seems like lack of focus to me. doesn't mean you have a medical condition.
"Seems like you have a lack of control over when you pee your pants to me. Doesn't mean you have a medical condition."
Reverse engineering my ADHD test
131–140 of 247 posts
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
" diagnosis during childhood so if you're 30 or 40 you might have no chance " Huh? You don't have to be tested as-a-child, you don't have to call up your fourth grade teacher. You can self report your subjective experience. "Did you have these problems as a child? Have you always had trouble doing your homework? Did stressing out about homework enable you to do the homework?" They ask the question a few different way…
In some countries it's almost impossible (I don't have any direct experience but I've heard tale that in e.g. aus/nz, east asia, south asia, etc people give up before getting diagnosed often), and my understanding is that in Europe it's virtually unheard of to have an adult diagnosis. In the US, at least, it ranges from difficult to straightforward, but that's not true everywhere
> ... my understanding is that in Europe it's virtually unheard of to have an adult diagnosis.
Can't speak for the whole of the continent but UK here and I got my ADHD diagnosis a few years shy of 50 years old. Wasn't tricky at all, just a long-ish (8 month) wait for a non-private diagnosis (not full NHS but via an outsourced provider via Right-To-Choose).
When going through the DSM-5 questions (during an ~80 minute interview) I was asked to give examples from both current life experience and from childhood, and that was enough.
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some countries it's almost impossible (I don't have any direct experience but I've heard tale that in e.g. aus/nz, east asia, south asia, etc people give up before getting diagnosed often), and my understanding is that in Europe it's virtually unheard of to have an adult diagnosis. In the US, at least, it ranges from difficult to straightforward, but that's not true everywhere
> ... my understanding is that in Europe it's virtually unheard of to have an adult diagnosis. Can't speak for the whole of the continent but UK here and I got my ADHD diagnosis a few years shy of 50 years old. Wasn't tricky at all, just a long-ish (8 month) wait for a non-private diagnosis (not full NHS but via an outsourced provider via Right-To-Choose). When going through the DSM-5 questions (during an ~80 minute…
Honestly it's really gratifying to hear that people around the world are getting the help they deserve, thanks for sharing.
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
ADHD also evolutionary advantages, so there is unlikely to be a single gene that encodes for it.
What are they? Are there papers on this?
ChatGPT's take was that 10 ADHD people/animals would go exploring and if one produced a new source of food then it would be advantageous for the group, but the other 9 could fail and be completely useless. A bit like venture capital funds haha.
So there is still room for complete failure in life, and maybe its a lot of luck/environment that some ADHD people succeed naturally.
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#135I sat a similar test at the start of my ADHD diagnosis (in the UK for reference).
The one I did (QbCheck) was a similar setup but you were presented with shapes on the screen, either a square or a circle, and either blue or red. All you had to do was press the spacebar when the shape on the screen was the same shape and colour as the previous one. No sound distracitons (or maybe I just had the volume muted.)
You also had to do the test on a laptop with a forward facing camera so the software could track eye movement.
I remember starting the test and thinking "This is exactly what my brain is wired for, I'm going to be awesome at this test!"
Within a minute my mind had already moved on to "I wonder how they score this test? I guess they're looking at accuracy, reaction times, how those trend over time, whether the accuracy/reactions goes up/down if they show the same shape/colour more than twice in a row?" etc...
It didn't take long for me to then get jolted into a "wait, did I just zone out a bit there and miss one?"
Then I became overly conscious of my eyes wandering around and not looking at the screen.
Then my mind moved on to "what if I'm too good at this and it means I won't get a diagnosis?"
Soon it was "When will this ever end? This must have been going on for ages!" only to find it had only been about 3 minutes.
The test took 20 minutes or so and I was mentally exhausted by the end of it.
My actual ADHD diagnosis was backed up by an 80 minute interview, basically doing the DSM-5 questions but linking it all back to childhood experiences too. I've no idea how much weight the QbCheck test had.
Glad I got the diagnosis, I've been masking both for years (diagnosed in my late 40s) but just got burnt out doing so. Medication helps but isn't perfect and since I'm probably AuDHD I find the ADHD medication amplifies some of the Autism traits and makes me into a bit of an emotional zombie, but that seems to be better than having zero motivation (aside from stress/deadlines and serious consequences).
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a doctor who goes by Russell Barkley, PhD on his popular YouTube channel and claims to be able to brainscan for ADHD with certainty. Is his claim legitimate?
Russel Barkley is a pioneer in the field of ADHD research. I have heard of such a claim, but not from Russel Barkley. Could you provide a link of Russel Barkley making the claim please?
It's somewhere in this talk (broken down as a playlist). It's been a while since I've watched it but I do recall him saying that they can see physically differences in the brain of adhd folks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#137seems like lack of focus to me. doesn't mean you have a medical condition.
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Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#138I took a similar ADHD test. It seemed so easy and simple that I always wondered how it was actually supposed to catch me. Good to know that neurotypical people mostly likely test differently than I did.
This was part of how my ADHD was diagnosed. I did a full day of testing at a specialist center. First I had a conversation with a nurse, then a psychologist, then they had me do a similar test (but in a controlled environment and I also had face tracking and a motion sensor monitoring my movement). After the test, I was given lunch and a dose of adhd medication and about an hour break, then they had me do the test again. After that I met with a psychiatrist who walked me through the test results. Then I had another break while the three specialists met to discuss my case and make a diagnosis. Finally I met with the three to hear the outcome (I was also given a full write-up of my results from the day).
My one surprise from this article is that "play a web game for 18 minutes" in an uncontrolled environment was considered enough testing for a diagnosis!
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#139The biggest risk for ADHD treatment is that most diagnosed people are told: "you brain doesn't make enough dopamine" which makes it feel safe for you and why they say non-ADHD people cannot take it.
But for your specific brain it does make enough and it will fight to maintain that via homeostasis (usually by creating more dopamine vacuums/re-uptakes that stick around a long time...there is good science on this).
So you become dependent on the medication and tolerance can occur making your situation worse than it was in the end.
ADHD-as-a-diagnosis is just a clever way to make the government okay with prescribing stimulant medication to "people who it can help" and having someone safely monitor its usage, and to assure the government that we won't end up with too large of percentage of the population taking it.
Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
ADHD also evolutionary advantages, so there is unlikely to be a single gene that encodes for it.
1. How is it advantageous? 2. Assuming it really is: Why would this make it unlikely to be encoded on a single gene? As a layman, the only condition I'm aware of with this "downside but also upside" quality is sickle cell anaemia (downside is anaemia, upside is increased resistance to malaria), which is decided by a single nucleotide change on chromosome 11.
By seeking out novelty, someone could be a more effective forager or better able to spot predators/prey hiding. ADHD often comes with a high attention to detail, so there's lots of advantages that could come with that (e.g. that twig wasn't broken before, something has passed through here).
Also, having different sleeping patterns can mean that the people with ADHD are likely better equipped to keep a fire burning overnight and possibly be alert for predators.