SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The textbook symptoms of ADD — inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity — fail to reflect several of its most powerful characteristics; the ones that shape your perceptions, emotions, and motivation. Here, Dr. William Dodson explains how to recognize and manage ADHD's true defining features.
The DSM-V – the bible of psychiatric diagnosis – lists 18 diagnostic criteria for attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD). Clinicians use this to identify symptoms, insurance companies use it to determine coverage, and researchers use it to determine areas of worthwhile study.
The problem: These criteria only describe how ADHD affects children ages 6-12, and that has led to misdiagnosis, misunderstanding, and failed treatment for teens, adults, and the elderly.
Most people, clinicians included, have only a vague understanding of what ADHD means. They assume it equates to hyperactivity and poor focus, mostly in children. They are wrong.
When we step back and ask, "What does everyone with ADHD have in common, that people without ADHD don't experience?" a different set of symptoms take shape.
From this perspective, three defining features of ADHD emerge that explain every aspect of the condition:
1. an interest-based nervous system
2. emotional hyperarousal
3. rejection sensitivity
Not precisely news but damned if it's not an interesting read if it has any relevance in your life.
Source: https://www.additudemag.com/symptoms-of-add-hyperarousal-rejection-sensitivity/
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday March 16 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
That statement presumes that this is a condition that develops in childhood, but never in grown adults.
(Is that the case? I don't know myself.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @06:08AM
It's primarily a genetic condition that runs in families. Few conditions have a stronger relationship to genetics than ADHD. Situations where a child is diagnosed without close relatives also having it are relatively uncommon and it's usually because of a missed diagnosis.
When they go about diagnosing adults they look very carefully at what they were like as children because it's easier to spot symptoms before the patient finds workarounds for the issues. If the symptoms start as an adult with truly nothing showing up in childhood, there's usually something else going on.