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You don't "fix" a person. Mental health is not a binary. Just because helping her with her ADHD didn't just flip a switch and "solve" her mental health doesn't

You don't "fix" a person. Mental health is not a binary. Just because helping her with her ADHD didn't just flip a switch and "solve" her mental health doesn't mean it didn't help her. The threshold for ADHD being a disorder is it causing distress in someone's life. Unfortunately, most of that distress tends to be invisible, so it's not something you can just decide as a third party without a lot of training and empathy. If you want to reach your end goal of good mental health, you have to work on every problem that exists. Healing one aspect of mental health often has a positive domino effect, but that's not the case every time. People are complex, and so is treatment. I would never urge someone to avoid treatment for something that is hard to solve, because health is worth the effort.

lazide 5y ago
It unblocked something which very shortly caused massive massive problems - as in 9 major crimes in less than 6 months type problems, where before she got so nervous she couldn’t even speed. she’s lucky she didn’t get deported or thrown in jail for years. If she was a man, she definitely would have. It’s easy to say it’s all good - and time will tell. But yikes.
- pksebben 5y ago
  That's really tragic, and I'm sorry that happened to the two of you. It sounds though like there were undiagnosed issues at hand - ADD won't really give someone anxiety about speeding (if anything, it will cause them to do it more, either from hyperfocus on the task of driving or by lack of focus on the speedo). I know amphetamines can also nominally 'treat' things like depression and anxiety, by dumping reward chemicals into the brain (but, as it seems happened here, also exacerbate a latent set of bad behaviors). You really don't want to make someone who's afraid of the world / mad at the world / frustrated with the world more motivated, which is the essence of how a lot of ADD meds work.

lazide 5y ago

It unblocked something which very shortly caused massive massive problems - as in 9 major crimes in less than 6 months type problems, where before she got so nervous she couldn’t even speed. she’s lucky she didn’t get deported or thrown in jail for years. If she was a man, she definitely would have. It’s easy to say it’s all good - and time will tell. But yikes.

pksebben 5y ago
That's really tragic, and I'm sorry that happened to the two of you. It sounds though like there were undiagnosed issues at hand - ADD won't really give someone anxiety about speeding (if anything, it will cause them to do it more, either from hyperfocus on the task of driving or by lack of focus on the speedo). I know amphetamines can also nominally 'treat' things like depression and anxiety, by dumping reward chemicals into the brain (but, as it seems happened here, also exacerbate a latent set of bad behaviors). You really don't want to make someone who's afraid of the world / mad at the world / frustrated with the world more motivated, which is the essence of how a lot of ADD meds work.