Denial about ADHD

This week: A guest post from ADHD coach Cynthia Hammer, founder and former executive director of Seattle-based non-profit ADD Resources (click here to visit her blog, “Pinnacle Coaching”).

I’ve always enjoyed Cynthia’s personal essays (look for more to come), and we both appreciate the thoughtful perspectives of Judith Warner, who writes the “Domestic Disturbances” column for The New York Times.
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Do you ever get discouraged about all the bad and inaccurate press about ADHD? That it is a condition that doesn’t exist? That those of us who have ADHD are seeking the easy way out by taking medicine or that we parents give dangerous medicine to children for a made-up condition?

I just finished reading an article by Judith Warner, a columnist for The New York Times who planned to write a book on these kinds of topics, but she kept putting off writing the book—and she finally realized why. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, the headlines this week may not come as news to us. But, following the recent ADHD Hall of Shame entry, science-based reportage comes as welcome relief. The following news sources, among others, report the latest study by NIDA Director Nora Volkow and colleagues showing that, well, ADHD is real. Read all about it.

Here’s a sampling of the breaking headlines, followed by the press release from the researcher:

• BBC News: ADHD Brain Chemistry Clue Found
  US researchers have pinned down new differences in the brain chemistry of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They found ADHD patients lack key proteins which allow them to experience a sense of reward and motivation. Read the rest of this entry »

Introducing: The ADHD Hall of Shame, a new ADHD Roller Coaster department.

Inaugural inductees: HBO show host Bill Maher and his guests Arianna Huffington, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). Two liberals and two conservatives who could agree on one thing only: It’s okay to bash ADHD.

“Paddling a child is inhumane but drugging a child is the way to go?” began an indignant Kingston (R-GA), implying that there’s nothing about ADHD that a good whupping won’t cure. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, I’m preparing a presentation for the CADDAC conference on ADHD in Toronto May 30-31. Here’s the description from the program:

“When The Acorn Falls Close to the Tree: Parenting when Both Parent and Child Have ADHD”

Your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, you’ve learned that this condition is highly genetic, and now you wonder: Could ADHD also be an issue for you and/or your partner? Even well into adulthood, ADHD can present challenges in staying organized, managing time (and mood), and maintaining the routines that stabilize and nourish a family. Learn how unrecognized ADHD symptoms in a parent can affect parenting skills and focus on strategies for success.

My desk is awash in copies of studies and articles on how ADHD in a parent affects the child. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to know that when a parent has difficult ADHD challenges in organization, initiation, motivation, and mood regulation, it doesn’t bode well for the child — especially if the child has ADHD and similar challenges. But here I am at my desk, trying to parse the studies in this area. Along with anecdotes and years of observations, it’s good to have data. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, I feel like Gilda Ratner’s character Emily Litella. No, it’s not because I’m mishearing “Youth in Asia” for “euthanasia” or “presidential erections” instead of “presidential elections.” Instead, I’m listening to news and analysis about the federal “stimulus package” but in my mind I keep hearing “stimulants package.”

Now that’s an odd thing, you might say. But consider this: Only one in 10 adults with ADHD in the U.S. are thought to be diagnosed, and only one-tenth of those adults are pursuing treatment. We also know that adults with unaddressed ADHD symptoms earn less, are more likely to be underemployed and unemployed, and are more likely to file bankruptcy and for divorce. In other words, many of these adults — 10-30 million Americans in all — stand at the very edge of our widening financial abyss. And their partners and children stand with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Is ADHD a modern “invention,” created by computers, fast food, or even…Big Pharma? Recorded history says no. In fact, a recently discovered medical text from 1798 describes, in some detail, disorders of attention, including the observation that some are likely hereditary.

Physician Alexander Crichton (pictured right, at his Cambridge University graduation) provided the first known medical description of disorders of attention in his three-volume medical textbook. Moreover, “he certainly deserves credit for being the first to describe adults with attention disorders,” says ADHD expert Russell Barkley, Ph.D., writing a commentary about Crichton’s work and its modern relevancies in the February issue of The ADHD Report, a newsletter that follows research and trends in the field of attention disorders.

Until the discovery of Crichton’s three-volume textbook (by the two Washington University researchers who wrote a paper introducing it), most medical historians acknowledged physician George Still as providing the first description of symptoms of what we today call ADHD, in children.

Specifically, in his lectures before the Royal Society of Medicine and later writing for the medical journal Lancet in 1902, Still Read the rest of this entry »

A physician with the World Anti-Doping Agency contends that ADD (as he calls it) is being overdiagnosed in major-league baseball. More importantly, it is over treated with medication. On what does he base this? The fact that he has rarely diagnosed the condition throughout his career.

Fail to see the logic? Me, too.

Just when I think this blog can move on to topics other than ADHD medical treatment, another flagrant show of ADHD ignorance makes the headlines. Being a big believer in speaking truth to misperception, I just can’t let it pass.

Besides, it’s pretty good timing. You know those physicians-in-denial-about-ADHD that Dr. Charles Parker wrote about last time? This physician serves as a good example. Read the rest of this entry »

We hear quite a bit about people who are “in denial” about their ADHD. But there’s a flip side to this phenomenon: An adult with ADHD dealing with denial in friends and loved ones who simply refuse to “believe” in ADHD or that this adult has it.

I just reviewed my friend and fellow blogger Bryan Hutchinson’s list of his 11 most popular posts for 2008. I enjoyed each in their original posting, but the one on facing this aspect of denial strikes me as particularly useful.

Like Bryan, I often hear from adults diagnosed with ADHD who can’t understand why others rail against their diagnosis. Bryan offers a list of what he considers the 10 most common reasons.

If you have ADHD, has this kind of denial been a problem for you? If so, how did you deal with it?