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Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

281–290 of 327 posts

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#281
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study also does not claim to show a causal relationship.

I was actually going to point that out. IMO from what I've seen of parents are that people who bring their children at a young-ish age to a therapist have a different issue. Especially "being to hyper" or "being unable to focus" have a different issue. Children are supposed to be outside moving 8-12 hours a day, have you seen puppies? They need something similar. Instead many parents give their children tablets, plop…

Let's be very careful with attributing children's medical conditions to parental failure. This is the same line of thinking that brought us "refrigerator mothers", piling on loads of undeserved and unjust guilt on blameless parents of autistic children that were already trying their hardest to help their kids.

Unless you have solid studies that establish _causation_, not correlation, to back up your assertions, your facile dismissal of all existing medical research in favor of your own personal social prescriptions deserves zero consideration.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#282
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same thing as you. I wasn't on Concerta for as long; I started on Ritalin in 3rd grade, and switched to Concerta my senior year of high school. I dropped all meds in college. I actually tried TWICE to drop my meds. Each time my life fell apart, as you described. The second time, however, I did not interpret my life falling apart the way you did: instead of interpreting it as validation of the medication's e…

I have said this many times already: the downside of medicating children is that they never have a chance of learning how dysfunctional ADHD is. Then they blame the medication because they find they can't function without it. No shit, that's why you were taking it. I have been diagnosed in my 30s and when I stop medication, my life returns to the same exact shit it's been for 30 years. It feels like falling apart, be…

My personal view is that this worldview, the one that that views my inability to "function" in school, work, etc. as attributable to a clinical disorder treatable by medication, was incorrect.

ADHD is defined as a disorder of executive function: that is, an individual with ADHD is unable to do what they wish to do. This was an accurate description of me; to this day, finding and working toward my goals is something I'm constantly working on.

But if I look back on my childhood, I see that there was never a time when I had space to figure out how to understand and execute my own wishes in the world. Indeed, within my own family it was not recognized that I had a will of my own at all.

Medication helped cope with this state of affairs, but it never helped repair it. So e.g. if I found I didn’t much like being a student, I could take a stimulant and improve my ability to perform as a student. But taking that medication did nothing to help me solve that key equation: to do something I want to do, that other people also want me to do for them.

So my answer to the problem posed by an ADHD diagnosis is growth: I had to start as an autodidact, but as I’ve grown into my adulthood I’ve found friends, mentors, and peers along the way who help me find my way. The world is making it harder and harder to get, but it’s out there.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#283
post #234

So, I had a psychologist tell me that I have many ADHD markers and referred me to the central mental health agency for an official diagnosis. Unfortunately, In Sweden, an official diagnosis means higher insurance (fine), higher mortgages (not fine) and the inability to hold certain licenses. Of course those markers of ADHD are pretty severely affecting my life, which is why I was seeing the Psychologist in the first…

Dude, you have to respond to these comments. I'm dying to know. That is the most dystopian thing I've heard of coming from the land of "socialized medicine is the panacea".

There’s nothing to respond to in most of the comments.

I elaborated more about it but I got downvotes after that, so…

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#284
post #234

So, I had a psychologist tell me that I have many ADHD markers and referred me to the central mental health agency for an official diagnosis. Unfortunately, In Sweden, an official diagnosis means higher insurance (fine), higher mortgages (not fine) and the inability to hold certain licenses. Of course those markers of ADHD are pretty severely affecting my life, which is why I was seeing the Psychologist in the first…

That is horrifying that your medical issues could be used against you in insurance, mortgages, and licensing... I'd suggest just leaving the country at this rate or getting the diagnosis in a sane country that won't share this information and getting the medication from over there (assuming you can move somewhere close to the border)

> I'd suggest just leaving the country at this rate or getting the diagnosis in a sane country that won't share this information and getting the medication from over there (assuming you can move somewhere close to the border)

I live on the border with Denmark, I’m not sure if it’s ok for me to access healthcare in Denmark without a “CPR Number” https://international.kk.dk/cpr-number

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you not needing meds...

Hey, this is really bad. I am disabled for Bipolar Schizoaffective disorder, living with it for 30 years, hospitalized quite a few times. I was on countless meds. They told me I needed them or I would get worse. But I kept getting worse. Now, for the last 8 years I am med free and showing signs of recovery. You do not need meds. You need to find out why you need them biologically. We know that ADHD is primarily cause…

I am always happy for people who can work without meds, but extracting out from that to assume that every physical/chemical balance can just be cured by addressing some reversible root cause isn't really sound logic. There are lots of situations where our bodies don't produce enough of a chemical and there isn't really a solution for that other than to introduce more of that chemical.

I also feel like:

> We know that ADHD is primarily caused by low dopamine

is a bit of an oversimplification. ADHD is not always caused by low dopamine/norepinephrine/etc production, it's often in part caused by faster than normal reuptake of those chemicals. But when arguing that ADHD is entirely caused by environmental deficiencies, "you're not producing enough dopamine" sounds better than "your brain is absorbing dopamine too quickly so it's not signaling as effectively as it should even when it's released in the same amounts as other people."

And again, this is complicated and different people's brains work differently, medication isn't right for everyone. That's why doctors should be involved. But what's going on is a lot more complicated than "something in the environment is making you depressed so you don't release dopamine" or "you don't have enough of X vitamin so your body can't produce the chemicals it needs"; it's more accurate to say that ADHD is often caused by differences in how actual neurons and synapses interact.

If reabsorption is happening prematurely, it's not necessarily that less dopamine/norepinephrine is being produced, it's that the chemicals being produced aren't as able to be used to do the things they're supposed to do.

And that more complicated explanation ends up being a lot more useful to describe some of the less well-known symptoms of ADHD that sometimes pop up for some people; symptoms like hyperfocusing, poor interoception. It paints a more complicated, multi-faceted picture of how the body can find itself unable to stop focusing on things when neurotransmitters do manage to finally bond, or why certain bodily signals just don't seem to reach the brain reliably. I am not a doctor, but I think it's a lot easier to understand what ADHD does when you look at through the lens of a physical difference in the brain that has knock-on effects on how the brain continues to develop as it learns to rely on other signals and coping mechanisms and strengthen those pathways.

TLDR I kind of disagree with the explanation of people with ADHD as if they're dopamine-deficient, I think where modern research is leaning is that they (often, everyone is unique) have brains that aren't able to make use of the dopamine (and other chemicals, not everything in the world is dopamine) that is produced.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. For example, a lot of Benadryl will make you hallucinate, but that doesn’t mean a normal dose will make you hallucinate a small amount. Getting horribly fall down drunk as a teenager caused me to shit my pants once. But I didn’t so much as fart when I got tipsy on vacation recently.

I wouldn't bet on that. It's far from a sure thing and the price of losing is too great.

I would absolutely be willing to bet that a small dose of Benadryl won't make someone hallucinate "a small amount".

Put it another way if makes you feel better -- a little bit of D3 via direct sunlight and D3 rich foods will improve your mood and health outcomes in a variety of ways. An excessive amount of D3 will give you kidney stones and harm your bones.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#287
post #195

Can someone comment on whether ADHD medication leads to 'loss' of the unfiltered imagination that I have come to associate with my perpetually distracted self ? A friend on ADHD meds told me that it feels like trading unbridled creativity for stability. He found it to be an essential drug for functioning, but I got a sense that it involved losing something really central to your sense of self. Almost like being made…

Diagnosed at 25, started Vyvanse right away. My ADHD is similar to what you describe, and the medication has helped with the mandatory chores of day to day life. If anything it has the effect of feeling that nothing is “too hard” for me and that I am not “too dumb to learn or do X”. Side effects are light to moderately sever headache if I don’t drink enough water, IBM, high blood pressure and a pinch of insomnia. It’…

Weird, my BP and HR lowered on lisdexamfetamine, and I sleep like a baby. It's true meds affect people in different ways.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#288
post #195

Can someone comment on whether ADHD medication leads to 'loss' of the unfiltered imagination that I have come to associate with my perpetually distracted self ? A friend on ADHD meds told me that it feels like trading unbridled creativity for stability. He found it to be an essential drug for functioning, but I got a sense that it involved losing something really central to your sense of self. Almost like being made…

I still feel as creative as my normal self, but I definitely feel less "in the clouds" in general, and that's a marked improvement. There's some feeling of being serious when I have to (i.e. home alone writing code), while previously my emotional state was always in foreground distracting me.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't bet on that. It's far from a sure thing and the price of losing is too great.

I would absolutely be willing to bet that a small dose of Benadryl won't make someone hallucinate "a small amount". Put it another way if makes you feel better -- a little bit of D3 via direct sunlight and D3 rich foods will improve your mood and health outcomes in a variety of ways. An excessive amount of D3 will give you kidney stones and harm your bones.

Would you notice it if you became slowly, progressively, stupider over several years? Maybe, maybe not.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#290
post #270

When I was on ADHD medication and developed depression, they gave me ADHD meds + anti-depressants. When those didn't work they added anti-psychotics. I was 12 years old, getting my blood checked regularly to try to detect the liver or kidney failure (I don't remember which) they knew was a side-effect. Turned out I just didn't like living in Florida.

Maybe you could have got worse without the meds.

True. But there should have been some limits. They put over eight different drugs into me over 1-2 years. I flunked out of school because the drugs made me either fall asleep or manic or sick. I don't know if it's changed, but they seemed to be able to put me on nearly any drug, or any combination, without recovery in between, as long as the doctor signed a script. I had been on Ritalin since I was 8, too, I think.
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