Live data from Hacker News

FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

axios.com

201–210 of 358 posts

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#201

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…

- Memory formation being based on attention leading to large gaps in your past and an insecure identity because of that.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#202
post #177
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeine can make it worse

Can but in my experience, most ADHD-affected persons will self-medicate with caffeine in atleast low doses.

I took amphetamines daily (week-daily at least) on and off for a decade before my diagnosis and the realisation that I was medicating with it was a large part of seeking my diagnosis. For me speed was calming and focussing and a tool to help me manage my life, not a fun thing for going out.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe zero discipline and/or work ethic are disorders? do you believe in the concept if mental health at all?

Absolutely. I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant, and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant. In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking back through the exact path you came from. It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day. I…

> I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant,

not everything is a habit, some behaviours are impulsive or context driven. lets say that habits take time to form though.

> and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant.

this is only true if breaking a habit, is also a habit. i don’t not certain this is always true.

lets ask, what is a habit? since this is an async convo i will answer myself. i think a habit is a behaviour that you repeat based on some trigger (time of day, previous activity etc). based on that we could call a “routine” a series of habits (or habitual behaviours). we do them, one after the other, in sequence (generally).

yeah i agree, these take time to build! how do you maintain them? because i spent 3 years working on running everyday and then i was ill for a week and immediately stopped. i broke my habit (or routine) that took 3 years to build in 1 week. are you wrong or am i broken?

> In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking backing through the exact path you came from.

more generally i would say, the only way out of “the darkness” (which i will use to mean a period of time in my life where i am incredibly unhappy) is to deal with my trauma and accept all parts of myself (probably with the help of a therapist). i’ve not found ruminating over the past to be a successful strategy for creating light in my life.

> It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day.

i honestly don’t understand this line. is the realisation that small iterative steps are required for study innate? is this your experience? i had to explicitly learn it. is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line.

> If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way.

what certain way is that?

> I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids.

it would be interesting to see a survey of this! i won’t join this wager as i don’t like gambling.

> Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood.

what are you claiming video games, youtube and netflix cause here? I’m not saying they each don’t have they negative aspects! especially youtube, just enough dopamine to keep you watching, so easy to waste a bunch of hours.

> By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits.

i too thought i was late all the time because of the template my mum handed down to me(shes late all the time too). you know what else can be handed down though? heritable traits.

i still object to modelling all human behaviour around habits. the scope is much larger and the insanity is often a lack of behaviour (e.g not washing your butt).

> What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years?

read interesting books? played games? made music? rode bikes? went to parties. i’m not sure what you are attempting to get at here.

>I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the all for 18 years.

see above.

> If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want.

so only if i did absolutely nothing in response to not being able to do something else, do i qualify for medication? i guess no one with any executing function disorders should get anything because sitting still is a real pain. sorry we’re not performing disorder well enough for you, i’ll get all the adhd peeps into a workshop perhaps you could join since you know exactly how someone with a disorder would perform. we really need those meds so any help you can offer is welcomed.

> If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits.

man, f*k you. i’ve been taking responsibility for my actions for 30 years. you don’t know me.

> It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years.

so we have resorted to fat jokes. well, i’m not sure what i had hoped for tbh.

tl;dr you don’t believe in this ADD-whatever the fuck and people should grow up and act like ever other adult.

idk if you are a boomer but you should get checked out for alzheimers because your ideas are old as fuck.

NOTE: i had a nice, emotional description of my experience but i forgot how people here like to argue (stupid me), so i took responsibility for my actions and took apart the argument line by line instead.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile this with the observation that seemingly every single child in the United States is diagnosed with this condition and prescribed drugs to treat it? Watching from Europe, where roughly nobody is diagnosed with it nor prescribed drugs to treat it, I’m always baffled, fascinated and horrified watching Americans talk about it.

A quick google search show that diagnosis rates in Europe are only half the USA. That’s not that big a gap, and easily explained by cultural and institutional differences. For example, a lot of parents do not treat their ADHD kids with medication. However getting the diagnoses allows for the kid to get an Individualized Educational Plan setup with their school district that makes exceptions to cater for their needs,…

There are large cross-cultural differences in groups seeking and getting diagnoses, so it could be the case that white middle-class boys are being over-diagnosed while lower-class black girls are almost certainly being hugely under-diagnosed.

In Europe acceptance of ADHD has lagged behind the US but you'd expect stronger institutional health-care systems to reduce cultural differences somewhat.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#205
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can but in my experience, most ADHD-affected persons will self-medicate with caffeine in atleast low doses.

I took amphetamines daily (week-daily at least) on and off for a decade before my diagnosis and the realisation that I was medicating with it was a large part of seeking my diagnosis. For me speed was calming and focussing and a tool to help me manage my life, not a fun thing for going out.

What a lot of people probably don't realize is that stimulants like Coffee (or even Speed) depend on the brain's structure. ADHD Brains work differently and they respond different to stimulants. And people don't like it when ADHD people self-medicate with coffee because they think it would make it worse (Heck, I've gotten detention for consuming coffee because I had ADHD. "Concerned teachers" they called it).

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#206

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…

How do you reconcile this with the observation that seemingly every single child in the United States is diagnosed with this condition and prescribed drugs to treat it? Watching from Europe, where roughly nobody is diagnosed with it nor prescribed drugs to treat it, I’m always baffled, fascinated and horrified watching Americans talk about it.

" Watching from Europe, where roughly nobody is diagnosed with it nor prescribed drugs to treat it"

And here is yet another victim to the 'Europe is a homogenous country-like entity' fallacy. Where in Europe are you talking about, and what age category? Because I can tell you that in the Netherlands this is very much wrong.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#207
post #64
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What the other person said and try and have adults who can back up that you had the symptoms of ADHD as a young child. My parents were not super-engaged with the process and it made my diagnosis a lot harder, my friend's parents were and he sailed through it.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#208

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…

I can relate with most of the things from the blog post, and I am sure the pain the author goes through is real. In no way I want to diminish it. Having said that, a couple of things: - I think on HN it would be more appropriate to link to medical/scientific resources, instead of personal blog pages like this, which despite being relatable, are dangerous to extrapolate an objective and statistical view on the topic f…

[deleted]

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google search show that diagnosis rates in Europe are only half the USA. That’s not that big a gap, and easily explained by cultural and institutional differences. For example, a lot of parents do not treat their ADHD kids with medication. However getting the diagnoses allows for the kid to get an Individualized Educational Plan setup with their school district that makes exceptions to cater for their needs,…

There are large cross-cultural differences in groups seeking and getting diagnoses, so it could be the case that white middle-class boys are being over-diagnosed while lower-class black girls are almost certainly being hugely under-diagnosed. In Europe acceptance of ADHD has lagged behind the US but you'd expect stronger institutional health-care systems to reduce cultural differences somewhat.

In many parts of the US, school nurses and teachers are critically involved in identifying kids that might have ADHD and getting them on the track for treatment (whether that treatment is medicinal or purely behavioral intervention). In my experience they don't push it, but they let parents know what resources are available, and have contact info for low-cost or cost-deferred pediatric clinics that can give the actual diagnosis.

Europeans tend to gasp with horror that the school system is "pushing drugs on kids." But it's really more that through the school system the kids and their families have access to free medical advice and social services. So whereas in Europe you might have to remember to ask your general/family practitioner when you see them once a year, in the US there's a team of professionals working through the school system that are making sure kids have everything they need to succeed. Usually that's things like free food so they're not hungry or school bus transportation, but in ~5-10% of the cases it means ADHD diagnosis and treatment. So while this a bit less than double the percentage of kids that get ADHD diagnosis in Europe, it makes a bit more sense in context.

Re: FDA approves new ADHD drug for children

#210
post #177
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeine can make it worse

Can but in my experience, most ADHD-affected persons will self-medicate with caffeine in atleast low doses.

Working from home, I drink about four coffees through the morning and early afternoon, plus one later in the day once the others have worn off, if I feel like it.

I drink half-caff double shots (sounds odd but I want a decent amount of flavor but not too much caffeine), making macchiato first thing in the morning, americano later.

People laugh at how I’m always carrying a coffee when I’m working. I tell them I’m just keeping my caffeine at the perfect level, which is true.

Post reply on HN