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Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

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Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#261

Post by firecall »

cbfrench wrote: post #23
TrackerFF wrote: post #7

I have ADHD (ADD), and was diagnosed after 30 - though I've greatly suffered from it since my teenage years. Sure, it is a big part of me, always has been, but I don't really make it part of my identity. I can't control it like a superpower, and there are serious consequences if you're not careful. I've noticed that in the ADHD community, there are some very vocal people that will wear the diagnosis with pride. I mea…

Exactly. I can point to specific ways in which my (at the time, undiagnosed) ADHD has negatively impacted my life: I never finished my PhD because I couldn’t execute a dissertation. The coping mechanisms that had served me reasonably well during my young adulthood suddenly stopped working during the pandemic. So, I became unable to motivate myself to a deadline, which had generally been a powerful force to motivate m…

Totally.

It's a curse.

I wonder how many people are jumping on the bandwagon of being ND and have actually been credibly diagnosed with ADHD?!

I'm super smart, but ADHD destroyed my schooling and I've never met my potential.

I'd start well, be ahead of the other kids by miles, and then would go totally off the rails.

It's was the same for School as it was for Work.

Relationships were also hard due to impulsiveness.

ADHD is a curse, not a super power.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#262

Post by slowmotiony »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #122
thenerdhead wrote: post #14

The part I hate most today is that if you relate to a video on ADHD/DID/Depression/Schizophrenia/etc, you will be fed the content until you convince yourself you have a “character trait”. That’s a serious problem with long term effects on society. I’m very sure I sit somewhere on the spectrum and have depressive disorder markers as well. But the last thing I want to do is to promote these traits. I am not proud of th…

Contrary to the depiction above it remains as far as I know exceptionally difficult to acquire adhd treating medication; they’re almost all controlled substances, heavily regulated and consumption tightly monitored.

Really? Where? Surely not in Europe, where the psychiatrist simply asks you a couple survey questions like "Do you have difficulty finishing tasks?", "Do you overanalyze things?" or "Do you frequently interrupt others in conversations?" before giving you a script for Concerta / Medikinet. The entire survey takes 5 minutes and if I was to take it seriously, then my entire family has ADHD including the dog.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#263

Post by adhdgaslight »

lghh wrote: post #89
triggercut wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume from the fact they were diagnosed (as they stated) by a professional (hopefully)? As someone who also fights an internal battle with my diagnosis 24/7, comments like this are not helpful and can even be hurtful. Would you ask someone with a hearing aid how they could be sure they were deaf? Or someone wheelchair bound how they could be sure they can't just walk if they try hard enough? The world of wor…

Yes, I was diagnosed by two professionals independently of each others because I was so unsure of the first diagnosis. Comments like these are hurtful. I ask myself the question the commenter asked me every single day. I just try to approach them with care and the assumption they are coming from a good place. I know that isn't always the case, but it's the best I can do. Also, it's wild that I already have a strategy…

I'm in a similar position as you.

It's deeply unfortunate that it's so asymmetrical. u/symlinkk has asked a question that in isolation is merely a category error, a lazy intellectual argument regarding burden of proof, subjectivity inherent in the DSM, clinical standards regarding impairment, etc., that can be dispatched in short order. However the emotional effect of a question that implicitly denies the existence of the illness remains long after the intellectual error is corrected.

It's structurally similar to LGBT erasure. We have already gone through life for years believing that there was something wrong with us that we could fix, and therefore was a moral failing and source of shame ("just use a planner" [1]). If in fact it is an immutable characteristic akin to sexuality, then it cannot be a source of shame. One would not ask nowadays whether one was really sure about their sexual orientation. Then again, very few people recreationally take testosterone.

I can only wish you the best regards, and be grateful that we live in the modern day where science (but not the general public yet) has developed an understanding of these things.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/pelip6/how_i_cured_my...

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#264

Post by shmageggy »

opportune wrote: post #212
WalterSear wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone diagnosed with ADHD later in life, a lot of these ADHD superpowers are just the result of taking dopaminergic stimulants. I experienced them before I was aware of my issues, before had ever tried any medication.

I am responding specifically to some of the paragraphs in the essay where the author mentions working non-stop for hours straight on something in a quiet room, while their peers who were "studying" were spending some of that time chatting or bothered by some distraction. Without medication, at least for me and I suspect almost all other people, hyperfocus is something that comes and goes at random and is rarely cente…

This part of the author’s account struck me as well. Like, yeah it would be great if I could summon the hyperfocus at the right moment, and sometimes impending deadlines/tests cause that, but more often than not it just doesn’t work that way. And if it does, the last-minute cram session is way more stressful and less effective than actually doing the work over time would have been.

Yes, the author got that A that one time, but what could he have achieved if he had managed to work on it for more than one night? Or put another way: if you are lucky enough to succeed and level-up through the academia/career/whatever ladder enough despite these problems, you’ll eventually get to a point where cramming doesn’t cut it. You’ll be surrounded by people who are just as smart but who can actually focus at the right times on the right things, and then you’ll struggle (speaking from experience).

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#265

Post by bananamerica »

TrackerFF wrote: post #7

I have ADHD (ADD), and was diagnosed after 30 - though I've greatly suffered from it since my teenage years. Sure, it is a big part of me, always has been, but I don't really make it part of my identity. I can't control it like a superpower, and there are serious consequences if you're not careful. I've noticed that in the ADHD community, there are some very vocal people that will wear the diagnosis with pride. I mea…

It is quite possible that some of those who "wear the diagnosis with pride" have more pronounced symptoms that are not as well addressed by the medication. In which case, they have no alternative but to wear it. Speaking from personal experience at least.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#266

Post by elil17 »

Here’s a perspective (more a response to the DeBoer article than this one) which I find helpful and which I think not enough people acknowledge:

Neurodivergence (view that mental disorders are a form of human variation that should be celebrated), medicalization (view that they are diseases, much like physical diseases), and personal responsibility (view that they are caused by personal choices) are all lenses which need to coexist in order to explain mental illness.

ADHD is probably the cleanest example because all three lenses truly apply. For many people with ADHD, it’s who they are, and there are aspects of it that they wouldn’t want to change. It’s also a condition which often needs medication to be managed properly. Plus, (in my experience with loved ones) it’s impossible for people with ADHD to function unless they are trying to take responsibility for their actions.

For most disorders, you need at least two lenses. You can’t fully understand alcoholism unless you acknowledge that both personal responsibility and a medical condition (“substance use disorder”) play a roll. Ditto anxiety and depression.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#267

Post by ysleepy »

luckydata wrote: post #183
thequux wrote: post #59

I have ADD. Not ADHD; I'm almost never hyperactive. I do, however, hyperfocus on anything and everything, to the point that it's caused severe problems to my career, relationships, and personal life. I'm nearly always hyperfocused on something, and I rarely have control over what that is. I'll forget to eat, sleep, talk to people, or really do anything else for several days at a time when it gets bad. Fortunately, ov…

ADD is just old terminology. You have ADHD, and you should read up on some updated science cause you got some very weird, very wrong ideas about your own condition. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33549739/

   [...] 15 The clinical presentation of ADHD can be described as primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive-impulsive, or combined,
    depending on the nature of their symptoms (American Psychiat-ric Association, 2013). [...]
I assume ADD is nowadays just a shorthand for the primarily inattentive presentation.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#268

Post by cja »

petesergeant wrote: post #219
pornel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please stop with the "candy" trope? Here in the UK, ADHD drugs are controlled substances. They can only be prescribed as by registered psychiatrists as part of ongoing treatment with patient monitoring. There are not enough doctors qualified to do this, and as a result people who need the treatment are facing year-long queues. Don't get medical advice from TikTok, and don't form an opinion of a mental disorde…

> Here in the UK, ADHD drugs are controlled substances They're controlled susbtances in the US too, but there appear to be a whole slew of sites in the US where you can fill out a form and they'll send you a perfectly legit scrip > There are not enough doctors qualified to do this, and as a result people who need the treatment are facing year-long queues. For anyone reading this who thinks they might need treatment a…

Link please because I've looked and can't find

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#269

Post by watwut »

elil17 wrote: post #266

Here’s a perspective (more a response to the DeBoer article than this one) which I find helpful and which I think not enough people acknowledge: Neurodivergence (view that mental disorders are a form of human variation that should be celebrated), medicalization (view that they are diseases, much like physical diseases), and personal responsibility (view that they are caused by personal choices) are all lenses which n…

> personal responsibility (view that they are caused by personal choices)

I have interpreted and see personal responsibility as the affected person being responsible for managing the issues. Not as the issues being caused by themselves. E.g., it is not your fault you have it, you did not caused it, but you are responsible for learning strategies or taking drugs to manage issue to the possible extend.

Re: Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering

#270

Post by thread_id »

"...There are bigger downsides to ADD, like the weeks when I can't focus on work, or when I get distracted by some awesome new thing and don't do the things I should be doing, or how I lost interest in projects and don't always finish them, blah blah blah. I am not going to complain about any of that, it is just part of being me and I like who I am pretty well. Everyone has problems and mine are less severe than many. ..."

What he is describing is everyone. The last sentence should read "Everyone has these problems just like me."

We are conditioned from a very early age to compare our insides to everyone elses outsides - the personas that they represent - or more accurately that we represent for them. Whether we imagine ourselves better than that persona or inferior in some way - it is all illusion.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so (where have you heard that before?)

Reading the comments below I feel there is a lot of beating oneself up. I know... I do this all the time. When I recognize that I am doing this I redirect it to accept and love my natural self (very liberating). This is our human nature. We all share in this. We should feel perfectly natural and ok about our nature.

The difficulty is in adapting to the structure of society. We are challenged to find ways to adapt and manage our nature in order to find some measure of accomplishment in that structure. Some adapt readily. Others have to work at it. We all face the same challenge and we all acheive different measures of success. Just make sure that it is your measure of success that you are striving to achieve.

The labels and their definitions are all a product of a feckless mental health industry that needs to create something to justify their existence. The definitions describe observable human nature and the labels categorize them. The negative connotation is a judgement - this is what causes so much stress.

This body of work is dynamic and changing. The American Psychaitric Association Diagnostic Criteria at one time included homosexuality as a mental disease. Can't suffer from Aspergers because technically it is no longer a diagnosis. So consider these examples to help keep it all in perspective.

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