feel like taking a survey?

The numbers are likely higher than they were, simply because it’s now being diagnosed. When I was a kid, they didn’t believe that girls had ADD and thought that ADD was outgrown anyway during high school. So that accounts for probably half of the kids and most adults the experts missed before. ADD was considered hyperactivity, and the rest were just lazy or daydreamers. So that accounts for another previously unrecognized group that is now receiving a diagnosis.

In grade school, I was labeled an underachiever and was told to try harder. When I didn’t achieve what they thought I should, I was blamed for not trying hard enough. My parents were blamed for my underachievement as well because they maintained a high stress home situation and they were divorced. In high school, same drill. Still no diagnosis. My parents did not create my ADD, any more than I created my son’s ADD, except by providing genetic material for it. A dangerous home environment and divorce didn’t create my ADD. It probably wasn’t much help, but I would have had ADD growing up with Ozzie and Harriet doing all the perfect parenting things. But no one could call it ADD because I was a girl, wrong age, and no hyperactivity. Back then they just called these kids a Disappointment.

Is ADD an epidemic? Interesting question. It seems that there are a lot of creative people that learn and think differently from the masses. I think ADD people have always been around, but haven’t been diagnosed in the past and now they are. ADD-ers tend to have ADD kids, perhaps more than one. It’s only now that we’re starting to see numbers from this population, so it might seem like an epidemic even though many of these people have been there all along.

!. When you were a child, did your parents allow you to keep your room in disarray. Yes. My mother nagged but I just ignored her. She would finally give up and clean it for me.

2. Did you parents make you take responsibility for chores that were not completed? No. They would take priveleges away and I didn’t care. I would just read. What were they going to do, tell me I couldn’t READ? The Christmas tree would stay up until after Valentine’s Day.

3. Did your parents teach you organizational skills? NO. My father just bitched about how gripless I was.

4. Did either of your parents have ADD/ADHD. My mother, I believe, does.

5. were you an adult or a child when diagnosed with ADD/ADHD? Adult, I realized I had it while reading up for my nine-year-old son last year.

6. Do you find yourself darting out at your children because you have ADD?ADHD and expect them to be perfect like you believe they should be? (very important question) Hmmmm. I try to make them accountable for their actions, since I felt that my parents erred by not doing that for me. I want them to keep their rooms orderly, clean their bathroom…I don’t want them to grow up to be like me.

7.How many are self diagnosed, why? and why do you think you have ADD?ADHD verses another copy cat disorder. I have read a lot about depression, bipolar disorder, etc. and while I have at times felt that I have to cope with depression, it is DEFINITELY ADD. Once I read Driven to Distraction, I knew.

8. Hopefully you did not diagnose yourself, what type of Dr. diagnosed you?

9. Do you take meds and are you aware of all the side effects? I went to my family nurse practicioner, he maintains I am depressed and put me on Wellbutrin. It helps a little. I forget to take it though, so that’s a problem.

10.

I have surfed all over the net at the different ADD/ADHD sites. As I read the topics and responses, It appears that Our Drs. are wrongly diagnosing people or we seem to have an ADD/ADHD epidemic in this country.

Has anyone noticed the climb in numbers??? Either that or heredity is now showing how it works.

I do know for a fact that a physiatrists will do exactly that. It stands to reason that when you only have a 20 minute visit and can’t remember half of the things you wanted to say, and not able to express how you feel, but you then walk out of there with a prescription to change the wiring in your brain. Does it really need to be changed or do we need something that was not given to us as children?

Keep smiling and you’ll be with us for a while

If it weren’t for my sense of humor I would have been dead a long, long time ago. It’s very difficult at times, as you all know. We have special gifts, talents of real value…but it seems to get cancelled out by our propensity to be late, or because we forget what we were saying mid-sentence. I KNOW how smart I am…my brain is incredible. If I am interested in my coursework I ace the classes, even if I have to re-read every paragraph aloud twice and review, review, I can do it. I do believe that there are some cases of mis-(over)diagnosis, but I do feel that in the past, people were WAY under-diagnosed. Thanks for the survey.

To Bojangles, To answer #5 when were you diagnosised. I was born in the late 50’s no one talked about ADD/ADHD. They only said I was slow in school. I did not find out until my daughter was in third grade and she was having trouble her self.After going to a few meetings about LD I spoke to the rep. on ADD and made and appointment to be tested. I think there are a lot more people out there that dont’t have kids that will never figure this out. YES there was always a mess under my bed.

Snoopy, I was born in 44.
I never knew the word exisited. I first heard it in the late 70’s when my son was going through testing. Now here is a sad story.
His pediatrician tested him. He told me he was fine and nothing to worry about.
But about a month later when the reports came in to bring to the school I read them. This is what one of the lines read.

Impression: ADDphyscologicaltest to be included

To me that said “add” physcological testing.

So for all of these years until we were both diagnosed in 1991? I never knew he had ADD until the Dr. (another one) pointed it out to me.

If I knew there was a name for this back in the 50’s I would have spoken up. But I kept everything to myself.

On diagnosis I just read in the New Yorker in an article on the effectiveness of the CIA and similar bodies the following:

“….
In the early nineteen-seventies, a professor of psychology at Stanford University named David L. Rosenhan gathered together a painter, a graduate student, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a housewife, and three psychologists. He told them to check into different psychiatric hospitals under aliases, with the complaint that they had been hearing voices. They were instructed to say that the voices were unfamiliar, and that they heard words like “empty,”“thud,” and “hollow.” Apart from that initial story, the pseudo patients were instructed to answer every question truthfully, to behave as they normally would, and to tell the hospital staff—at every opportunity—that the voices were gone and that they had experienced no further symptoms. The eight subjects were hospitalized, on average, for nineteen days. One was kept for almost two months. Rosenhan wanted to find out if the hospital staffs would ever see through the ruse. They never did.

Rosenhan’s test is, in a way, a classic intelligence problem. Here was a signal (a sane person) buried in a mountain of conflicting and confusing noise (a mental hospital), and the intelligence analysts (the doctors) were asked to connect the dots—and they failed spectacularly. In the course of their hospital stay, the eight pseudo patients were given a total of twenty-one hundred pills. They underwent psychiatric interviews, and sober case summaries documenting their pathologies were written up. They were asked by Rosenhan to take notes documenting how they were treated, and this quickly became part of their supposed pathology. “Patient engaging in writing behavior,” one nurse ominously wrote in her notes. Having been labelled as ill upon admission, they could not shake the diagnosis. “Nervous?” a friendly nurse asked one of the subjects as he paced the halls one day. “No,” he corrected her, to no avail, “bored.”

The solution to this problem seems obvious enough. Doctors and nurses need to be made alert to the possibility that sane people sometimes get admitted to mental hospitals. So Rosenhan went to a research-and-teaching hospital and informed the staff that at some point in the next three months he would once again send over one or more of his pseudo patients. This time, of the hundred and ninety-three patients admitted in the three-month period, forty-one were identified by at least one staff member as being almost certainly sane. Once again, however, they were wrong. Rosenhan hadn’t sent anyone over. In attempting to solve one kind of intelligence problem (overdiagnosis), the hospital simply created another problem (underdiagnosis). This is the second, and perhaps more serious, consequence of creeping determinism: in our zeal to correct what we believe to be the problems of the past, we end up creating new problems for the future.
…..
Rosenhan’s psychiatrists used to miss the sane; then they started to see sane people everywhere. That is a change, but it is not exactly progress
…..”

from:CONNECTING THE DOTS
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
The paradoxes of intelligence reform.
Issue of 2003-03-10 Posted 2003-03-03
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?critics/030310crat_atlarge

!. When you were a child, did your parents allow you to keep your room in disarray.

2. Did you parents make you take responsibility for chores that were not completed? no she did not , she was too busy trying to feed the four of us ..

3. Did your parents teach you organizational skills? no never , but others did and i still got lost in the shuffle , always have ..

4. Did either of your parents have ADD/ADHD. yes i believe my dad is and also my sister

5. were you an adult or a child when diagnosed with ADD/ADHD? i was an adult , i am 38 and a women , they did not know about adhd then , but i was a girl with the classice hyper impulsive type ..

6. Do you find yourself darting out at your children because you have ADD?ADHD and expect them to be perfect like you believe they should be? (very important question)
No , i do not , i have had extensive therapy and have thought profoundly on my issues and i am aware of myself .. and i also have reality based expectations for my kids .. i never expect my kids to be anything except who they are growing to be in their uniqueness „ the only thing i ask of my kids is respect , that i also show them , proper techniques to solve problems , being kind and teach them how to love themselves and others .. and most of all i listen to them …
7.How many are self diagnosed, why? and why do you think you have ADD?ADHD verses another copy cat disorder. i am not self diagnosed but new that i was ADHD well before i was officially diagnosed … the symptoms are so profound and i think that no one could copy cat if they were not truly ADHD. and if they weren’t why would they want to be???? do you know how extemely painful this has been for me ??? the shame issues were intense ..amoung a miriad of other things that i could write a book ..

This is a definitely biomedical issue and although we do not have the technology to prove it , i believe in the next decade or so we will , along with i hope more target specific drugs that help all the mental disorders that can not be percisely proved , but effects are very visible ..

8. Hopefully you did not diagnose yourself, what type of Dr. diagnosed you?
psychiatrist who speacializes in this field

9. Do you take meds and are you aware of all the side effects?
i take prozac and adderall , no side affects so far , prozac for 2 years now , initial side affects that went away after 2 wks … adderall is great , but i have to adjust with eating and sleeping issues , but nothing really major in this reguard .

10.

I have surfed all over the net at the different ADD/ADHD sites. As I read the topics and responses, It appears that Our Drs. are wrongly diagnosing people or we seem to have an ADD/ADHD epidemic in this country.

Has anyone noticed the climb in numbers??? Either that or heredity is now showing how it works.

I do know for a fact that a physiatrists will do exactly that. It stands to reason that when you only have a 20 minute visit and can’t remember half of the things you wanted to say, and not able to express how you feel, but you then walk out of there with a prescription to change the wiring in your brain. Does it really need to be changed or do we need something that was not given to us as children?

i think the climb in diagnoses is because of the reasons others gave you , but i also think there is a rise in this disorder because our nutrition in the food is much poorer than a couple decades ago and the pesticides and artificial , mass produced using chemicals ,overprocessed , synthetic foods are all around .. then add into the mix the different pollutants in the air and all the other synthetic materials that are now part of our everyday life .. these things have profound effects on brain chemistry and developing brains ..

well i said my piece , thanks , laura

Keep smiling and you’ll be with us for a while