't trying to convince you, we are simply discussing it among ourselves. It's an interesting topic. What's the problem you are having with it. Many people are posting to each other, not just to you, to tell you that it's real. Lots of people think the way the guy said in your OP.