Awareness, I didnt even know I could possibly have it til a friend told me I reminded him of his friend with adhd, I just assumed since I got good grades til college (having to learn to study and force myself all of a sudden was rough) I didn’t have it, since ppl that had it did bad in school (tv had taught me)
Great article! Honestly I believe one of the aspects of the collapse we are undergoing is an attempted reduction of neurodivergence in humanity. The same process that is causing a loss of biodiversity and the loss of diversity in human languages in general I think is also violently selecting against neurodiversity in humans.
Of course you can’t quite stop all the neurodiverse kids being born yet (genetics is trying to get us there as fast as possible though!), but you can make their life living hell and force them to mask so much they become lost in layers of masking and trauma.
The thing is, ADHD is unintentionally one of the most political disabilities as it smashes the cornerstone of expressed willpower being the basis for judgement in most societies and leaves systems of selection rudderless without the sharp distinctions expressed willpower falsely hallucinates and accentuates. Further one of the major way social safety nets and the shared collective wealth of societies have been hollowed out is by offloading immense amounts of Executive Function requirements to people navigating systems and then aggressively pretending Executive Function isn’t a limited, exhaustible capacity.
People have had their basic understanding of focus lobotomized by tech narratives (the concept of “attention span” abstracted from context is meaningless for one) and we now collectively pretend it isn’t an act of labor to focus and use Executive Function. This forces ADHD squarely into a broader discussion of collapse and enshittification.
Epic comment. I feel like there is stuff to unpack here - gonna bookmark this and spam you with more comments later if I can remember.
[do a task later] if I can remember
ADHD forum
I personally think that it isn’t so much people that are increasingly expressing ADHD traits, it’s the world that’s more and more unforgiving of those traits. Everything is monitored and optimized and the volume of info we’re supposed to process every day is massive. We’re not built for this world and it shows. If we fail to fit the mold that produces the most value for stock holders we are deemed defective. We’re not. We’re just human.
The world changes massively in the 90s and then again every 10 years since. Each change affects the group that grows up during the change, making them much different than generations before. Older generations label this diversion as ADHD and attempt to correct the new generations back to the old ones.
While I appreciate your sentiment, the math doesn’t follow in the last sentence: 90s’ older generation is not the same as 20s’ older generation, and the latter is not “correcting” to said 90s’ target results. I feel that what you’re trying to land on is the seemingly exponential change to modern society since the 90s advent of various social/comms tech, though. 🙇🏼♂️
I’m a parent of kids born in the 10s, I was born in the 90s. Kids are still being diagnosed with adhd often as young as three. Its plenty of my peers my age that push this stuff too.
Generations are inheriting what they think “normal” should be from the generation before them, and they from the generation before them.
Its definitely not a hard rule. I’d expect people on lemmy to be more likely to be independent thinkers anyways.
Yes, and the point is that each successive generation has a slightly different era of parents that influence their own parenting, etc. —for better or worse.
It might seem like it, especially for late diagnoses, but I don’t think the ratio of individuals with ADHD is increasing.
They are getting hit with an information overload unlike anything previous generations have had to deal with. And, what was possible to cope with earlier in life, now in mid-life, results in a choice of either a mental breakdown from exhaustion, or medication that helps deal with the symptoms.
There are some technological and cultural trends that exasperates the issue, especially short form social media, which I think governments have failed at protecting the younger generation from. It’s not like it’s an easy thing to fix. Try banning sugar from the sugar addicted children who’s sense of identify and self worth is made out of sugar. Not to mention capitalistic forces salivating over how dirt cheap and easy it is to manipulate them en mass.
I have been diagnosed as an adult. I suffer from imposter syndrome.
“Maybe I don’t have ADHD?”
Paradoxically this is normal for someone with ADHD.
But really, how do I even know at this point? I’ve been taking Vyvanse for years.
I don’t even know if I’m more productive because my life has changed dramatically since getting my diagnosis.
Shit’s fakked.
I literally just went though this. I quit taking my adderall for about a month.
I kept seeing posts online about having adhd and how relatable it is. Ironically, I also saw articles about the rise is diagnoses and whether the increase is real or over-diagnosed. I started to question if I saw some random post, related to it then got a diagnosis for something I may not have. I was thinking I didn’t deserve for the meds to work bc I didn’t really have ADHD. Honestly, it doesn’t even make sense to me now lol
You know, just your basic imposter syndrome spiraling.
I thought I was okay but over the month I was feeling more and more stressed out at work. Suddenly, I had 150 unread messages in my inbox and I realized I wasn’t completing my work. Before going off the medication I had just a handful of emails.
Back on my medication last week and I’ve already halved that stack of emails. My bf can tell when I take my medication and when I don’t. He notices I start interrupting a lot more than I when I don’t take it.
Sound like my family but with antidepressants.
“I dont think the pills work, life’s just better now things are going so well, I’ll probably go off the meds”
Honestly thats the best we have when it comes to mental health right now. People working in mental health industries need to be more open and honest about how little we know and how much work is left to do.
I do understand that honesty would impact drug sales though, so I won’t hold my breath.
I have been diagnosed as an adult. I suffer from imposter syndrome.
“Maybe I don’t have ADHD?”
This is partly what prevents me seeking a diagnosis.
Honestly, talk to your doctor. Tell them why you think you might have it and why you’re worried you might be imagining it.
They’ll give you a test, and you’ll be evaluated by someone who is trained to tell if you might have it or not.
I didn’t ask about it for a long time bc the same reason but life has been so much more manageable now.
Thank you.
What has made it more manageable for you, if you don’t mind me asking?
Great that this is being asked finally, and in a Guardian article even.
Because people are addicted to stimulants. I say this as having been diagnosed by multiple doctors. I 110% have adhd. My mom, my brother and all the other family members that take a stimulant do not. Especially my brother. He just likes to go fast
I wonder if there’s any outside pressure to go fast and not stop 🤔
Same reason anything takes off in the west. There is money to be made by treating adhd. The more people diagnosed the more money can be made. Most doctors won’t advise that the medications they prescribe haven’t been around long enough to do long term studies on them.
Y’all can roll the dice if you like, I really hope some of you luck out and find benefit.
What are you even on about, mate? You could check for yourself in minutes how old the research is on ADHD and stimulants (linked is a Google scholar search for some key terms for research from 1950-1980).
Just don’t participate in an ADHD support community if you don’t want to be supportive, eh? The block community button is probably at the top of your page/app somewhere, so you never need to see it again.
Lol at you asking me to leave. What goes together better than “adhd” and being anti-social.
Not meant to be antisocial; it just seems strange to participate in a community in an adversarial manner. It implies this might not be a good fit for you.
On the other hand, there are non-pharmaceutical interventions that work, and maybe that’s why you’re here. I wouldn’t flag your account to be reviewed by a mod to be banned—disagreement can contribute to a discussion, although ideally it would be grounded in accurate claims.
