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Reverse engineering my ADHD test

nullpt.rs

221–230 of 247 posts

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who only got our ADHD diagnosis in our late thirties and our autism spectrum diagnosis at forty fucking two, please consider just telling them. That could be years or decades of social, pharmacological, and even legal assistance that they deserve and need and aren't otherwise getting.

Also agree with this, but want to caution: Bring this up as gently as you can Don't accuse them of being ADHD, or insist too strongly If you do bring it up, I would say make sure to really emphasize that you don't think they need fixing. It's something that might help them overcome their own struggles, not something to make them a better person for others, you know?

"I have always envied your ADHD hyperfocus superpowers." /h

Everything I am really good at, I am really bad at, depending on context and the wobbly compass that governs my internal motivation.

It is definitely not all bad. Without my hyperfocus, my life would be unrecognizable. I would be unrecognizable. Hyperfocus is core to so many things I am good at, care about, and have achieved.

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#222
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amphetamine used to be legal. As an example, President JFK received regular injections containing high doses of amphetamines from his personal physician. Then the risk of abuse and side-effects in the population were observed and it was banned. Did JFK have ADHD? No, it just helped him with energy levels. Like it would anyone. There are no conclusive bio-markers for ADHD. Therefore its not possible to say who doesn't…

You seem to have your mind made up, so just gonna say that for anyone else reading this, this is not accurate or scientific information. Lacks an understanding of how the medication works, the differences in kinds of medications. The fact it used to be legal is not relevant. Misrepresents how ADHD is diagnosed, the criteria for it (by professionals), and even to a lesser extent the biomarkers statement.

Everything I have said is explained with citations here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9189308/

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nearing my 40s. In my mid-twenties I was diagnosed and over the next couple of years tried all of the usual ADHD meds and none of them were short of terrible in regard to side effects. I guess I've just learned to live with it in a way that outweighs the side effects I get from the drugs. I was diagnosed with Shiftwork Disorder at one point in time and was prescribed Modafinil and it was incredible for the most p…

Have you gone down the rabbit hole of non stimulants? I have had bad reactions to every stimulant I tried since I developed bipolar 1 in my late teens (had taken them as a child for ADHD). I had a good response to strattera, but there's a variety of them out there.

I had terrible brain zaps on Strattera and didn't notice anything at all in regard to benefits. Probably because I just could not get through taking it long enough.

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ADHD often comes with a high attention to detail Per the DSM-5, one of the core symptoms of ADHD: "often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities

Yes, it's both a lack of attention to details in "boring" tasks and an exceptional attention to details in "interesting" tasks.

I think there is a conflation between attention and attention to details. I understand attention control can vary depending on the engagement value of a task. I have experienced the condition my entire life, I am well aware.

I am not aware of any data that supports being interested in a task lessens the likelihood of making mistakes. If you have any data, I will gladly read it.

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#225
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a molecular neuroscience perspective, for both ADHD and ASD (autism) you're unlikely to find any pure biomarkers as clean as a disease like huntingtons disease whose mechanism is clearly understood as extra CAG repeats on the HTT gene (a clean mendelian disorder). ADHD is defined by behavior/cognitive symptoms and most all behavior/cognitive diseases are multifactoral, which ADHD is. WES/WGS and GWAS has been do…

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?

He's a legit researcher though I haven't seen his work on youtube. In terms of how accurate brain scans are at diagnosing adhd you can look at recent meta analyses (gold standard of evidence based medicine pyramid).

In a 2024 meta-analysis of MRI/fMRI machine-learning studies for ADHD, the average pooled sensitivity was 74% (the ability to correctly identify people who actually have ADHD) and the average pooled specificity was 75% (the ability to correctly identify people who do not have ADHD), that also means that there is a 26% false-negative rate (miss/Type II error) and a 25% false-positive rate (accidental diagnosis/Type I error) [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.03.111].

Though there is no set standards but under 80% is pretty low for a clinically useful test but can still be used in some conditions such as to supplement diagnosis. To give some numbers the rapid antigen covid tests had 72% sensitivity and 98.9% specificity. (note the lower sensitivity was acceptable at the time but the CDC guideline was for symptomatic people to retest 48 hours. Viral load and other staging factors could all confound.) [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004011]

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#226

I spent a decent amount working on ADHD diagnostics and unfortunately it sucks. To my knowledge, to this day, there isn’t a single reliable biomarker that identifies autism spectrum disorders. It’s usually correlation studies paired with questionnaires which for lack of better words can be described as “incidental” at best. Most z scored tests I know are also developed with small samples, a hundred participants with…

From a molecular neuroscience perspective, for both ADHD and ASD (autism) you're unlikely to find any pure biomarkers as clean as a disease like huntingtons disease whose mechanism is clearly understood as extra CAG repeats on the HTT gene (a clean mendelian disorder). ADHD is defined by behavior/cognitive symptoms and most all behavior/cognitive diseases are multifactoral, which ADHD is. WES/WGS and GWAS has been do…

If I remember correctly there are some paradigms in which you can show it in fMRI quite clearly but the trouble is of course MRIs are not accessible to a wide public. I will have to go dig through papers though, I have not read into MRI based diagnostics in a long while

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#227
post #64

Earlier 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.

Am biologist and keeping genes that are "advantageous" is the most common trap that people fall into about evolution. Evolution isint actually about keep advantageous traits the real idea is about differences in reproductive success, not about evolution systematically preserving only traits that are beneficial to the individual.

In fact Darwin's theory of evolution is kind of outdated as well. We now understand genetic drift and things like the neutral theory of molecular evolution from moto kimura and the nearly neutral theory of evolution from tomoko ohta may give some sort of explanation to polygenic nature of adhd.

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#228

I spent a decent amount working on ADHD diagnostics and unfortunately it sucks. To my knowledge, to this day, there isn’t a single reliable biomarker that identifies autism spectrum disorders. It’s usually correlation studies paired with questionnaires which for lack of better words can be described as “incidental” at best. Most z scored tests I know are also developed with small samples, a hundred participants with…

32 y/o male. I took an in-person assessment earlier this year. It was an 8 hour battery of tests split across two days. In no particular order: - Clinical Interview - Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) - Wechsler Memory Scale – Fourth Edition (WMS-IV) - Conners Continuous Performance Test – Third Edition (CPT-3) - Delis-Kaplan Executive Functioning System, selected subtests - Wisconsin Card…

I’m going to say that as you perform more clinical tests typically your chances of a wrong diagnosis will decrease proportionally. However particularly in the case of ADHD tests, if you know the test questions and the symptom description I think you could cheat your way to a diagnosis. If you went to all of these tests in earnest, without looking them up, just providing spontaneous responses, and all of them come back positive, I’d say chances are you have ADHD.

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#229
post #97

I spent a decent amount working on ADHD diagnostics and unfortunately it sucks. To my knowledge, to this day, there isn’t a single reliable biomarker that identifies autism spectrum disorders. It’s usually correlation studies paired with questionnaires which for lack of better words can be described as “incidental” at best. Most z scored tests I know are also developed with small samples, a hundred participants with…

Isn't this true of nearly all mental disorders in DSM-5 and ICD-11? We don't really know what mental disorders are and so we don't have objective diagnostic tests for them. [1] We just have treatments that sometimes work for some people (and with the replication crisis[2] that sometimes is probably a lower value than expected). [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6732705/ [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/art…

I concur that many of the diagnostics methods are small sample sized for psychological tests. However I believe we have a lot more neurological evidence for underlying conditions and mechanisms in some. Schizophrenia for example has clear neurological hypothesis relating to agency and we can clearly tell these patients in a standard MRI. The same cannot be said for ADHD or ASD

Re: Reverse engineering my ADHD test

#230
post #29
post #3

Opening up devtools during ADHD test is so ADHD, almost as if he didn't even need the psychiatrist to explain the results :D

That doesn't have to be ADHD, could be the *tism too. The tells are usually somewhat overlapping. In general, if you are in the industry, save yourself (and your kids) some trouble and get diagnosed before it becomes a problem. Add: I wonder why they don't just give people some ritalin and ask if they feel calmed down? Except the obvious reason of course

Yeah it feels like the diagnosis itself is useless, compared to just straight up trying some of those drugs and see how much you feel better. If none works, then no use in diagnosis.
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