4 ms·

I was “diagnosed” with ADD and was put on ritalin which had 0 affect on me. Wasn’t until later in life I realised I didn’t have ADD I just wasn’t enjoying parts

I was “diagnosed” with ADD and was put on ritalin which had 0 affect on me. Wasn’t until later in life I realised I didn’t have ADD I just wasn’t enjoying parts of school. Put me in physics class, technical drawing, cooking, math, I focused and did really well. Every other class was boring and non stimulating and so I acted up. ADD is over diagnosed.

texasbigdata 4y ago
The last line is logically ambiguous. In Europe, I believe in 2019, they found two effects: a significant _underdiagnosis_, offset by a tiny over diagnosis; now you could argue phones and screens artificially raise the genetic baseline, or that America is inherently different. But I will tell you ADHD meds calm me down, or when measured with a heart strap monitor over a full day fairly meaningfully lower my heart rate. It’s perhaps a meme now that adhd is over diagnosed, but I’d guess the majority is pill seeking individuals looking to compete at school or at work and less false positive diagnoses such as yours. Net net you seem to have solved it fairly quickly so at least that’s good: even when you get the diagnosis wrong if you can backtrack without significant cost then maybe it’s not absolutely horrible.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it doesn’t exist or the meds are pointless. Absolutely there are people with ADHD and meds work for them. But sometimes I think difficult children are automatically labeled ADHD and the solution is drugs without trying to find the cause. I reminded of this Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_c...
  - adastra22 4y ago
    For people with ADHD though, the drugs are the cure. Stimulants are a miracle drug for those lacking executive function.
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    In my experience it was the opposite - there were almost no kids labeled ADHD. Where did you live that everyone was labelled ADHD? Most people blamed the behaviour of difficult children on their difficult parents. That being said there are a lot of people who are purposely seeking ADHD meds who know they are not ADHD just to get drugs. Those people are kind of ruining it for everyone else. They are usually pretty easy to spot though
jon-wood 4y ago
> Put me in physics class, technical drawing, cooking, math, I focused and did really well. Every other class was boring and non stimulating and so I acted up. Being able to focus (sometimes to self-destructive levels) on things we enjoy are as much a part of ADD as being chronically unable to focus on things we find boring.
adastra22 4y ago
> Put me in physics class, technical drawing, cooking, math, I focused and did really well. Every other class was boring and non stimulating and so I acted up. I’m curious what you think ADD is, since what you describe here is practically textbook symptoms.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Diagnosing every child who is bored and not paying attention with ADD and putting them on drugs is trying to shift blame from teachers and the education system to kids. I didn’t say ADD/ADHD don’t exist. I said it’s over diagnosed. We just like to label kids and tell them they are broken and needs drugs when in reality most kids are bored of the sterile environment of learning with the dumbed down education system that teachers are forced to adhere to because acknowledging that not all kids learn the same way as other kids is too hard.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    > Diagnosing every child who is bored and not paying attention with ADD and putting them on drugs is trying to shift blame from teachers and the education system to kids. No, it's trying to see if they have a condition which is readily and effectively treated through medication. I have ADHD, and my daughter has ADHD, so I've been through this a few times with the docs. The _gold standard_ for determining if a patient has ADHD is treatment with stimulants. There are assessment surveys they have you fill out and such, but there's tons of other underlying issues which can cause similar symptoms and lead to false positives. The best, easiest, most reliable way to tell if someone really has ADHD is to give them Adderall and see what happens. My psychiatrist says that he has done this even with patients who end up getting diagnosed with other issues like bipolar. Why? Because despite being a scheduled drug, stimulants are incredibly safe at pharmaceutical doses, without any serious side effects. It's harmless to try, and if it doesn't work you move on to try something else. Btw what studies have been done have shown that if anything ADHD is under diagnosed, and severely so in the case of girls. A lot of people who have had other underlying issues have initially been misdiagnosed as ADHD, but this is not the same thing as general over diagnosing, and generally is because ADHD must be first considered and ruled out before moving on to conditions which require the use of more serious drugs.
balfirevic 4y ago
> ADD is over diagnosed. You concluded this just based on your single experience? It could be wrongly diagnosed for many people and still be under diagnosed overall.
smittywerben 4y ago
It had zero affect on you 15 years ago. Is α > 0.05 comment on ADD in thread on ADHD diagnoses (2018) considered flame bait?

texasbigdata 4y ago

The last line is logically ambiguous. In Europe, I believe in 2019, they found two effects: a significant _underdiagnosis_, offset by a tiny over diagnosis; now you could argue phones and screens artificially raise the genetic baseline, or that America is inherently different. But I will tell you ADHD meds calm me down, or when measured with a heart strap monitor over a full day fairly meaningfully lower my heart rate. It’s perhaps a meme now that adhd is over diagnosed, but I’d guess the majority is pill seeking individuals looking to compete at school or at work and less false positive diagnoses such as yours. Net net you seem to have solved it fairly quickly so at least that’s good: even when you get the diagnosis wrong if you can backtrack without significant cost then maybe it’s not absolutely horrible.

philliphaydon 4y ago
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it doesn’t exist or the meds are pointless. Absolutely there are people with ADHD and meds work for them. But sometimes I think difficult children are automatically labeled ADHD and the solution is drugs without trying to find the cause. I reminded of this Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_c...
- adastra22 4y ago
  For people with ADHD though, the drugs are the cure. Stimulants are a miracle drug for those lacking executive function.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  In my experience it was the opposite - there were almost no kids labeled ADHD. Where did you live that everyone was labelled ADHD? Most people blamed the behaviour of difficult children on their difficult parents. That being said there are a lot of people who are purposely seeking ADHD meds who know they are not ADHD just to get drugs. Those people are kind of ruining it for everyone else. They are usually pretty easy to spot though

jon-wood 4y ago

> Put me in physics class, technical drawing, cooking, math, I focused and did really well. Every other class was boring and non stimulating and so I acted up. Being able to focus (sometimes to self-destructive levels) on things we enjoy are as much a part of ADD as being chronically unable to focus on things we find boring.

adastra22 4y ago

> Put me in physics class, technical drawing, cooking, math, I focused and did really well. Every other class was boring and non stimulating and so I acted up. I’m curious what you think ADD is, since what you describe here is practically textbook symptoms.

philliphaydon 4y ago
Diagnosing every child who is bored and not paying attention with ADD and putting them on drugs is trying to shift blame from teachers and the education system to kids. I didn’t say ADD/ADHD don’t exist. I said it’s over diagnosed. We just like to label kids and tell them they are broken and needs drugs when in reality most kids are bored of the sterile environment of learning with the dumbed down education system that teachers are forced to adhere to because acknowledging that not all kids learn the same way as other kids is too hard.
- adastra22 4y ago
  > Diagnosing every child who is bored and not paying attention with ADD and putting them on drugs is trying to shift blame from teachers and the education system to kids. No, it's trying to see if they have a condition which is readily and effectively treated through medication. I have ADHD, and my daughter has ADHD, so I've been through this a few times with the docs. The _gold standard_ for determining if a patient has ADHD is treatment with stimulants. There are assessment surveys they have you fill out and such, but there's tons of other underlying issues which can cause similar symptoms and lead to false positives. The best, easiest, most reliable way to tell if someone really has ADHD is to give them Adderall and see what happens. My psychiatrist says that he has done this even with patients who end up getting diagnosed with other issues like bipolar. Why? Because despite being a scheduled drug, stimulants are incredibly safe at pharmaceutical doses, without any serious side effects. It's harmless to try, and if it doesn't work you move on to try something else. Btw what studies have been done have shown that if anything ADHD is under diagnosed, and severely so in the case of girls. A lot of people who have had other underlying issues have initially been misdiagnosed as ADHD, but this is not the same thing as general over diagnosing, and generally is because ADHD must be first considered and ruled out before moving on to conditions which require the use of more serious drugs.

balfirevic 4y ago

> ADD is over diagnosed. You concluded this just based on your single experience? It could be wrongly diagnosed for many people and still be under diagnosed overall.

smittywerben 4y ago

It had zero affect on you 15 years ago. Is α > 0.05 comment on ADD in thread on ADHD diagnoses (2018) considered flame bait?