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> One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be ev

> One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be evaluated for ADHD and the professional they went to said "nope, this doesn't look like ADHD"? I'm wondering if there are criteria people use to exclude ADHD as a diagnosis, or if the assumption is that if people are seeking diagnosis/treatment that they're experiencing something enough like it and should be given ADHD interventions (and of course, the incentive under fee-for-service would be to provide the intervention for a fee).

travisjungroth 5y ago
Yeah, usually people who lack the executive function navigate the healthcare system. It’s like they have a lack of focus pathology, so they can’t get an ADHD diagnoses. https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-you-looked-into-adhd-your-posts-from https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-yo...
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  Can confirm. Lost every single object I could lose, dropped out of school, forgot I had prescriptions to pick up for a year, constant messy room, spent an entire year literally doing nothing and still feeling nervous every day, failed jobs where I couldn't cherry pick interesting things out of JIRA and then spent 2 hours in hyperfocus, followed by 6 hours of faking being busy because I simply couldn't focus anymore (but in practice, nobody minded, and I was considered to be overperforming. getting paid based on hours sucks for me). My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). It got substantially worse. I can't remember the last time I managed to enter hyperfocus. So I've made a new-years resolution and made an appointment online (thanks, low friction tech) this week. It'll only be... 9 months until I figure out which side of the ADHD battle this doctor is on. (I've had bad experiences getting trans healthcare, and only got treatment through a lucky incident, so my expectations are rather low). I've known for years that this is likely what it is, but only doing it when absolutely neccessary is on brand for it too I guess.
  - bluesnowmonkey 5y ago
    > My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). You generally have more control over your job description than anyone will acknowledge to your face. If you’re miserable maintaining broken black boxes, then stop doing that. Figure out what you’d be more productive doing, tell your boss, and start doing it. You may have some uncomfortable conversations. Stand up for yourself. There’s a huge gap between what your boss will complain about vs what they’ll fire you for. In most cases it’s incredibly difficult to fire someone who is doing something (almost anything) valuable. Another thing you might consider is to pick one of those black boxes and dive into it. Tell people this thing is broken and you need to fix it and they need to cover the rest while you do so. If the company doesn’t have the resources to do so, that’s the company’s problem. Then focus on it until it’s not broken and not a black box (at least to you) anymore. Now you have job security as the person who understands the thing, and it’s a nice job to have because you made the thing nice.
    - sascha_sl 5y ago
      I may have simplified a bit. The black box is GitHub Actions Self-Hosted runners. Recently a very large blast radius Keycloak got added (we're a go team, we have zero experience running anything Java/JBoss). GitHub Actions was used to sell GitHub somewhere way above me, a Microsoft enterprise contract might've been involved too. GitLab wasn't even considered. Rejecting GHA outright as a team is something we all agree would be right, but not politically feasible. Keycloak is another team running off. The entire tribe is massively understaffed because limitations to salaries (also from higher up) are slowly eating away at all the performers. I like my team and the tribe in general, but even if we could hire more people, we've become the least desirable team with all the broken shit and hiring is always for all teams, so long term I'll probably ask to do something else.
Retric 5y ago
I don’t know about adults, but parents are often told their children don’t have ADHD. Various estimates place prevalence at around 4% which is common, but not that common.
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  Quality of the estimations is extremely shitty. I've heard everything from 1% to 5%. And for persistence into adulthood, anything from 40% to 15%. This is mostly because diagnostic criteria are extremely up for interpretation, and it usually comes down to the doctor if you get a diagnosis or not. I read one particular study that attempted to correlate location with ADHD incidence, and then it turned out that it came down to how the local specialists felt about it. Reminds me of the reason the DSM comittee rejected cPTSD from inclusion into their officially-opinionated manual. "If we add this, too many people would be affected, we simply can't pathologize this many people at once".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
freedom2099 5y ago
Never… I have always been capable of extreme focus! Even now at work I regularly zone out for hours on a daily basis ignoring my phone and the company chat (people learned that of I don’t answer is because I am focusing and filtering out all distractions so just wait for me to answer when I can). Even most of my ho bows are about continuous focus on one single activity they leads me to ignore all the distractions!

travisjungroth 5y ago

Yeah, usually people who lack the executive function navigate the healthcare system. It’s like they have a lack of focus pathology, so they can’t get an ADHD diagnoses. https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-you-looked-into-adhd-your-posts-from https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-yo...

sascha_sl 5y ago
Can confirm. Lost every single object I could lose, dropped out of school, forgot I had prescriptions to pick up for a year, constant messy room, spent an entire year literally doing nothing and still feeling nervous every day, failed jobs where I couldn't cherry pick interesting things out of JIRA and then spent 2 hours in hyperfocus, followed by 6 hours of faking being busy because I simply couldn't focus anymore (but in practice, nobody minded, and I was considered to be overperforming. getting paid based on hours sucks for me). My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). It got substantially worse. I can't remember the last time I managed to enter hyperfocus. So I've made a new-years resolution and made an appointment online (thanks, low friction tech) this week. It'll only be... 9 months until I figure out which side of the ADHD battle this doctor is on. (I've had bad experiences getting trans healthcare, and only got treatment through a lucky incident, so my expectations are rather low). I've known for years that this is likely what it is, but only doing it when absolutely neccessary is on brand for it too I guess.
- bluesnowmonkey 5y ago
  > My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). You generally have more control over your job description than anyone will acknowledge to your face. If you’re miserable maintaining broken black boxes, then stop doing that. Figure out what you’d be more productive doing, tell your boss, and start doing it. You may have some uncomfortable conversations. Stand up for yourself. There’s a huge gap between what your boss will complain about vs what they’ll fire you for. In most cases it’s incredibly difficult to fire someone who is doing something (almost anything) valuable. Another thing you might consider is to pick one of those black boxes and dive into it. Tell people this thing is broken and you need to fix it and they need to cover the rest while you do so. If the company doesn’t have the resources to do so, that’s the company’s problem. Then focus on it until it’s not broken and not a black box (at least to you) anymore. Now you have job security as the person who understands the thing, and it’s a nice job to have because you made the thing nice.
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    I may have simplified a bit. The black box is GitHub Actions Self-Hosted runners. Recently a very large blast radius Keycloak got added (we're a go team, we have zero experience running anything Java/JBoss). GitHub Actions was used to sell GitHub somewhere way above me, a Microsoft enterprise contract might've been involved too. GitLab wasn't even considered. Rejecting GHA outright as a team is something we all agree would be right, but not politically feasible. Keycloak is another team running off. The entire tribe is massively understaffed because limitations to salaries (also from higher up) are slowly eating away at all the performers. I like my team and the tribe in general, but even if we could hire more people, we've become the least desirable team with all the broken shit and hiring is always for all teams, so long term I'll probably ask to do something else.

Retric 5y ago

I don’t know about adults, but parents are often told their children don’t have ADHD. Various estimates place prevalence at around 4% which is common, but not that common.

sascha_sl 5y ago
Quality of the estimations is extremely shitty. I've heard everything from 1% to 5%. And for persistence into adulthood, anything from 40% to 15%. This is mostly because diagnostic criteria are extremely up for interpretation, and it usually comes down to the doctor if you get a diagnosis or not. I read one particular study that attempted to correlate location with ADHD incidence, and then it turned out that it came down to how the local specialists felt about it. Reminds me of the reason the DSM comittee rejected cPTSD from inclusion into their officially-opinionated manual. "If we add this, too many people would be affected, we simply can't pathologize this many people at once".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

freedom2099 5y ago

Never… I have always been capable of extreme focus! Even now at work I regularly zone out for hours on a daily basis ignoring my phone and the company chat (people learned that of I don’t answer is because I am focusing and filtering out all distractions so just wait for me to answer when I can). Even most of my ho bows are about continuous focus on one single activity they leads me to ignore all the distractions!