There is a lot of confusion and misinformation about ADHD.
Some of the most common online claims aim to discredit the condition. They diminish the impact it has on those diagnosed with ADHD, saying it creates inconvenience but nothing life-threatening.
Others go even further, sharing suspicions that ADHD is not a real condition but a temporary impairment created by social media addiction or just an excuse for people’s laziness, irresponsibility, recklessness, and lack of discipline.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
ADHD is a very real and serious serious mental health disorder with symptoms that significantly impact the everyday lives of people who have the condition. This is not an opinion but a factual statement supported by hundreds of studies.
The symptoms are even more severe for those who remain undiagnosed because they lack therapy, medical guidance, and clarity on what coping mechanisms to use. This is why getting an official diagnosis and receiving more information about ADHD is essential.
If you have even a faint suspicion of having ADHD, then it is worth listening to your hunch and considering the possibility.
What is ADHD?
ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a mental health condition that disrupts the ability to pay attention, reduces control of impulses and emotions, and impairs cognitive function in various ways.
The condition is almost entirely genetic. The person is born into it and remains with ADHD for the rest of their life. It runs in the family, which means if one or two parents have ADHD, then the chance for their child to have it is significantly higher.
There is also a small minority of people who suffer a brain injury and have what is known as acquired ADHD.
Since most cases of ADHD have a very strong genetic component, the brain differences are permanent and irreversible. Contrary to popular belief, children can’t outgrow ADHD. Still, people diagnosed as children may experience changes in how intense and persistent certain symptoms become compared to others when they grow into adults.
For example, as a child, you may struggle with external hyperactivity, which comes with physical restlessness. However, in adulthood, you may find it more challenging to cope with internal hyperactivity, like racing thoughts, anxiety, and inability to shut off your brain.
ADHD symptoms
Having ADHD can be like carrying a huge backpack because many symptoms can create challenges and problems.
- Intense craving for stimulation
- Executive dysfunction
- Inattention and distractability
- Hyperactivity
- Impulsivity
- Emotional dysregulation
- Decision-making dominated by intrinsic motivation
The Negative Impact of ADHD
Having ADHD is not a joke.
Don’t be fooled by trends for romanticization of mental health disorders, claims that give you quirky personality traits, or misleading information about the ADHD “superpowers” you may have.
Here are a few startling statistics to remember as we dive deeper into the symptoms of the condition:
- ADHD can reduce total lifespan
- ADHD increases the chance for co-occurring mental health disorders
- ADHD can lead to a higher risk of substance abuse
- ADHD can cause difficulties in your career
- ADHD increases the chance for conflict and issues in relationships
Common misconceptions
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that leads to a very specific subset of symptoms. Unfortunately, despite the scientific literature being very clear on the existence of ADHD, there are many misguided and unscientific theories that seek to discreet its existence.
For example, certain nutrient deficiencies may exacerbate ADHD symptoms, but fixing your diet won’t cure your condition.
ADHD is not a sign of a magnesium, zinc, iron, or B12 deficiency. Severe malnourishment, movement, and adequate sleep can mimic ADHD symptoms, but that doesn’t explain why there are millions of people with stellar blood work and healthy lifestyle habits who continue to have ADHD.
Furthermore, spending a lot of time on social media and the internet can worsen the symptoms of ADHD, but the condition has been reported in scientific journals way before modern technologies became an issue. Similar to the previous myth, those who spread such theories make the logical fallacy of assuming that a factor contributing to worse ADHD symptoms is the root cause behind the condition.
Those examples are some of the most extreme ways of avoiding what science says. However, sometimes people get genuinely confused because they suffer from PTSD, severe depression, and crippling anxiety and have many symptoms that feel similar to having attention deficit and hyperactivity syndrome.
This happens because many other mental health disorders have some symptoms that are similar to those of ADHD. Still, that doesn’t mean they are the same. It’s just that many mental health disorders impair and disturb the same brain regions, so symptoms overlap.
It can seem tempting to believe that “ADHD is just a trauma response,” but that’s a gross over-simplification that’s simply not true. In a small fraction of instances, ADHD symptoms may actually be a response to severe and unprocessed trauma. However, this is the exception, not the rule.
In some people, it’s not one condition (PTSD) or the other (ADHD). Those cases happen due to co-occurring mental health disorders. The problem is that ADHD symptoms could be significantly contributing to the formation of a second mental health disorder, which ends up being easier to diagnose. So, the physicians treat the symptoms but not the root cause.
In ideal circumstances, this dual diagnosis (comorbidity) dilemma is usually resolved through trial and error in treatment that ends with the mental health professionals reaching the conclusion that it could be nothing else but ADHD.
For example, if you suffer from extreme anxiety that brings overwhelming racing thoughts, you’d be administered anxiety medications, therapy, and other science-based treatments.
However, if they remain resistant to all treatments, you can explore other hidden conditions, like undiagnosed ADHD. As you will see below, ADHD impairs emotional control and increases internal hyperactivity (racing thoughts), so those two symptoms can appear as a classic case of anxiety on the surface. When an anxiety disorder is not seen as the root cause anymore, you can get diagnosed with ADHD and get the right treatment.
This illustration may seem like a very rare exception, but cases where ADHD symptoms are misdiagnosed as side effects of another mental health disorder are very common. For instance, many women who suffer from both depression and ADHD but get treated only for depression don’t see significant improvements because their ADHD remains unaddressed.
This is why there is a whole term called “the lost generation” that describes several generations of women who had symptoms of ADHD but got treated for anxiety, depression, and trauma because back then, the research and diagnosis for ADHD were almost entirely centered on men.