Probably over diagnosed by people self-diagnosing. Probably significantly under diagnosed officially/clinically.
And the above is true for a LOT of conditions, not just ADHD.
My daughter has a learning disability. Dyslexia and some weird kind of error with certain fine motor skills. The diagnosis from everyone? ADHD-put her on drugs. What drugs would you like? If one drugs doesn’t fix her, we’ll try two drugs.
Thank god my wife and I resisted. Nobody could explain what was going on and how drugs would fix it. I ain’t gonna lie, her elementary school days were rough. But now, straight A college student in her junior year.
I’m sure there are people looking for it, but my experience was default diagnosis by doctors and schools pushing adhd onto kids where it wasn’t appropriate.
There’s a very vague term called NLD or Neurological Learning Disorder with which I was diagnosed at the time. Iirc a big part of it is issues with fine motor skills because of bad communication between the two brain halves. Also gets misdiagnosed as ADHD quite often.
I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia as a kid which was a wildly vague fine motor skills disorder that made me near unintelligible prior to speech therapy. I still have issues slurring words from time to time, but it’s not significant.
I don’t think anyone knew what was going on with me tbh. But I def have ADHD, and there’s suspicion I’m autistic as well. I’m working on getting a neuropsych eval done now to try and understand better.
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I don’t have numbers but my personal experiences tends to show me what it’s over diagnosed, at least in California. Got many people around me that are diagnosed, with meds, and they take it as part of their identity, bringing it up all the time.
My kid talked to a therapist a few times for some minor anger issues, and he’s already talking about getting him diagnosed for ADHD. He’s the top student in his class, can focus for hours building anything he wants, is outgoing, and gets along with all his friends. He just has a few emotional outbursts at home, which don’t affect his functionality or happiness. I don’t understand the point of a diagnosis. It feels like a label would just follow him around and box him in, so we decided not to pursue.
“He’s the top student in his class”
With studying, or without?
In my experience, being top of the class without working for it is a great way to wind up crashing and burning as soon as one gets to college and suddenly isn’t the smartest in the room
Don’t know. I’m on a 2-5 year waiting list to find out 😵💫
Dang, that’s a long wait time. I hope you get some answers soon.
Cheers. Me too
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Say more please!
Mental health issues since I was 14. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression in my 20s. Been on so many medications which don’t work. Now in my 40s my wife see’s a self diagnostic for ADHD and says “you have every single one of these traits, perhaps you should mention it to your shrink” Ask my shrink who says of course we can refer you but the NHS has a waiting list of 2-5 years for an adult referral unless I go private. I’ve been waiting for a year and a half so far.
Dude, that really sucks. I wish you all the best! And thank you for sharing!
I’m not sure what the diagnosis process is wherever you’re at but here is a series of questionnaires for people in your family and yourself and your boss/teacher (depending on age) and that’s it. Super simple. I swear anyone with a photocopier and a pocket calculator could do the diagnosis.
When I had myself and my kids inspected I was shocked.
Thanks dude
For adults, it’s under-diagnosed. Because some of the most common prescriptions for it are stimulants like Adderall, there is a fear that adults are trying to scam the doctor. Additionally, and imo even more infuriatingly, doctors are apprehensive about diagnosing an adult because “you made it this far in life without needing help. You can’t be ADHD/autistic/neurodivergent.” Fuck that mentality. I’m ADHD and autistic and I don’t need a doctor to validate me when they can’t even agree amongst themselves half the time.
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Do you have any idea how hard it is to be diagnosed with ADHD?
I was diagnosed when I was 32. In order to be diagnosed, I had to go through a series of screening tests that measured intelligence, executive function, behavioral assessments, interviews with family that knew me when I was a kid, “testimony” from my therapist and other tests meant to rule out alternative explanations. eg. sleep deprivation, health issues, depression, anxiety etc. And it was expensive. Thousands of dollars and many hours. Its essentially designed to mentally tax you until the ADHD is detectable through any masking that you do.
I was diagnosed as a kid and was on ritalin and later adderal but stopped taking all that stuff after elementary school. I’m 36 now and I wonder if it’d be a major pain to get on meds again as an adult or if my previous diagnosis would still be good enough.
Yes, and no. This is an unanswerable question.
Negligence, ineptitude, and mistakes happen in every field and medicine, education, and parenting are no different.
There is pain in being diagnosed correctly just as much as there is incorrectly. The question we should be asking instead for both sides of the aisle is how do we best deliver knowledge, support, and care in the correct format to those who need it?
It can be both overdiagnosed and underdiagnosed! Both these things can be true at once:
- Some people who would benefit from ADHD treatment do not receive it.
- Some people receive ADHD treatment who would be better off without it.
One contributing factor is that people are treated differently in the contexts where ADHD is likely to come up (e.g. in schools) due to things like race, gender, and family income.
A black boy and a white girl having the same “brain stuff” going on are likely to be treated differently by teachers and parents — not only due to overt sexism and racism, not only hormonal and developmental differences, but also different cultural experiences with medicine (and medical mistreatment), different parental fears, etc.
Definitely not in women - the opposite is true.
Most definitely but also poorly defined which leads to the former
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Over diagnosed, probably. Over medicated, most definitely.
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