- InfiniWheel ( @InfiniWheel@lemmy.one ) 80•1 year ago
Self diagnosed? Definitely
Actually, properly diagnosed? Probably underdiagnosed actually. Friend of mine had to go through a lot of pricey hoops just to get tested in a reputable place.
- BestBouclettes ( @BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ) 27•1 year ago
It’s definitely under diagnosed. 5% of the world population is thought to have ADHD. I know plenty of people around me that show serious signs of it and they have no idea. Granted I’m not a psychiatrist, but I live with an ADHD person and the similarities are striking.
- blindbunny ( @blindbunny@lemmy.ml ) English16•1 year ago
This feels like the correct answer.
The amount of people I go on a date with and tell them I’m ADHD and they follow with, “me too” when they are obviously not, is crushing. I’m glad my learning disability is fun to cosplay for you. The juxtaposition of people I meet in wild and tell them I’m ADHD and they are like, “Oh what’s that like?” as they’re looking for the lost keys in their left hand or leg stemming, feels… curious.
- cubedsteaks ( @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ) 5•1 year ago
god that sucks to hear.
I’m alarmed at the amount of people I met, mostly women, who are like upset when I tell them I’m not autistic. It’s like they want me to be or something. They insisted I needed to get tested to be sure.
Like what is with these people wanting this to be common and wanting to get people join in like its a club? It’s a genetic trait. You either have it or you don’t I thought.
- Blake [he/him] ( @Blake@feddit.uk ) 5•1 year ago
If multiple people seem surprised that you’re not autistic and encourage you to seek diagnosis, I dunno, maybe there’s something there? Are you a woman yourself?
- cubedsteaks ( @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ) 2•1 year ago
Well I had the luxury of dating a psychologist who specializes in diagnoses and her brother is autistic - so she is very aware of autism and how it works and what it looks like in different people.
When I told her that random autistic girls from my comm were making this assumption she gave me the biggest eye roll and a laugh. Because duh, I’m not autistic.
- JackbyDev ( @JackbyDev@programming.dev ) English4•1 year ago
It also doesn’t help that many folks use Adderall and other ADHD meds recreationally.
- rizoid ( @rizoid@midwest.social ) English53•1 year ago
As medicine advances, most diseases or conditions will be diagnosed more often. With the extreme increase in technology in the past 50+ years I wouldn’t say that cancer is being over diagnosed just because we can find it better. While mental health science is arguably far behind traditional medicine, I wouldn’t say that ADHD as a whole is over diagnosed. Is it probable that there are some bad doctors that will simply hand wave kids away with an ADHD diagnosis? Sure but those cases are far less common than you might think. As someone with ADHD I have seen the sentiment that it is over diagnosed arise in my life as people claiming that what I suffer from isn’t real and I need to pay attention better, or that I’m just “abusing the Adderall to get ahead in life.” So no I don’t think it is over diagnosed and people around the world need to have a better understanding of how mental illness truly affects the people that suffer.
- JoYo ( @JoYo@lemmy.ml ) English16•1 year ago
I’ve always been fascinated how ADHD is the disorder that gets singled out for over diagnosis but not ASD.
AFAIK there’s not much in the way of pharma treatments for ASD so public policy couldn’t care less about it.
There’s money to be made in demonizing ADHD.
- jabib (he/him) ( @jabib@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
You’re just abusing adderal to get on par with NTs
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English31•1 year ago
The scientific, peer-reviewed answer is that it is significantly under-diagnosed in adults as well as in those AFAB of all ages. Most sources say up to 80% of adults with ADHD are undiagnosed and/or untreated.
- blindbunny ( @blindbunny@lemmy.ml ) English7•1 year ago
May I have this source? Being genuine here, I don’t doubt this but I may use it to show people and maybe put a bug in their ear to get diagnosed.
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English10•1 year ago
I found these citations in a paper on the first page of Google. I apologize but I have not verified them.
Fayyad J, De Graaf R, Kessler R, et al. Cross-national prevalence and correlates of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Br J Psychiatry. 2007;190(5):402–409.
Retz W, Retz-Junginger P, Thome J, et al. Pharmacological treatment of adult ADHD in Europe. World J Biol Psychiatry. 2011;12(suppl 1):89–94.
Newcorn JH, Weiss M, Stein MA. The complexity of ADHD: diagnosis and treatment of the adult patient with comorbidities. CNS Spectr. 2007;12(suppl 12):1–14. quiz 15–16.
- blindbunny ( @blindbunny@lemmy.ml ) English4•1 year ago
Thank you!
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English5•1 year ago
No problem, hope it was helpful. I will review further when I have time.
- cubedsteaks ( @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ) 2•1 year ago
what is ASAB in this context?
- Erk ( @Erk@cdda.social ) English7•1 year ago
Assigned snake at birth, it’s a yuan-ti thing
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English6•1 year ago
A typo. It should be AFAB, assigned female at birth.
- Phoebe ( @Phoebe@feddit.de ) 1•1 year ago
I agree with you.
I think argueing if adhd might be over or under diagnosed makes adulds feel even more ashamed.
I also don’t like blaming self diagnosis. Women having a hard time finding professionell help, cause they never fit into stereotypical adhd behaivor. They seen as overreacting and emotional.
- menturi ( @menturi@lemmy.ml ) 1•1 year ago
What does ASAB mean?
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English3•1 year ago
It was a typo that has been corrected to AFAB. The edit may not have federated to your instance yet.
- Skoobie ( @Skoobie@lemmy.film ) English18•1 year ago
For adults, it’s under-diagnosed. Because some of the most common prescriptions for it are stimulants like Adderall, there is a fear that adults are trying to scam the doctor. Additionally, and imo even more infuriatingly, doctors are apprehensive about diagnosing an adult because “you made it this far in life without needing help. You can’t be ADHD/autistic/neurodivergent.” Fuck that mentality. I’m ADHD and autistic and I don’t need a doctor to validate me when they can’t even agree amongst themselves half the time.
- m0darn ( @m0darn@lemmy.ca ) 12•1 year ago
I mentioned my adhd diagnosis in a post earlier today so you may be the same inquirer. Regardless here’s a little bit more of my story.
I was born in 1986 and not diagnosed with ADHD until 2021 (I was 35). I didn’t do anything about about my diagnosis until 2023 when my career started going off the rails. I sometimes fantasize about what my career would have been like if I’d been diagnosed (and acted on the diagnosis) 15 years ago when I started to suspect something was up.
For me it mostly manifests as struggles to initiate tasks unless they’re interesting or urgent.
Is it over diagnosed? Maybe. Our brains evolved to hunt, collect berries, and work collaboratively with our clan. If we struggle do so TPS reports so that shareholders know how their incomprehensible riches are being used, is it fair to call that a mental disorder?
Is paying money to the pharma-man so we can be a better money machine for your bosses shareholders kinda fucked up? Yes.
But will it also help me better support the things I value? My family? My community? My interests? Yes.
I think if you want to know if ADHD is over diagnosed you need a scholarly resource, not an internet forum.
- deathbird ( @deathbird@mander.xyz ) 4•1 year ago
The other thing that makes it tough is that we don’t really have a good grasp of what it is. At least, last i checked.
Like, are we just pathologizing people on this or the other side of a fuzzy threshold of executive function? Or is there a population that really is physiologically/genetically different? Either way, is there something wrong with society where people within a previously normal range of executive function are now unable to keep up?
- millie ( @millie@beehaw.org ) 8•1 year ago
Thinking about disgnosis reminds me of some of my experiences on LSD.
Several times I had these relevatory moments where the ephemeral nature of the universe and its gradual slipping into entropy over time became intimately tangible. When this would happen, I’d usually find it terrifying. I’d feel like the world was falling apart around me, because it literally always is.
But in these moments, I was so focused on seeing that entropy in a way that felt new that it would take some time to realize it had always been this way. It seemed like the end of the world, but the reality was that it was just a normal day and I was examining aspects of my world that I didn’t normally and making connections. That’s all.
Some of those connections were silly psychedelic-fueled nonsense, with whatever meaning that might lie beneath lost in some cryptic and half-undestood internal symbolism, while others were perhaps a bit more useful, but none of them were new.
To me, though, these revelations felt apocalyptic in the moment, and of dire urgency. It felt as though the realization itself presented a dire threat, as if it itself was entropy, but in reality the only thing that had changed was my awareness.
Diagnosis, to me, is a similar beast. We’re attempting to peel back the falsely self-protective veil of ignorance about our own internal workings, and we see these things as though they were new and should somehow define us. The reality is, though, that we’re just learning how to classify and examine what was already there. We’re not describing something different from what we might have assumed otherwise, we’re looking at the guts of what’s made us who we are.
For some people making those connections may lead to things that can help improve their lives. For others it can be a way to divorce a person from themselves. We’re taking the huge variety of human experience and trying to pigeonhole it just based on people that share various sets of common characteristics that some of them have found difficult to cope with or to make work with the expectations of their social context. If we’re focused on mental health only in terms of disfunction, that’s all we’re going to see when we start classifying it.
- rufus ( @rufus@discuss.tchncs.de ) 6•1 year ago
Probably under diagnosed with people who actually have it.
- dosse91 ( @dosse91@lemmy.trippy.pizza ) 4•1 year ago
Definitely. A lot of kids that used to be called “very lively” back when I was in school are diagnosed with ADHD or similar conditions nowadays even if there’s nothing wrong with them.
- shapesandstuff ( @shapesandstuff@feddit.de ) 13•1 year ago
A lot of kids that used to be called “very lively” back when I was in school
Just like mania was “hysteria” and crippling suicidal depression was “a rut” or its victim “less of a man”.
- dannoffs ( @dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org ) 11•1 year ago
And all of those people in the past who were “really into trains”
- JWBananas ( @JWBananas@startrek.website ) English7•1 year ago
We also used to call PTSD “shell shock” even though you don’t have to go to war to be affected. Science and medicine change and improve over time.
- flamingo_pinyata ( @flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz ) 3•1 year ago
Not overdiagnosed. Broadly defined.
Seems like too many people fall under the criteria, but that’s how psychologists defined it.