I think there are a lot of factors.

1. Wealthy Americans often already have access to or utilize services that would help someone with ADHD manage their symptoms regardless of whether they get a diagnosis or not.

2. There are so few affluent Americans left that it’s a significantly small percentage of the population already, meaning though they are more likely to have a diagnosis available to them, they make up a small percentage of people who actually have ADHD.

3. Poor people have less overall knowledge about learning disabilities and Neurodivergences on the whole. They assume that because they also have the same symptoms (which they don’t recognize as symptoms), it’s a matter of laziness, a moral failing, or a lack of work ethic/ability to buckle down).

Also If you’re poor, it’s likely that you may not be evaluated at all (which is part of the reason so many adults are now being evaluated and the percentage of adults who have ADHD has gone up rather steeply).

Also also if you’re poor (especially if you’re a minority) you may not get a diagnosis because there’s a stigma attached to it (nobody want to admit there’s “something wrong” with their kid developmentally).

4. When I was a kid, there was also a lot of assumptions about who could have ADHD (girls “didn’t” get ADHD, it was a boys disease). And ADD was considered a separate thing. If my mother hadn’t worked in the education system it’s likely I and my siblings never would have been tested at all.

5. Support systems in schools are lacking, underfunded, understaffed, and unsupported. Lots of kids fall through the cracks, even when they aren’t neurodivergent.

6. Even less people have access to mental healthcare and for those that do it’s still exorbitantly expensive even with insurance.

7. Without healthcare it’s unlikely that you can get access to medication. ADHD meds are considered narcotics /schedule 2 drugs. Can’t get them without a prescription.

8. Some doctors have a propensity to treat people looking for a diagnosis as addicts looking for a fix. It’s not just doctors (looking at you pharmacists).

Edit:

9. The symptoms a lot of us share are at odds with the way the medical system works, meaning we’re likely to have trouble getting the will to talk to the doctor, have trouble keeping up with appointments and doing tasks that might be required. I was diagnosed as a kid and I still haven’t talked to my doctor about getting further help when I already have a diagnosis.

To be clear, doctors who specialize in this often have a more streamlined process with our symptoms taken into account but just getting to that point where their system can take effect is daunting. The medical care system in this country as a whole works against us.

FBI director breaking opsec best practices and regulations every chance he gets like it’s going out of style. Why show up to a conference where other people could talk about that?

I lost a sticker I specifically separated from the other stickers to take to work to attach to a magnet so I could have it stuck to my tool box without having to commit to actually sticking it to my tool box and I am so sad about that, so I feel your pain.

I’m sure it’s in a very very safe place I will never check again.

She was 8. She had cancer. She was the runt of her litter and I miss her every day.

When she was still with us?

Fluffy. Fluffy nuggets. Fluff Nugget. Fluffinator. Fluffy cake. Mrs Cake. Cake. Cake but when a Japanese person says the word with their native accent.

There’s more but it’s been a decade and it’s after midnight.

Ah. So it’s not just me.

I was diagnosed as a child. I don’t… I don’t think I would have a lot of the coping strategies I do have or be as functional as I am if I weren’t (even though I’ve never been on meds). I suspected being medicated would be better (I am also in my 40’s), but at the same time it is very hard to get past my executive dysfunction in that regard. I think I also worry that being medicated will help very little/not at all and my expectations will be shot to hell.

I don’t know if this perspective helps at all.

But for what it’s worth, being diagnosed may afford you some other support systems that might help you at work and in your professional life.

I didn’t recognize that I had issues with it but I had issues with it for years. Subconsciously (probably because my mother was such a stickler for eye contact when we were in trouble) I look at facial features and focus on one that lets me fake eye contact, but I don’t often meet the eyes of people.

I’d also like to note that people with both ASD and ADHD often have symptoms that can mask each other, allowing us to pass as not having one or the other Neurodivergences. So just because someone doesn’t see ASD in your behavior doesn’t mean that you don’t have it.

Emily’s not a snitch so it’s fine.

I would love to give more like. Concrete things you can do to motivate yourself and also sort of build up certain habits but I still don’t know how to verbalize those and I don’t think that the trial by fire sort of way I learned as a kid is a good way. Or easy to implement in adulthood.

Okay so first thing, I want you to understand that writing is hard. Finishing a writing is hard. A lot of things happen to make it so I don’t finish.

The most notable thing is that writing and whatever the subject of the writing is is often a hyper focus. So I’m obsessed with the idea for days maybe even just hours, possibly weeks. And then sometimes I never touch it again.

This is something I think medication would help with (at least for me). This is also very normal. Give yourself permission to do that. Sparks don’t last forever.

The second thing is, sometimes my ideas and my writing are too grandiose and they kind of balloon to the point where there’s too much and I can’t seem to keep a handle on everything and I get overwhelmed.

In this instance I have found that changing the medium I’m writing the story in helps. Comics are a good example. I can’t draw very well but I can storyboard comic panels of my story. Helps me cut out the fat and the extra stuff I don’t need and make it a more clear picture in my head.

I have problems fleshing out characters, their motivations and their actions based on those motivations.

I’m not gonna lie. I got into D&D because someone offered and I was curious but the game helped me to sort through this kind of conundrum.

“What would you like to do?” Is a question I ask myself and my characters all the time and sometimes if I’m conflicted I can roll dice. This helps with decision paralysis and so on.

Shorten your stories. Challenge yourself to write a whole idea in one page. This is a writing prompt type thing I learned in college. It goes together with the other bit from college which was “ask yourself what’s taking your attention in the story”. This way you can focus on the parts your brain think need to be there. It helps me to hyper focus and get what I view as the important parts down on the page.

I’m one of those people who rereads and edits as I write but also one of those people who agree that you should have a first draft before you do major edits (spelling and punctuation and grammar are minor, changing the turn of phrase or moving bits of the story around are major).

Give yourself permission to hyper focus on other things and make a deal with yourself to come back to that thing in a specific span of time.

Have a time when you write. Like. This day from this time to this time. If nothing gets on the page in that time? Let yourself take the break. It doesn’t have to be the same day every week or even the same time. But give yourself office hours. Even if you don’t write a lick it’ll help. You can use that time to storyboard or outline or write ideas on slips of paper and put them in a fishbowl or something.

It’s okay to do a thing if you aren’t good at it right away. I am such a perfectionist that it’s hard for me to remember that. I definitely have the ADHD “if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing right the first time” mentality.

Sounds like a lunar lander and I love that about him and or her.

That’s my comfort lemon husk.

I think it might actually be a Neurodivergent thing. I also have always struggled with “long term plans”. If investment (401K etc) wasn’t easy I wouldn’t do it at all.

I dunno. I have lots of problems with textures (and textures that feel good as well). Might be ADHD, might just be me being weird. But plates, cups, and silverware especially shouldn’t be greasy and if you fry anything you’ll get grease everywhere.

Glass front doors. The grease. Good God, the grease all over everything you own.

Having a diagnosis officially opens up some doors for the world to wait for you. That’s one of the major helpful parts of having the diagnosis. It means that you are officially diagnosed with a disability, and that certain allowances would be made for you under the law (if you live in a country with such provisions).

Even without medication, that can make a world of difference and is an important factor in getting an official diagnosis.

Extra time for college or work assignments, a more flexible schedule, a private work space, noise canceling headphones, etc can be beneficial along with the coping mechanisms he’s trying to get you to develope in order to facilitate a better management of your condition.

That’s probably the conversation you should be having with this therapist. Because if he can’t legally give you a diagnosis he should put in a referral for a doctor who can. And if he can give you a diagnosis, I think he should be doing the job you pay him for.

This is one of the things that smart phones have done for me.

I may not remember I wrote it down, but I will remember where because it’s in the notes app on my smart phone.

That being said, this obviously still doesn’t really solve anything if I don’t even remember there was something to be written down.

And it creates a brand new problem if I do remember because then I get caught up scrolling through notes trying to figure out what they mean, if I still need them, and lamenting that I didn’t remember to check notes for these other things back then.

Yeah. This is a problem with how Facebook implements things.

I understand your fears. I live in the US. My son is autistic. My youngest brother is autistic. Both I and my youngest sister have ADHD.

We were all diagnosed as children and my parents could only afford to help the worse off of us (my youngest brother) so that’s where their time, effort, and money went.

I struggled for years. My sister struggled for years. Because there was no support for us.

But I want you to understand that (as someone who suspects they also have Autism), the support for children with autism and ADHD far outweighs what is available for adults, and it might be more beneficial to him to give him support now than to allow him to suffer in some aspects without it.

The support he’s already getting likely won’t cover everything.

I would fight for your son and my son and all the others who could likely be affected by the current regime. Others will too. There’s so many more of us than people think and there’s power in that.

At the end of the day your child and his care is your business. I’m sure you’ve thought this through a million times.

I just wanted to express that there’s a downside to it.