Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 358 posts

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#61

Post by falcolas »

rgifford wrote: post #50
adolph wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is not a in the same class as “defects of human physiology that exist or come to exist from sitting and focusing on one thing (usually alone) for long periods of time.” Here is a better definition: ADHD represents the extreme end of the distribution of several highly correlated normal traits in the human population, just like intelligence. In this case, these are inattention (specifically distractibility, poor p…

We have partially lizard brains that evolved for running distances to pack hunt. If your expectations are that we should all be able to sit for 8-10 hours a day from the time we're children, it's easy to say some percent of us have a defect. The defect -- to me -- doesn't seem to be that some percent of our lizard brains can't do that. It seems to be in our expectations.

Cool. Change society. The 5% of the population with ADHD will wait.

But while we’re waiting, we’ll do what we need to in order to survive in the society we have, not the one we want.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#62

Post by The_rationalist »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #39
nerdbaggy wrote: post #17

Seems that lots of people only think ADHD people have a hard time paying attention. If it was that simple I would be so happy. Here are just a few of the things I struggle with. - Will power. People with ADHD struggle sooooo much with will power. It’s a constant struggle with everything in life and really wears you down. - Constantly putting on a fake front pretending you don’t have ADHD. - Rejection sensitivity - Fe…

This is a great start. I’ll add some more: - Other common mental health issues like anxiety and depression. I experience both chronically, treating my ADHD is currently the only management I need, nothing else has ever worked. - Sensory sensitivity including overload, confusion, neurological disorders. Hyperacusis and auditory processing disorder are my main issues. I just learned this past weekend that tinnitus may…

How does one treat chronic anxiety?

Xanax has a miracle reputation but like all other benzos it is said to only works temporarily as a hotfix, then you build up tolerance and you go back to your baseline Pre Xanax (or worse). What is very frustrating about such explanations is that I can't tell if it exactly put you back to your pre Xanax era or if after tolerance builds up (for a same dose) you are better than before, just slightly better. If so that would make Xanax slightly useful for long term treatment.

There are also SSRIs but it feels wrong to take SSRIs for someone that just has ADHD and anxiety, not depression.

There are anxyolitics e.g l-theanine pills, ashwaganda, etc Those don't seems to work (on me) and more importantly don't work for a whole day, just a few hours max.

What else?

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#63

Post by lfowles »

lurquer wrote: post #40
nerdbaggy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. It sound stupid but it’s the truth. You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it.

> You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it. Really? How do you know that? I don’t think you can come close to relating to what a non-ADHD person knows or feels as you have ADHD.

I've heard there are some drugs that impair executive function enough to simulate bad ADHD, it's too bad they're probably not legal to for people to take to gain a sense of empathy :)

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#64

Post by mhh__ »

lurquer wrote: post #40
nerdbaggy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. It sound stupid but it’s the truth. You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it.

> You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it. Really? How do you know that? I don’t think you can come close to relating to what a non-ADHD person knows or feels as you have ADHD.

You do grow up with them though.

I'm pretty convinced that I have ADHD, will be seeing what I can do about it when the doctors are less stressed, one of the things that struck me recently is that almost everybody I meet causes me to think "wow, they're organised" - even to the point where someone who I know very well even has the piece of paper to prove he has ADHD is like a scheduling algorithm compared to me.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#65

Post by rgifford »

falcolas wrote: post #43
rgifford wrote: post #29

ADHD, diabetes, depression, anxiety, heart disease, suicide and obesity are all labels for defects of human physiology that exist or come to exist from sitting and focusing on one thing (usually alone) for long periods of time. Labeling in this way has the funny consequence of taking onus off the societal arrangement that creates these conditions. I wonder, is this an active discussion in the medical community? The e…

ADHD isn’t a modern malady. It’s been around for centuries. Just under different names. Here’s a reference from the 400’s BC: He [Hippocrates] was known to have made at least one reference to some patients who could not keep their focus on any one thing for long and had exceptionally quick reactions to things around them. He thought the cause was an “overbalance of fire over water” and recommended a bland diet that i…

Most people I know with ADHD got taken to a doctor, diagnosed, and put on medication as a consequences of their grades. I'm sure this quirk in the distribution of human psychology has existed for a long time, I just question the sudden popularity in its medicalization.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#67

Post by thonos »

reader_mode wrote: post #42
thonos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. Comments like this make me angry because it shows how much of a disconnect there is with taking ADHD serious. It's like saying to a depressed person to "just don't be sad and focus on something fun". Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impu…

>Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committed to it, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. I'm still having a hard time seeing this as a debilitating condition, I can relate to all the…

Sure we can manage without medicine (have done so for 25 years of my life) but constant struggling and arguing with yourself about small things is just not fun.

The difference is if those issues are actually becoming a problem that affects your day-to-day life vs just a mild annoyance. When you can’t get your task at work done because you just really don’t care about it for example. Or when you again throw out your entire salary into this weeks dumb hobby that you are fully convinced isn’t just a phase.

It’s also worth noting that adhd is a spectrum and not a binary condition. Some people have more problems in some things while some other people struggle with something else, or have it very mild.

When I take meds I actually don’t feel any different. It’s just easier to stick to things and in more mentally balanced.

Funny story - I actually found out that I had adhd because I commented on a HN post about my productivity issues and someone suggested that those don’t sound normal. Even just officially knowing what’s wrong helped a lot with managing (even without meds) because I understand where these impulses are coming from for example

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#68

Post by rgifford »

dragonwriter wrote: post #55
rgifford wrote: post #29

ADHD, diabetes, depression, anxiety, heart disease, suicide and obesity are all labels for defects of human physiology that exist or come to exist from sitting and focusing on one thing (usually alone) for long periods of time. Labeling in this way has the funny consequence of taking onus off the societal arrangement that creates these conditions. I wonder, is this an active discussion in the medical community? The e…

> ADHD, diabetes, depression, anxiety, heart disease, suicide and obesity are all labels for defects of human physiology that exist or come to exist from sitting and focusing on one thing (usually alone) for long periods of time. That’s completely untrue for ADHD and Type I diabetes, and untrue for much of depression, anxiety, heart disease, and suicide. So, basically, that list is bullshit.

All of these diseases are far overrepresented in the modern world. I don't intend to say these issues don't exist regardless, just that when you setup a society of people who drive everywhere, work 55 hours a week, spend more time watching tv than they do their children, and consume large amounts of red meat and sugar you get easily explained results.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#69

Post by The_rationalist »

nickysielicki wrote: post #2

The drug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viloxazine tl;dr: It's an SNRI, like Effexor or Cymbalta.

Amphetamine stimulants are SNRI too just like some antidepressants such as Wellbutrin. What I do not understand is: they have the same mechanism of action (or at least the same consequence) but the effect is different, one mostly focus on fixing ADHD symptoms and one mostly focus on depression. What explain such a difference in behavior?

BTW unrelated but simultaneously taking SSRIs with stimulants show great results (but there are few studies) (of course don't overdose if you don't want serotonine syndrome)

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#70

Post by eyelidlessness »

runawaybottle wrote: post #30
Jarwain wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird right, because the experience _is_ something everyone goes through but for adhd individuals it is more difficult in a way that's quantifiably describable but difficult to quantitatively convey

It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. Again, been there, done that. What is one of the classic bullshit things about it again, you can ‘hyperfocus’ on things you like but can’t on things you don’t like. Gosh. Yeah that’s everyone, and everyone sucks it up and finds a way to deal with it.

Hey. You’re being a jerk. It’s making me mad. But let me see if I can help you understand.

Hyperfocus in ADHD doesn’t have to be about the focus being rewarding. It can be about the reward of getting the unrewarded thing out of the way. The exact opposite of what you’re describing, and what you might perceive as a “work ethic”, but totally absent any kind of time allotment or sunk cost analysis.

We can get hung up on something so displeasing to deal with that we cannot get it out of our heads, no matter how insignificant the resolution, and not let it go. For days, weeks, months. I’ve been through a fairly severe stretch of this recently. I hated every minute I couldn’t break out of it. But I couldn’t walk away and let the thing be unfinished, even knowing the “reward” at the end would be totally meaningless to me and the whole world.

I would even tell myself at the beginning of my day I was going to abandon these things. But I couldn’t do anything else! Things I wanted to do that I would enjoy more!

Post reply on HN