441–450 of 455 posts
For others new to this subject on HN, go to Algolia and search for ADHD. Here's a question I posed a while back, with some helpful responses. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716306 Also, it's worth diving into the literature on a number of conditions if you're unsure or curious. For me, I only started to think something was really different when I compared my interests and how obsessively I'd learn about them,…
Genuinely trying to understand ADHD here (I'm really open, have no aggressive intentions, ready to put empathy to use, might have ADHD or other issues myself, I still don't know. I am driven by scientific curiosity). A few questions: - What are the symptoms? I read here that some argue that they cannot do menial tasks or get up from bed, others get up at 5am regularly or are exceptionally able to do chores. Some can'…
ADHD is defined as a cluster of symptoms like many other disorders. Probably there are different etiologies. But the treatments are the same.
Mild ADHD was less of an impediment before industrialization. It's less of an impediment if you have a secretary at the office and a wife at home. Self medicating can help. And what does a severe case look like if you don't know what you're looking at? Maybe shiftless, maybe dim, maybe accident prone, maybe hot headed, maybe a drunk. So it's no surprise diagnosis varies.
> hard time focusing on things that I don’t like or want to do Not trying to be insensitive, but doesn't that describe everybody? At what point does difficulty motivating yourself to do something unpleasant become an actual pathology? I identify with a lot of the symptoms he lists, but I've never thought that meant there was anything "wrong" with me, I thought everybody felt that way. Are there really people out ther…
Fuck you
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.
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>I see this repeated often and I've never been able to find a source for it. I do not believe stimulant medications affect people with ADHD and without ADHD differently. I'm sorry but you clearly haven't even tried to research the subject, so I'm not surprised you don't believe it. People with ADHD have been scientifically proven to have deficiencies in specific neurotransmitters, namely norepinephrine and dopamine.…
Pretty poor effort response on my part, but whenever I see a claim about a drug doing anything along the lines of "balancing neurotransmitters" I think immediately that its bs. There are probably studies that confirm some people with ADHD symtoms have less dopamine or whatever, but how each of the stims result in increases of these things is simply not specific and targetted enough to make such a claim as 'balancing'…
I believed the idea of imbalanced neurotransmitters readily, as you hear it from authoritative-sounding sources, until some reading made it clear that not only is it not true, that most serious practitioners know it is not true. I remember a talk by the author of "Mad in America" (obviously not an unbiased source) saying that when he discussed this with practitioners they said "of course we know the chemical imbalance hypothesis is not correct" and he said "well you forgot to tell the American public"... That really stuck with me.
Off topic to your comment, but germane to the thread: I keep wrestling with this, but as I move beyond just reading abstracts and summaries of the research, I have to question the idea that ADHD is easily explainable, has any single cause, or is even manageable long term with stimulants [1][2][others, but I am still reading the literature]. I am still trying to answer questions I thought were clear: Does ADHD exist in a meaningful way[3]? If so do stimulants treat it long term [4]? If so at what cost[5]? I thought these were settled questions but the more I read the less convinced I become (I know there are many studies showing different results or debating the results of studies I have linked)... I just put these thoughts out there for anyone on a similar journey. Not to undermine anyone's personal experience; I tried many meds, some helped significantly but side effects ultimately made me stop, I do not doubt people have these symptoms (I do) and that medications have an effect. Good luck to you all! I appreciate reading everyone's input.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5510202/ [2]https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/-/media/Files/Corporate/Reports... [3]https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c547 [4]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19318991/ [5]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670101/
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There's no point to the story below. I never meet people with ADHD, and I just felt like writing about my experience. To summarize, I know that I have ADHD, but I don't know what to do with that information. It's either, take that pill and turn into a robot, or don't take the pill and continue living an unorganized, chaotic life. I'm only 22, don't know at what point I'm supposed to figure out what life is and how it…
First, I really appreciate that you're opening up about your life. It's not easy to do, even with strangers on the web. > It's either, take that pill and turn into a robot, or... Might I suggest you think of it this way: Take that pill and realize my enlightened self or try to love myself in spite of my chemical imbalance in the brain. > can't even summarize without writing a wall of text... Although I'm not currentl…
Sometimes I get a good feeling, and this comment section gave me one :) Seems like the place to write about ADHD.
> Take that pill and realize my enlightened self or try to love myself in spite of my chemical imbalance in the brain
That's actually a good quote, thanks for coming up with it :)
> JOURNAL your personal thoughts, it's really helpful to realizing what you're trying to say to yourself
That's such a good point. Lots of times I spend months thinking about stuff, but rarely come to a conclusion. Sometimes gets to a point where I think so much about something, that it starts to pull me down mentally. But everytime I write these thoughts down, most of the times because I stumble upon a comment which talks about the same topic, I feel like it allows me to summarize these thougts and understand them fully. Somehow I only noticed this now, with you telling me that a journal could help. So thanks again, I should probably start writing a journal, after all, I liked writing stories as a child.
> I'd suggest you try a different medication
I probably should, yes. Funnily enough, I (illegally) self-medicated with Modafinil, a year before I even suspected that I had ADHD. I was just always tired with no motivation, Modafinil helped quite a bit. But it's not an official medicine in Switzerland, so I ordered it over the internet. Obviously that's a terrible solution, so I stopped after 2 blisters.
The official med they gave me was Concerta, which is basically Ritalin for adults in Switzerland.
I spend like 99% of my time on the internet on US-centric platforms. When I informed myself about ADHD, I exclusively read from US sources, Russell Barkley as an example. Now the annoying thing - Adderall, as an example, is just not prescribed in Switzerland. You can only get it in very rare occasions, or if you migrate from the US. Lots of times when I talk about meds or ADHD-theories with my doctor, they either don't exist here or they have another name, which makes that whole ordeal a bit complicated.
I should call my doctor to renew my Concerta prescription. That's another thing, the prescription has to be renewed constantly, but with 'rona you can only get appointments for urgencies. Plus, at the pharmacy I get treated like a drug addict. Last time I tried to pick it up, the prescription expired like a week before. I didn't know that, because the prescription is stored at the pharmacy. The pharmacist then decided to look at me very sincerely and state with a loud voice, that he "can't just give Concerta with an expired prescription, we are talking about extremely strong narcotics here." Was really nice of her, especially because everyone in that pharmacy was able to hear, that this young man over there consumes "extremely strong narcotics". Got some weird looks after that. They also constantly treated me like they suspected that I was only getting them to resell them, had to justify me picking them up both times I went there.
I guess, overall the experience I had with meds was just unsatisfactory. Should probably just try out a different pharmacy, the last experience demotivated me so much that I just completely gave up on meds.
Well anyways, thanks for reading my TED talk, and many thanks for your great tips :)
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I am not diagnosed with ADHD. I do however have 400 tabs open in Firefox and about 30 in Edge.
I regularly have around 8 windows of firefox and 2 windows of Safari. I just can't bring myself to close them.... What if I forget one of the things?!
Then paste it into Joplin or something.
I am going to mention something. In my distant past I worked for a psychology firm handling, well, everything to do with computers. That included some testing. In the United States, there are two tests for ADHD I would vouch for: Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT) and the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA). Both are computerized. Both rely solely on your reactions and your restraint, they are not questionn…
Is there an easy way to access these tests? Like a free clone or something? I'd much rather not fork over my precious currency to some rent-seeker just so they can let me do the test on their computer and the give it their stamp of approval. If there's nothing but a description then I'll go and implement it myself and release it on sourcehut.
1) Which types of attention will you measure and how do you differentiate between them?
2) Do you have an extensive body of testing to establish baselines, normals, standard deviations, and the like?
3) Do you expect a psychiatrist to write a prescription of a scheduled drug for anyone based on something they downloaded off of, say, sourceforge, or cloned out of GitHub?
Even if you valued your time at a buck an hour, you're not gonna get cheaper than forking over your precious currency to some rent-seeker.
I have undiagnosed ADD. I know partially because I observe my own behavior, but also because once at a party I took adderall and while everyone else frantically danced themselves into a heavy sweat, I was compelled to go into the kitchen and do all the dishes and reorganize my closet. I don’t like how stimulants make me feel, even though I know they might make it easier to fit into society. It is probably hard to des…
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Is there an easy way to access these tests? Like a free clone or something? I'd much rather not fork over my precious currency to some rent-seeker just so they can let me do the test on their computer and the give it their stamp of approval. If there's nothing but a description then I'll go and implement it myself and release it on sourcehut.
Good luck with that. You have no idea of what you're up against. Let's just start with the basics: 1) Which types of attention will you measure and how do you differentiate between them? 2) Do you have an extensive body of testing to establish baselines, normals, standard deviations, and the like? 3) Do you expect a psychiatrist to write a prescription of a scheduled drug for anyone based on something they downloaded…
Also it takes much less than to get a scrip, just those shitty questionnaires.
And I would if it time well spent if it helped me and others to manage their illness.
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Good luck with that. You have no idea of what you're up against. Let's just start with the basics: 1) Which types of attention will you measure and how do you differentiate between them? 2) Do you have an extensive body of testing to establish baselines, normals, standard deviations, and the like? 3) Do you expect a psychiatrist to write a prescription of a scheduled drug for anyone based on something they downloaded…
Dude, I mean to copy the existing test. Also it takes much less than to get a scrip, just those shitty questionnaires. And I would if it time well spent if it helped me and others to manage their illness.
They're not going to give you the source and they're not going to give you the base data. You can test people for times but you don't know the cutoffs or the norms for those times. You don't even know if high or low of a norm is a sign of attention or inattention. You'd have an easier time replicating the MMPI.
But go for it.