ADHD Roller Coaster: "Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?"
News and Essays about Adult ADHD, with author Gina Pera
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We’ve seen the headlines and read the stories regarding a recent study on ADHD and diet. But
what is the real story behind the research? You’ll find out below. But first, a brief examination of the situation.
Increasingly, even legitimate news outlets lift stories verbatim from the press release, without bothering to ask important questions of experts not associated with the study or explaining the limitations of the study and its relative importance.
I invite you to join me in the coming weeks at Northern California CHADD meetings (Marin, 4/21; Sacramento, 5/3) to explore this topic: “Adult ADHD Symptoms or Poor Coping Strategies? Clarifying the Confusion for Adults with ADHD and Their Partners.” The public is welcome; the suggested donation for non-CHADD members is $5.
Here is an excerpt from my book (Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? Stopping the Roller Coaster When Someone You Love Has Attention Deficit Disorder) that explains why we even ask the question, “Symptoms or poor coping strategies?”
There’s a whole lot more to understanding ADHD and its broad effects on behavior than reeling off the list of symptoms. “I used to think, what kind of disorderly disorder is this?” Grace recalls. “Just when I thought my husband would zig, he’d zag.” She couldn’t understand what was ADHD and what was personality or family conditioning—or, for that matter, where ADHD ended and jerk began. “It took a few years to piece together the puzzle, but I’m glad we did,” she concludes. “Our relationship and our family life is one thousand percent better now.”
It’s true. Trying to understand ADHD can feel like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Even within one person, the traits can appear slippery and shape-shifting over time or in different circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning, I had the pleasure of fielding some great questions from Totally.com community members in this webinar. (Note; there are a couple of commercials during the hour-long session, but they are pretty short!)
When I asked Australian writer Matthew Bush to contribute a guest column on his experiences with sleep and ADHD (below), I expected a well-written and engaging piece. What I didn’t expect was a happy ending, too, and perhaps a blueprint to help others.
ADHD’s potential challenges to sleep include the behavioral (putting off sleep because anything is more interesting than lying in the dark waiting for nothing to happen) and the physiological (Restless Legs Syndrome, Sleep Apnea, dysregulated circadian rhythm, etc.). Here is a post from my other blog on ADHD and sleep. Look to the latest issue of CHADD’s Attention Magazine for my article on the topic, a prelude to a short upcoming book: The ADHD Roller Coaster Guide to Sleep. Now to Matt’s guest column!
I was the 11 year old ninja master.
I had to be awake for school in six hours.
The creaking kitchen floorboards raised the hair on the back of my neck. The house was dark. I could hear snoring.Good. Dad was a heavy sleeper and that meant mum had her earplugs in. Still, there was risk.
The adrenaline pacified me. I inhaled slowly, my pulse pounded through the swell of blood in my ears. I opened the cabinet door slowly and clicked the torch on. I was on a mission.
If I was successful, I’d take my bounty back to my room and quietly self-medicate with caffeine and carbohydrates. Then I’d curl up on my beanbag and read.
My official bedtime was 8:30. I was allowed to read for half an hour, then my dad would tell me to go to sleep. I rarely did. Eventually, my lamp and torch batteries got confiscated. That just added another objective to my mission dossier. Read the rest of this entry »
Check your local listings!
The award-winning documentary ADD & Loving It?! airs on 78 PBS stations nationwide now through the end of December. (That’s the trailer above.) This is a great time to pledge or renew your membership, and you can tell the station you’re doing so because they are raising ADHD awareness in your area.
Here’s a list of PBS stations running the show, some airdates and times included (if it’s not airing in your area, you can buy the DVD here from the TotallyADD website — makes a great holiday gift!):
Dear readers,
If you are an Amazon shopper, I would greatly appreciate your using this link when you start all your shopping excursions. That way, I will receive a small portion of your purchase costs – at NO extra cost to you. (And no, I won’t know who bought what! Your privacy is assured!)
As many of you know, my ten-year volunteer effort around ADHD awareness and education has been extensive and is ongoing. This extra bit of support helps to pay for website hosting, domain names, and the like. (It takes quite a bit of time to research and write blog posts, too!)
Just bookmark the link as “Amazon” and begin all your shopping from that link. It’s easy.
Thank you so much, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Having ADHD in the 21st Century means we enjoy a burgeoning body of knowledge as well as myriad media from which to access it. From books to blogs, videos to podcasts, there’s something for every learning style. Perhaps no one has made information available through more media types than Dr. Charles Parker. Here are some of my top picks from Dr. Parker’s YouTube Channel, with captions below each.
Summary: Why do so many people with ADHD experience problems with medication? One reason is not establishing targets before treating them. But there’s more to it….
ADHD Subset #1: “Acting Without Thinking” Many people think that impulsivity/hyperactivity is the only ADHD diagnosis and if the person is suffering from that, that’s a clear indication for medication. But impulsivity/hyperactivity represents only about 20% of the presenting issues. Moreover, it’s important to recognize that ADHD is a contextual challenge. When structure is good and variables are predictable, performance is better than when structure is poor and variables are unpredictable (think a structured workplace vs. home — just one of the reasons some people with ADHD become workaholics). In other words, just because you can focus on a video game doesn’t mean you don’t have ADHD.
ADHD Subset #2: “Thinking without Acting” : This can look like OCD if you don’t know what’s underlying this outer appearance. This is cognitive anxiety, not affective anxiety (thinking anxiety vs. feeling anxiety). You might not “feel” anxious but you might be overwhelmed with thinking. (This is often misdiagnosed as bi-polar disorder.) These folks might abhor therapy because they’re asked to think even more. (No more questions! I don’t need more to think about; my head is already about to explode!)
ADHD Subset #3: “I’m not going to think; I’m not going to act; please go away.”
Key concepts: Avoidance of self, avoidance of close relationships, avoidance of people in general (Looks like “social anxiety disorder” but the core issues are inattention and distractibility), avoidance of projects (too many unpredictable variables and lack of structure)
Call me the Paul Harvey of the ADHD Roller Coaster blog. The fact is, I knew there were “issues” with the recent widely reported research on the genetic links of ADHD, especially in the media’s coverage of it. Because I could not competently parse this complex study, however, I found an expert who could. Because her research institution requires that all information given to the media be cleared with the press office and because time is of the essence, I decided to share this expert’s comments, with her consent, by identifying her simply as a respected neurologist with significant background in ADHD research.
The published paper is reporting a genetic association between ADHD and abnormalities in CNV in some areas of the genome that have been previously associated with autism and schizophrenia.
Some comments:
The study’s lead investigator, Professor Anita Thapar, explains the important new research behind the headlines. Congratulations and gratitude go to the hardworking scientists who teased out this discovery. As for the reporting of this research, ADHD Cyber Command finds that some did better than others, especially in implying that until now we had no evidence that ADHD wasn’t caused by bad parenting or that this is the first news of a genetic link to ADHD.
What? You say you already knew that ADHD is highly genetic? Of course you did. I can’t account for the headlines, but it seems these news outlets missed a key adjective in Dr. Thapar’s explanation of her team’s research findings: direct, as in “the first direct genetic link.” But even that is being contested; stay tuned for more info on that.
Meanwhile, here’s a sampling of how various news organizations covered the study, some of them as if stuck in a time warp from, oh, 30 years ago:
Have gene findings taken the stigma from ADHD?
For the first time, evidence has emerged of genetic mutations linked to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But how strong is the link, and how far does the finding undermine claims that children with the condition are simply naughty kids, victims of bad parenting or driven to hyperactivity by dietary additives? Read the rest of this entry »
When I first started advocating for and volunteering in the ADHD community 10 years ago, the overriding goal was creating awareness that Adult ADHD exists. I figured that the next step for many of those newly diagnosed—that is, exploring medication strategies with an informed physician—would be relatively easy. Ha!
There is good reason that my book, Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?. includes three chapters on medication, including an entire chapter on the medication protocol offered by a top ADHD expert, Margaret Weiss, MD, PhD. Because, in listening to thousands of first-person stories, I so rarely encountered evidence that most physicians treating ADHD followed such a protocol. Or any protocol at all!
That’s why a chief goal in writing my book was creating a grass-roots movement to improve treatment standards. (It’s also why the book is offered in PDF form, so that readers can easily print out key pages for mental healthcare providers. The same for the details on evidence-based therapy strategies for ADHD. My book explained the details about CBT for ADHD long before you read all the headlines.)
A few weeks ago, I wrote this comment on a blog written by a man with ADHD:
You’re right, Douglas. Not everyone with ADHD needs medication. It’s a personal choice.
But when that choice is based on bad experiences with reckless physicians or a tendency to latch onto negative information (a not-uncommon tendency with ADHD), is it really a choice? I don’t think so.
I’ve been an unpaid advocate in the area of ADHD for 10 years not because I have any ties with Big Pharma (or even any stock). I do it because solid information makes a huge difference in individuals’ lives. It is appalling how often people with ADHD get substandard medical care — and don’t even know it. …
The producers at HealthyPlace read my comment and asked for an interview with me on this topic. Here is the video. I hope you find it helpful!
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