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NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

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Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#21

Post by faeriechangling »

_fat_santa wrote: post #2

I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects some children, but on the other hand I realize that alot of ADHD symptoms overlap with the general nature of children, especially boys. My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD. Often times it's described as just not being able to pay…

Hmm, I’ve become less and less sceptical over time simply because I’ve seen the research on how medicating those with ADHD drops all cause mortality enough to extend lifespan by several years. It’s possible there’s overdiagnosis even still but I think people overestimate the potential scale of it, 25% overdiagnosis seems plausible to me but people act like ADHD is just all made up and a way to drug children into being study zombies because they act too much like typical children. It’s profound how often people diagnosed with ADHD, when off medication, will just kill themselves accidentally in car accidents and drug overdoses far more than the general population.

ADHD is not just labelling children with being disordered for being children. It’s labelling like the most inattentive, dysregulated, and hyperactive 5% or so of children. Children that act like 5 year olds when their peers act like 7 year olds. ADHD has been observed for centuries as well. ADHD in women tends to be diagnosed later in life and if you study certain subpopulations of women like teen mothers you will trip over ADHD and the diagnostic gap narrows with age.

There’s also evidence like.. from the OP where we can observe neurological differences. I think my main problem with ADHD is labelling something that’s probably evolutionarily adaptive (People with ADHD love having unprotected sex early in life) as a disorder and deficit, but this gets into the philosophy of medicine.

Dr. Russell Barkley is a good source of information and champion of the scientific mainstream view of ADHD.

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#22

Post by pornel »

_fat_santa wrote: post #2

I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects some children, but on the other hand I realize that alot of ADHD symptoms overlap with the general nature of children, especially boys. My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD. Often times it's described as just not being able to pay…

There is a huge difference between the common stereotype of ADHD (just rowdy children who can't sit still), and actual symptoms and diagnostic criteria. The difference is almost as comically warped as an image of a "hacker" in media vs actual hackers.

ADHD includes many other things like weak short-term memory, defunct perception of time, hard to control hyperfocus, overwhelming inner monologue, and executive dysfunction that makes some tasks physically impossible to start even when the person wants to do them. And it comes with a bunch of other comorbidities. Doctors diagnosing ADHD also have obligation to exclude other causes of the symptoms, like bipolar.

The stimulant medication does not actually cause stimulation in people with ADHD. When people have a deficit/insensitivity to the neurotransmitters, the meds merely bring them up from a dysfunctional level where the brain lacked ability to function properly to the normal-ish level.

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#23

Post by corobo »

lolinder wrote: post #7
corobo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD The second D - disorder. When it affects the kid's ability to learn, socialise, etc

The problem is that what is perceived as "disordered" is different across time and space. Behavior patterns that were once totally normal may get in the way of living the kind of life that some parents have come to expect of their kids—running from school to dance to piano to soccer to tutors to therapy to whatever. Are these kids disordered because they can't keep up, or are the demands unreasonable?

I dunno to be honest, I don't know of any kids diagnosed with ADHD to think of as examples.

Looking back on my own life (diagnosed early 30s, but part of the process was looking at how I was in school): I struggled to keep up with the bare basics outside of lessons - getting ready for school on time, remembering books, remembering to tell my parents I/they needed to do stuff on specific dates, doing (small amounts of) homework.

On the social front - Billy no mates until college (where I met people who were as weird as me), constantly bullied for reasons I couldn't figure out, could not work out how people managed to make friends. Felt like I'd missed the day of school where they taught everyone how to socialise and be normal. It was also like my prime directive was "don't speak unless spoken to" haha. So damn quiet.

Unless someone directly invited me or gave me permission to do an activity that activity was just for other people, not for me. Dancing, sports, and pianos weren't even on the table lol.

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#24

Post by bookofjoe »

bookofjoe wrote: post #19
light_hue_1 wrote: post #16

This is a no-op paper. They found nothing useful. Maybe an inkling of something extremely weak. Maybe. Certainly nothing that should be popularized, taken up by the media, or used to make any decisions about anything. The kicker is: > Effect sizes were small (largest peak d, 0.15). To put that into language more people here would understand, it's like publishing a paper where your classifier gets 52% accuracy on a bi…

What does "no-op" mean?

>That is a paper that you should not put your name on. I certainly would not. Their effects are also more like 0.11 not 0.15; the largest peak misrepresents all of the rest of the results.

>What they did is aggregate so much data that even a small inconsequential difference between groups that may account for nothing at all, that would go away with slightly different controls for confounds, becomes statistically significant.

>A lot of the comments here drawing conclusions like, ADHD is about an overly integrated brain or whatever are really frightening. This means nothing. Science communication at its worst.

Here are the paper's authors' affiliations:

Office of the Clinical Director, NIMH, Bethesda, Md. (Norman, Shaw); Section on Neurobehavioral and Clinical Research, Social and Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Md. (Sudre, Price, Shaw).

It's hard for me to believe that the authors should not have put their name on this paper.

Do you have a background and credentials as valid?

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#25

Post by [deleted] »

_fat_santa wrote: post #2

I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects some children, but on the other hand I realize that alot of ADHD symptoms overlap with the general nature of children, especially boys. My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD. Often times it's described as just not being able to pay…

[deleted]

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#26

Post by Implicated »

bookofjoe wrote: post #19
light_hue_1 wrote: post #16

This is a no-op paper. They found nothing useful. Maybe an inkling of something extremely weak. Maybe. Certainly nothing that should be popularized, taken up by the media, or used to make any decisions about anything. The kicker is: > Effect sizes were small (largest peak d, 0.15). To put that into language more people here would understand, it's like publishing a paper where your classifier gets 52% accuracy on a bi…

What does "no-op" mean?

Waste, space/time/etc.

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#27

Post by jstarfish »

samtho wrote: post #17
fsociety wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee that you took Adderall IR, and a higher dose than those typically prescribed by a doctor. It’s like slamming back 10 cups of espresso instead of sipping one over a day. And then judging people who drink a coffee a day. Slow release and a therapeutic dose is significantly different than slamming back meds in school like that. Therapeutic dose means you can’t even tell you took the med, until you either sto…

> Lastly, medication for ADHD is something that makes all the actual effective treatments do-able. It’s a first step not a crux. This is a nuance that is lost on a lot of people. Medication needs to be taken in conjunction with re-learning how to study/organize/prioritize. This actually allows for new neuro-pathways to be forged and reinforced in the brain, which actually fixes many of the negative effects of ADHD, l…

[dead]

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#28

Post by user_7832 »

corobo wrote: post #20
user_7832 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or counterpoint- in my case I was helped at home a good bit with structure. It wasn’t until I was independent at uni that this facade started to fall off, revealing “issues”.

Aye same - I did great up until I had to make my own structure. Decent enough in school but dropped out of college twice. Fell into an entry level IT job with loads of scripts, processes, and procedures but the more I progressed the more autonomy I was given and the worse I performed. Was mostly terrible but occasionally amazing (enough to keep my job at least) for ~10 years then bumped into the ADHD symptoms at some…

Could you explain what/how the CBT helped? Where I am in Europe the default treatment is only medication which feels inadequate on its own.

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#29

Post by bluefirebrand »

pornel wrote: post #22
_fat_santa wrote: post #2

I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects some children, but on the other hand I realize that alot of ADHD symptoms overlap with the general nature of children, especially boys. My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a child actually affected by ADHD. Often times it's described as just not being able to pay…

There is a huge difference between the common stereotype of ADHD (just rowdy children who can't sit still), and actual symptoms and diagnostic criteria. The difference is almost as comically warped as an image of a "hacker" in media vs actual hackers. ADHD includes many other things like weak short-term memory, defunct perception of time, hard to control hyperfocus, overwhelming inner monologue, and executive dysfunc…

I really like that you list a whole lot of things that ADHD includes that most people are unaware of, but I wanted to call attention to the two that probably had the largest negative impact on my own life

Rejection Sensitivity and Emotional Disregulation

I have always been paralyzed by being afraid of failure (rejection), and that has kept me from pursuing a lot of things in the past

And I've always been prone to anger outbursts, even over seemingly trivial silly things. It has damaged so many of my relationships and overall left me pretty lonely throughout my life. And when the dust settles I'm sitting there thinking "Why was I so angry about that thing. I don't even care that much about it"

My ADHD diagnosis and medication, starting in my early 30s, has almost entirely turned my life around

Re: NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in Youth

#30

Post by mirsadm »

kypro wrote: post #14
mirsadm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a child with ADHD you will know. They are different.

Even if true, the problem is those who don't but think they do. I suspect you might also have parents who kinda like the idea that there child's behaviour can be explained by ADHD. My sister's kid often gets in trouble at school for example, and whenever this happens she will try to excuse it by saying she has ADHD. I'm not at all convinced given that imo it's far easier to explain the misbehaviour with bad parenting…

I don't think you understand. "Bad" behavior is one aspect of it but there are many others. Girls also have different symptoms (and are severely under diagnosed compared to boys). This is not a situation of excusing behavior you need to live and deal with a child every single day to understand.
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