ADHD: Illness and Normality
So, last week I posted my three-part story about discovering I have ADHD. I titled it "I have a mental illness" because I wanted to convey the impact of the realisation that I'm not, and will never be, like everybody else.
I want to rebalance that idea a little before moving on with this series of posts, because although ADHD people are fundamentally very different from those without ADHD, these are really quantitative rather than qualitative differences - the problems I struggle with affect all of us at least occasionally. It's only the degree and frequency of the occurrences that make ADHD different from "normal" mental functioning.
Like autism, Aspergers and several other disorders we've only recently started to understand, ADHD is a spectrum disorder. It presents in a wide range of degrees of severity, and with different combinations of symptoms. It's only called a disorder because there is strong evidence for a genetic/biochemical cause underlying all these symptoms.
There's a strong argument, supported by a loud and vocal community, for avoiding the medical categorisation of ADHD as a disease or a disorder entirely. Its proponents claim that ADHD is merely a difference between people, a different way of seeing and dealing with the world which our society just needs to learn to cope with. Often this argument is driven by those with fears about the consequences and side-effects of medication for ADHD, particularly in children.
Actually, I'm pretty much entirely behind this argument. After all, ADHD is estimated to affect 5% of children and recent evidence indicates that those symptoms generally continue into adulthood. 5% of the population is a lot of people.
The problem with "learning to cope with" ADHD individuals comes when the environment just cannot, or at least will not, be altered to fit our needs. The reason why I support the medical diagnosis of ADHD is that the established methods of learning, working and communicating we have grown used to in modern society just do not always work for someone with ADHD.
This is especially the case for children, where regular classroom routine can become a huge problem for ADHD students with short attention spans, serious distractability, an often violent and unpredictable response to boredom and repitition, and great difficulties sitting still.
Adults can choose a lifestyle that fits their special characteristics, in which case the "just different" tag works just fine. Children rarely can, and getting special allowances made for them requires that ADHD be taken seriously as a condition.
What's more, for children and adults with ADHD, it's important to be able to identify the causes, and therefore the specific manifestations of the condition, so as to plan and target strategies for working with it.
I'm not going to talk about medication on here, at least yet, because I don't plan to use it. I believe that with good information, observation and strategy, I can work with - and indeed benefit from - with my condition in pretty much every aspect of my life. In the future, if and when I feel ready to ask for a medical diagnosis, I may keep a small reserve of medication in case of situations where I absolutely cannot shape my environment to fit my differences.
To return to the point of these posts, it's a fact that everybody struggles with distractability, inattention, procrastination, boredom and disorganisation at least some of the time, and it's hampering many people from achieving all the things they're capable of. This is particularly true since creativity and independent-minded intelligence so often go hand in hand with some degree of ADHD, or at least aspects of the spectrum.
I've spent half my life developing strategies to deal with these problems, (even without knowing why they were so severe), and a great deal of time seeking out the best information from other people with the same problems - ways to make oneself more productive, beat procrastination, organise oneself better in all kinds of simple ways. I'm going to share them here, in the hope that they'll be of use to others who are trying to achieve amazing things with their lives.
I want to rebalance that idea a little before moving on with this series of posts, because although ADHD people are fundamentally very different from those without ADHD, these are really quantitative rather than qualitative differences - the problems I struggle with affect all of us at least occasionally. It's only the degree and frequency of the occurrences that make ADHD different from "normal" mental functioning.
Like autism, Aspergers and several other disorders we've only recently started to understand, ADHD is a spectrum disorder. It presents in a wide range of degrees of severity, and with different combinations of symptoms. It's only called a disorder because there is strong evidence for a genetic/biochemical cause underlying all these symptoms.
There's a strong argument, supported by a loud and vocal community, for avoiding the medical categorisation of ADHD as a disease or a disorder entirely. Its proponents claim that ADHD is merely a difference between people, a different way of seeing and dealing with the world which our society just needs to learn to cope with. Often this argument is driven by those with fears about the consequences and side-effects of medication for ADHD, particularly in children.
Actually, I'm pretty much entirely behind this argument. After all, ADHD is estimated to affect 5% of children and recent evidence indicates that those symptoms generally continue into adulthood. 5% of the population is a lot of people.
The problem with "learning to cope with" ADHD individuals comes when the environment just cannot, or at least will not, be altered to fit our needs. The reason why I support the medical diagnosis of ADHD is that the established methods of learning, working and communicating we have grown used to in modern society just do not always work for someone with ADHD.
This is especially the case for children, where regular classroom routine can become a huge problem for ADHD students with short attention spans, serious distractability, an often violent and unpredictable response to boredom and repitition, and great difficulties sitting still.
Adults can choose a lifestyle that fits their special characteristics, in which case the "just different" tag works just fine. Children rarely can, and getting special allowances made for them requires that ADHD be taken seriously as a condition.
What's more, for children and adults with ADHD, it's important to be able to identify the causes, and therefore the specific manifestations of the condition, so as to plan and target strategies for working with it.
I'm not going to talk about medication on here, at least yet, because I don't plan to use it. I believe that with good information, observation and strategy, I can work with - and indeed benefit from - with my condition in pretty much every aspect of my life. In the future, if and when I feel ready to ask for a medical diagnosis, I may keep a small reserve of medication in case of situations where I absolutely cannot shape my environment to fit my differences.
To return to the point of these posts, it's a fact that everybody struggles with distractability, inattention, procrastination, boredom and disorganisation at least some of the time, and it's hampering many people from achieving all the things they're capable of. This is particularly true since creativity and independent-minded intelligence so often go hand in hand with some degree of ADHD, or at least aspects of the spectrum.
I've spent half my life developing strategies to deal with these problems, (even without knowing why they were so severe), and a great deal of time seeking out the best information from other people with the same problems - ways to make oneself more productive, beat procrastination, organise oneself better in all kinds of simple ways. I'm going to share them here, in the hope that they'll be of use to others who are trying to achieve amazing things with their lives.
Labels: ADD and ADHD, Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Mental disorder, Mental Health
posted by Mark at
14:16
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