ADD/ADHD Discussion

[Devia]

There's something ironic about an ADD thread containing so many walls of text...

What's truly ironic is that fact that so many people seem to consider more than 3 consecutive sentences to be a "wall of text" ...

[Streak]

That's still better then the New Autism they tried in the '80s.

Very funny. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) comes in 3-5 flavours depending on if you are looking at the DSM IV or V:

-Classic autism
-Asperger's syndrome
-Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)

And 2 others (Rhett's and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder).

Of the main 3, classic autism is considered the most severe. Characterized by severe disruptions in social and behavioral areas.

[Enedin]

Brilliant video, that.

[Tagus]

@tagus: no offense but you are dead wrong. take it from someone who has ADD.

None taken. I've never really heard someone describe what it felt like before. Reading your description, it actually sounds pretty similar to some problems I've been having dealing with people lately.

Maybe Byrthnoth is right.

[hey]

My gf keeps telling me I have adhd, and funny enough the first time she told it to me, I've never heard of it, I've heard of ADD, but didnt know it was similar to ADHD or there was even another "version" of it

There's not. ADD is exactly the same thing as ADHD. The only difference is that ADD is shorter and easier to say. ADHD is the only one that can be found in the dsm, and it has three different sub types. One of these is what you probably think ADD is, and the other is probably what you think ADHD is, and the third is a combination of the two. However, the terms ADD, and ADHD do not actually mean anything different, even though they are commonly used to refer to different subtypes of ADHD.

[Cesaria]

From what I've seen working in education - there is a very real disorder, but there's also a fucktonne of free-loading and excuse-finding that goes on on the back of the disorder's "label".

I would say I've taught a few kids with genuine massive attention problems - one in particular springs to mind who desperately desperately wanted to be "good" but just had such problems with attention and impulse control he was forever ending up in bother and you could almost see him thinking "gaaaaah fuck" when he did something wrong... desperately sweet kid underneath it all - just forever bouncing off the walls, mind all over the place and doing the first thing that occurred to him - ritalin was working for him in one way, he became a much happier child because he wasn't in bother, wasn't being demonised by some of the kids (and one particular witch of a parent and her bullying daughter) and he just seemed to have the whole cloud lifted from him - sadly there were sideeffects so I think they took him off the tablets in the end. THAT's the sort of kid I think that genuinely is affected by the disorder.

On the other hand - you've got the ones that teachers DO raise an eyebrow at. Usually incredibly badly parented, with every kid in the family "having ADHD" - completely out of control, violent, verbally abusive (both on the side of kid AND attached parent) and they're invariably claiming extra benefit (talking UK here) for having ADHD. Kids are usually the first in school when asked a perfectly reasonable request like "stop trying to stab Johnny with your pencil" to reply "I fucking can't I've got ADHD bitch." Most of us don't think they have it - they obviously have behaviour and emotional issues (often there's a complete "do what the fuck you like as long as I can hear the fucking telly" attitude to parenting with them), but not ADHD as such... nope. They're the ones who both kid and parent will use the label as a complete justification for not trying with anything - a licence to not give a shit in school, a licence to swear at anyone in a Macdonalds who dares object to their kid climbing on and standing on the table you're trying to eat your meal off (actually had that one happen to me) and the ones who give the whole situation a bad name.

Yeah you get kids who you can tell within 10 seconds of them walking in the door if they haven't had their ritalin that day (because they're like a piece of flubber bouncing all over hte place) but there is a fairly large chunk of people just pushing for a label to provide excuses for bad behaviour and I think (don't think there's a teacher out there who doesn't) that it's grossly overdiagnosed - especially when it can open the doors to extra cash from extra benefit in the form of DLA and the like.

[Dimmauk]

This video always reminded me of how ADD is sometimes, except there is no stain.

Brilliant video, that.

And so true.

[Byrthnoth]

I would say I've taught a few kids with genuine massive attention problems - one in particular springs to mind who desperately desperately wanted to be "good" but just had such problems with attention and impulse control he was forever ending up in bother and you could almost see him thinking "gaaaaah fuck" when he did something wrong... desperately sweet kid underneath it all - just forever bouncing off the walls, mind all over the place and doing the first thing that occurred to him - ritalin was working for him in one way, he became a much happier child because he wasn't in bother, wasn't being demonised by some of the kids (and one particular witch of a parent and her bullying daughter) and he just seemed to have the whole cloud lifted from him - sadly there were sideeffects so I think they took him off the tablets in the end. THAT's the sort of kid I think that genuinely is affected by the disorder.

I've definitely dealt with kids like this when I was a summer camp counselor. Their parents would take them off the meds for the summer because they didn't need to pay attention, and nothing in the world I could do would keep it for them. That said, it's difficult to tell whether having used the meds caused the problem or using the meds solves the problem. We could literally be giving our kids ADHD with Ritalin/etc.

Here's a hypothetical:
1) There's a relationship between age of entry to school and ADHD diagnosis, probably just caused by immaturity at the time of diagnosis - http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/ADHD-ADD/21720
2) When you take a medication chronically, your body adapts to its presence and compensates. In the case of an "attention increasing" medication, we would expect the body's reaction to be to decrease attention.
3) If you diagnose someone with ADHD and medicate them for whatever "too long" is, then take them off the medicine, they may end up worse than they started. You could theoretically induce ADHD in an otherwise normal kid that was diagnosed due to immaturity.

Personally, I don't believe we understand the science behind attention well enough to medicate people safely, and I'm not sure ADHD is really a problem with the "attention system" as much as the "motivation system." It looks to me like we just take X% of the kids that pay attention the worst and diagnose them with ADHD.

[Weeks]

There's not. ADD is exactly the same thing as ADHD. The only difference is that ADD is shorter and easier to say. ADHD is the only one that can be found in the dsm, and it has three different sub types. One of these is what you probably think ADD is, and the other is probably what you think ADHD is, and the third is a combination of the two. However, the terms ADD, and ADHD do not actually mean anything different, even though they are commonly used to refer to different subtypes of ADHD.

Stop quoting the DSM like it means anything.

Actual ADD/ADHD are pervasive disorders. You don't only have them when you're uninterested in what you're reading/watching. There's enough in the OP to rule out the diagnosis if a doctor knows what he's doing. Stimulants may still help the kid focus (And, more importantly to be honest, keep him from being a distraction in the classroom), but they're still being mis-prescribed.