Do you think ADHD is real?

Anyone interested in ADD or ADHD should loook up asperger's syndrome

Many kids are
mis-diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, and they acutely have this. The thing is aspergers is a mild form of autism, it is not like other autism, it is very mild, so the child is just thought of as shy.


ADD refers more to a general personality type in my opinion,
I was told I had ADD, but In reality I believe I really had asperger's syndrome.

And to any parents considering any sort of ADD medication, don’t.
Ritalin and Adderal are basically controlled doses of Meth, not worth it to do it your kids.
I took ritalin for many years and it will fuck with you.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/tc/aspergers-syndrome-symptoms

 

Adderal and Ritalin aren't "controled doses of meth."

Look up the molecule for Adderal. If you have any knowlege of chemistry one of the first things you'll notice is that the Nitrogen molecule in the amine has no methyl group. Adderall is related to the phenethylamine family, which does include methamphetamine, but it is not giving your child meth. As for Ritalin, the substance is much more complex than methamphetamine. Although the chemical is Methylphenidate, that does not make it equivlent to meth. The chemical is named that because of the METHYL (CH3) group on the oxygen.

Even though both these substanses are related to amphetamines they are still able to help people. Childern on Adderall performed better on mathematics tests, and the stimulants increase attentiveness and show a decrease in impulsivity.

Most doctors recomend ADD patients try at least two stimulants before moving to other options. Of these, the only approved non-stimulant ADD medication is Stratera, which is an NRI and not at all related to crystal meth.

 

It depends on what you mean by "real". sure there are kids that have troble paying attention and focusing in school, but its not a disorder. It's called an overactive imagination. It's all part of human/genetic variance.

 

well, as far as the rality of ADD is.
as far as my own personal experience, I've found that the medication really does help with learning. after i started taking concerta it would help it me learn so much better in a classroom setting. it's not just giving kids drugs so they'll be have, it really does help with people who have dificulty learning in a classroom setting.

if you think your child would have problems with classrooms, you should at least get him checked out so they can properly diagnose him (if it's at all necessary that he be diagnosed with anything)

 

Well, yeah. Clearly these medicines help people learn better. They are stimulants. Amphetamines. But that doesn't mean they are good for you.

 

I saw a statement in this thread to the effect that a beating will cure dyslexia..? Wrong.

I never even knew I was dyslexic until I caught myself switching things around backwards while reading in my 30's. When I was growing up, abuse was plentiful.

I work in psych...
Some kids genuinely do well on adderal, concerta, & other substances...

But, I see a lot of kids that simply need to go ride their bikes for a few hours every day. That's what is not happening.

The system is bogged down.

I work in a for profit hospital.
Many there are not interested in whether or not the child is properly diagnosed. Of course your kid is hyper, they've been locked in a facility for weeks!
Many of our patients get prescribed stimulants that are supposed to help them focus for school. You can tell it isn't working when the child can't keep their eyes on you long enough to let you finish a sentence.
Turn off your television... Teach your children about predators. Question them about what you taught. If they can answer your questions, let them go outside and run around!
I meet parents so frightened by what they see on the evening news that they will not allow their ten year olds out of their yard.

As for actual add, adhd... I do believe that they exist, but there are far less cases than are diagnosed IMHO.

The biggest problem in parenting today is a lack of willingness and time to spend with the children. These kids are sat in front of the television and video games and fed sugar. Both parents are working full time, or worse, there is only one very overwrought parent... This economy is making it worse... The idiot box becomes the babysitter. The kid never leaves the property. The kid then becomes impossible to control...

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening.

 

I think it's real, but I also think it's preventable.

I think parents have changed the way they raise their kids, and the food supply is loaded with crap that's not even meant to be eaten and I think changing both of those would change the number of cases there are.

 

The existence of ADD has been proven. It is no longer debatable, except among people who aren't aware of the conclusive medical studies.

At Wake Forest University's Bowman Gray School of Medicine (a few miles from my house) studies were done a few years ago with a PET (positron emission tomography) scanner to map human brain activity. High and low levels of activity are color coded on the published images. When you compare a "normal" brain to an ADD brain engaged in the same mental task, there are obvious differences. The ADD brain shows much more variation between "hot spots" and semi-dormant areas. When the ADD patient is given an appropriate stimulant and scanned again an hour later, the patterns have changed to closely match those of a normal brain.

 

I've been very resistant to 1) ADD and ADHD diagnoses as well as 2) drugs for what I call "social or personality problems."

The school wanted to my son and every single other male child in his K-5 class on drugs and hold them back. EVERY child! I thought that was utterly ridiculous.

It turns out that particular teacher had all three of her own kids on drugs. Family drugging is something I'm seeing more and more of. One person in the family will get on them and before you know it they all are.

The school tested my son for "distract-ability" against my firm wishes. He did NOT test for it. Ha!

Now, in my family people often have strange or opposite reactions to drugs. My mother went off the deep end after my daddy died. She resisted drugs but finally was convinced to take an anxiety med.

That turned out to be her gateway drug. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say she has been on every single anti depressant and anti anxiety med on the market for the past 20 years. She currently is on more drugs than I can keep track of and frankly I don't want to keep track anyway.

Drugs are her weapon of choice to attempt to kill herself. So it seems counter intuitive to give her more and more. Her weight has gone dangerously low and then dangerously high due to the drugs. She wants to die even now, twenty years later. I can't count the number of attempts she has made. She has been diagnosed with every single mental disorder that is connected to depression. She has drugs to get up and drugs to go to sleep. It sucks.

When my girl was in 6th grade she refused to go back to school. She'd read that she could drop out in the handbook by simply not going. She was too young to drop out but the book failed to mention that.

I took her for counseling. The counselor was against homeschooling. Said my girl had severe depression and was ADD. She gave me a book about ADD. At that point I found that anyone I knew well enough to evaluate according to the book was in fact, also ADD. That seemed like waaaaay too many people.

The doctor wanted to use drugs. She also felt homeschooling would add the depression and problems. Probably because parents, especially mothers are always considered THE PROBLEM.

The doctor tried to strong arm me but it didn't work. Later she was shocked by my girl's complete turn around from depressed to happy upon beginning homeschooling.

Okay, fast forward six years later, I'm tired of seeing my girl struggle with time and organizational issues. I'm tired of seeing her struggle against her own nature. She is about to start college. She has a four year scholarship dependent on her GPA. She is in the honors program. I took her for evaluation. She was finally willing and so was I.

She is now on Strattera. It seems to be helping. She seems happier. She loves college so much. Recently she was also put on an anti anxiety drug, very low does of zoloft. I'm terrified about all this. Still it seems to be doing her some good.

She is NOT a zombie like so many others seem to be whilst drugged. She is loving her life and excelling with less heartbreaking effort!

I'm keeping a close watch though. So is she.

 

This may be true, but I know many people who do not "have" ADD who have gotten their hands on Ritalin or Adderall and used it to help them study. Just because something helps doesn't mean it is necessarily "curing" or "fixing" some "problem". It just helps people focus, some people ave an over active imagination, but that's not a disease or a disorder, its a gift.

 

my brother in skool hes 8 the called him troubled they labeld him as add an THEY WERE WRONG he had a hormone problem , YES hormones at 8

 

To define the individual mind is difficult enough without the medical industry's inability to acknowledge that we have so much yet to discover. The terms ADD and ADHD are used far too often to shrug off a range of both simple and complex mental states. When you look at all the people who have been labelled as such you find such a range that it is ludicrous to think they all have the same 'condition'. And more often than not, it is not an issue at all.
"She's not crazy - she's a dancer!"

 

very well said. just wondering, but how is it that i seem to see your posts so often and you've been on since 05 and only have 500 something posts?

 

Traits of ADD/ADHD [not unlike any other psychological disorder] can be found in any human. When symptoms such as inattentiveness and hyperactivity affect the organism's functioning in society it becomes a disorder. ADHD is a common misdiagnosis for other disorders such as [mild] bipolar disorder, and even certain autistic spectrum disorders [specifically asperger syndrome].

Some Psychologists/neurologists have said that ADD/ADHD should be considered to be autistic spectrum disorders....

I was diagnosed with somewhat sever ADHD when i was about 16, and have been taking stimulants off and on since then [i've been off of them for something like a year]. the first day i started Concerta it was like the flip of a swich; my best friend for about 8 years at that time saw me sit completely still for the first time ever...he thought i was hilarious.


ADHD has caused me a great deal of suffering over the years [i don't want to get into it all, but it made school a living hell, and gave me strong feelings of inadequacy]. I feel that MY psychiatrist explaining this to my father [as 3 or 4 therapists in the past have] helped him to understand that i wasn't just being lazy [most of the time ].

MY POINT: if you think it's fake, you don't have it...
i mean, it's possible for people with add/adhd to learn to function properly without treatment, but it helps a lot. the diagnosis in-and-of itself helped me out a lot [though i had always suspected that i had it]



for the record, i got up to do other things a few times while writing this post...

 

thanks for reminding me that the American medical system is a fucking three ring circus...

it's also important to note that just because someone has a disorder doesn't mean that they are that disorder; it has been said that there is no typical case of skitzophrenia, but there defiantly is the archetypal schizophrenic. i would say the same is true for ADHD. It's just a list of symptoms that can be treated by a number of medications.


and for the record, i would rather be me with a short attention span than somebody else who could focus for hours...

 

I appreciate being noticed. I am not sure if any posts have fallen off but I don't think so. I just had a good few years' hiatus and only started posting again within the last 5 months or so. I guess you see me around because I flit from topic to topic as they appeal to me!

 

yeah...i lurked on here for two years or so, you can see my join date, and i only had one post or so, then didn't really start posting til this summer. not sure why...

 

I completely understand!

 

Update, the zoloft made my girl suicidal. So she got off of that.

The strattera is still doing her good when she remembers to take it.

She did well in her first semester of college.

 

The issue with ADHD and diagnosis seems really weird to me. At 5 my brother was diagnosed with ADHD and had it really bad throughout grade school, but when he was in his early 20's it seem to have disappeared except at times when he was really tired or sick. I think diagnosing children with ADHD has been so overblown that doctors think that some aspects of normal childhood behaviour (lots of normal children can't sit still or pay attention) are abnormal and can be cured with Ritalin.