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Is ADHD over diagnosed?
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Self diagnosed? Definitely
Actually, properly diagnosed? Probably underdiagnosed actually. Friend of mine had to go through a lot of pricey hoops just to get tested in a reputable place.
It's definitely under diagnosed. 5% of the world population is thought to have ADHD. I know plenty of people around me that show serious signs of it and they have no idea. Granted I'm not a psychiatrist, but I live with an ADHD person and the similarities are striking.
If social media is to be believed, 95% of us have it
Social media is not to be believed. About anything.
I do believe that's a paradoxical statement considering where you made it.
That's the joke.
Absolutely not, the tricky thing about ADHD is that it's mostly lots of small things that everyone has or does. (Bad short term memory, executive dysfunction, rejection sensitivity, inattention, difficulty to focus, etc). People with ADHD have a lot of them all at once and that's the problem. It's a spectrum with a threshold of issues to have at once to be considered ADHD. That's why it's not easy to diagnose, it can vary wildly from person to person.
Something I've noticed hanging out in online communities is the selection bias. Sometimes everybody in a community really does have the same tendencies and characteristics.
This feels like the correct answer.
The amount of people I go on a date with and tell them I'm ADHD and they follow with, "me too" when they are obviously not, is crushing. I'm glad my learning disability is fun to cosplay for you. The juxtaposition of people I meet in wild and tell them I'm ADHD and they are like, "Oh what's that like?" as they're looking for the lost keys in their left hand or leg stemming, feels... curious.
If I could snap my fingers and not have ADHD I'd do it. People think ADHD is just being scatterbrained and hyperactive and think its at best quirky and at worst annoying but a lot of the hallmarks of ADHD cause a lot of suffering just existing in society. eg. executive dysfunction/impulsivity, emotion dysregulation (seemingly feels like your emotions are harder to control which is part of the rejection sensitivity), difficulty building and maintaining relationships, difficulty holding jobs, being unable to quiet your thoughts late at night (80% of us have insomnia/delayed sleep patterns to one extent or another) and being very prone to boredom that can often feel almost physically painful. And of course, society treats you as if your personality is shit because what people see is someone forgetting things, making bad snap decisions and generally being annoying. So a lot of us dont think highly of ourselves because thats often how we are conditioned. To think we are lazy, uncaring, annoying and thoughtless/impulsive.
I’ve also got ADHD, so I understand the struggle. But personally I think ADHD has a lot of upsides as well. People with ADHD are often really fun to be around, they have often really different perspectives on the world and see things that other people don’t, and tend to take everything in their stride. ADHD people in my experience are better at out-of-the-box thinking, handling stressful and chaotic situations, and extremely capable when they’re interested in something.
The reason that ADHD feels debilitating is because capitalist society forces us to conform with neurotypical behaviour, because conformity is more important than outcomes. If ADHD people were allowed to work their to own schedules, and allowed to focus mainly on tasks which interest them and offload things that they find boring/tedious, it would go a long way towards getting the best out of people with ADHD. If it’s handled well, they can easily outperform neurotypical coworkers, it’s just very much about harnessing the chaotic energy that we have.
ADHD feels debilitating because there are things you have to be able to do to function in any society that ADHD makes more difficult than it is for everyone else. I have to remember to take medication that keeps me alive. I have to put my contacts in or I am metaphorically blind as a bat and it feels a lot better to actually be able to see things. I have to interact with other people in an acceptable manner i.e not blurting out the first intrusive thought that comes to mind. I have to eat and drink when I should. Yeah I literally forget to do that a lot because I am engrossed in some activity or another. I have to go to sleep at a normal hour or I wake up feeling like shit because my circadian rhythm is fucked up. There are just some things you will never ever avoid doing even in a luxury space communist utopia.
And while there are some advantages to ADHD like creativity, hyperfocus and being less likely to die of obesity related diseases due to hyperactivity, it is not fucking worth all of the other stuff that caused me to want to be tested for it. Not because society forces normality on me but because I want to do a lot of stuff without having a wrestling match with my own brain.
My wants and needs are important to me and those wants and needs are often incompatible with the ADHD tribe that I was born into.
I’m not trying to say that ADHD isn’t a disability, I’m saying that the worst parts of it come from society being intolerant of our needs. You’re not lazy or selfish, you’re doing the best you can <3
god that sucks to hear.
I'm alarmed at the amount of people I met, mostly women, who are like upset when I tell them I'm not autistic. It's like they want me to be or something. They insisted I needed to get tested to be sure.
Like what is with these people wanting this to be common and wanting to get people join in like its a club? It's a genetic trait. You either have it or you don't I thought.
If multiple people seem surprised that you’re not autistic and encourage you to seek diagnosis, I dunno, maybe there’s something there? Are you a woman yourself?
Well I had the luxury of dating a psychologist who specializes in diagnoses and her brother is autistic - so she is very aware of autism and how it works and what it looks like in different people.
When I told her that random autistic girls from my comm were making this assumption she gave me the biggest eye roll and a laugh. Because duh, I'm not autistic.
Other people see you differently than you see yourself. And you wouldn't necessarily realize you were part of the autism tribe because as far as you were concerned, everyone is in the same tribe as you. You wouldn't really know what it was like to experience things with a different tribe's mental wiring. Just like I didn't really figure out that my brain literally worked differently than 95+% of the population (ADHD) until I was very thoroughly an adult.
I definitely don't think that way. I'm aware that I am different from other people.
Reposting from my other comment:
She confirmed I'm not autistic and thought it was hilarious that anyone would assume that about me. She's known me for years and she has experience in that field. She knows better than just randoms at a meet up group would.
It also doesn't help that many folks use Adderall and other ADHD meds recreationally.