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Stress is certainly a killer, but it's a facet of a broader factor. Society has built up a lot of systems to support people, to protect us from our environment

Stress is certainly a killer, but it's a facet of a broader factor. Society has built up a lot of systems to support people, to protect us from our environment and ourselves, and they've been incredibly successful; average lifespans have increased dramatically... literally by decades. For the most part, these systems are built in response to and designed around how "we" expect peoples' brains work. If your brain doesn't work those ways, many of those support systems are unnecessary, ineffective, or worse still: harmful. There's also no doubt a bunch of systems that could be designed & built that could to help support & protect people with challenges that are largely non-existent for people whose brains work as we expect. That the combined consequence of this is less that a decade of life expectancy for people with ADHD is actually quite remarkable, but let's not kid ourselves: we could be doing so much better.

hirvi74 2y ago
> we could be doing so much better I do not see that happening in my life time. Modern society values none of the things that would help people with ADHD -- relaxed deadlines, less emphasis on productivity, valuing human lives over profits, etc.. Maybe someday in the future AI can take much of the burden off us, but till then, I only see things getting worse.
- cbsmith 2y ago
  > Modern society values none of the things that would help people with ADHD Yeah, I wouldn't expect that modern society is going to value things that would help people with ADHD. One might hope that modern society might value people with ADHD, at least enough to help them some. It's not like society's expectations of people don't change over time. They do. That said, my statement that "we could be doing so much better" wasn't really a hopefully statement. It was more a statement of fact, and a recognition that society's expectations are killing a lot of people with ADHD.

hirvi74 2y ago

> we could be doing so much better I do not see that happening in my life time. Modern society values none of the things that would help people with ADHD -- relaxed deadlines, less emphasis on productivity, valuing human lives over profits, etc.. Maybe someday in the future AI can take much of the burden off us, but till then, I only see things getting worse.

cbsmith 2y ago
> Modern society values none of the things that would help people with ADHD Yeah, I wouldn't expect that modern society is going to value things that would help people with ADHD. One might hope that modern society might value people with ADHD, at least enough to help them some. It's not like society's expectations of people don't change over time. They do. That said, my statement that "we could be doing so much better" wasn't really a hopefully statement. It was more a statement of fact, and a recognition that society's expectations are killing a lot of people with ADHD.