~ADHD Blog

More than 80% of children and adults with ADHD are likely to have at least one other psychiatric disorder and more than 50% are likely to have two.

Sun, 06 May 2012 22:34:40 -0400

Thus, ADHD is associated more often with at least one comorbid disorder than without any.

Brain Pathways Seem Disrupted in Kids with ADHD

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:11:06 -0500

Brain Pathways Seem Disrupted in Kids with ADHD:

The brains of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show abnormalities in certain areas involved with “visual attention,” new research finds.

Researchers performed functional MRIs (fMRIs) on 19 children aged 9 to 15 diagnosed with ADHD and 19 without the disorder while the children took a test in which they were shown a set of numbers and then asked to remember whether a subsequent group of numbers matched the original.

Basal Ganglia Studies and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:52:28 -0500

Basal Ganglia Studies and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD):

A consensus of opinion exists among the scientific community that ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is a biological condition resulting from varying, yet scientifically undefined, neurological dysfunctions. Traditionally, the majority of research results suggest that a region of the brain known as the pre-frontal cortex, situated behind the forehead, controls many of the behaviors and traits associated with ADHD, given that the anterior part of the brain is associated with executive functions: problem solving, attention, reasoning, planning, and decision making – cognitive functions noticeably impaired in those with ADHD. However, gradually, with the aid of neuroimaging techniques, neurologists and neuroscientists have been able to map additional neural mechanisms responsible for ADHD symptoms more accurately.

Photo

Wed, 11 May 2011 04:29:48 -0400

Not Enough Sleep Disruptive for Kids with ADHD

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:38:38 -0400

Not Enough Sleep Disruptive for Kids with ADHD:

Investigators discovered an average nightly sleep loss of about 55 minutes for six nights was associated with deteriorating performance including inattention, omission and depressed reaction time in children with attention deficit disorder.

“Moderate sleep restriction leads to a detectable negative impact on the neurobehavioral functioning of children with ADHD and healthy controls, leading to a clinical level of impairment in children with ADHD,” said lead author and principal investigator Reut Gruber, Ph.D.

Adult ADHD Ups Risk for Dementia

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:00:46 -0500

Adult ADHD Ups Risk for Dementia:

“A new Argentina study suggests that adults who suffer from attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are three times more likely to develop a common form of degenerative dementia than those without.”

ADHD Linked to Higher Risk of Substance Abuse

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:56:12 -0500

ADHD Linked to Higher Risk of Substance Abuse:

“In the first large-scale comprehensive analysis exploring the link between children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and future drug abuse, researchers reveal that those diagnosed with ADHD are two to three times more likely to experience serious substance abuse problems throughout their teen and adult years than those without the disorder.”

Prescribed Amphetamines May Up Risk for Parkinson's Disease

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:51:36 -0500

Prescribed Amphetamines May Up Risk for Parkinson's Disease:

“According to the study, those people who reported using benzedrine or dexedrine were nearly 60 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s than those people who didn’t take the drugs.”

This is pretty scary considering that I have been taking Adderall for years…

Join an ADHD Study

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:24:48 -0500

Join an ADHD Study

ADHD and Motor Skills

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:20:05 -0500

ADHD and Motor Skills

Misrepresentation of Neuroscience Data Might Give Rise to Misleading Conclusions in the Media: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:26:51 -0500

Misrepresentation of Neuroscience Data Might Give Rise to Misleading Conclusions in the Media: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:

scipsy:

Data misrepresentations are frequent in the scientific literature dealing with ADHD and may contribute to the appearance of misleading conclusions in the media. In synergy with citation distortions and publication biases they influence social representations and bias the scientific evidence in favor of the view that ADHD is primarily caused by biological factors.

OH! YES!

Sluggish cognitive tempo

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 04:22:16 -0500

Sluggish cognitive tempo:

apiaceae:

It has been roughly estimated that the SCT population may make up 30-50% of the ADHD-PI population [aka inattentive ADHD]. In many ways, those who have an SCT profile have the opposite symptoms of those with classic ADHD: instead of being hyperactive, extroverted, obtrusive, and risk takers, those with SCT are drifting, introspective and daydreamy, and feel as if “in the fog” (although in excited states, an SCT patient behaves very similarly to a traditional ADHD patient).

They also don’t have the same risk factors and outcomes. A key behavioral characteristic of those with SCT symptoms is that they are more likely to appear to be lacking motivation. They lack energy to deal with mundane tasks and will consequently seek things that are mentally stimulating because of their underaroused state, an intense craving for emotional and intellectual stimulation.

Those with SCT symptoms show a qualitatively different kind of attention deficit that is more typical of a true information input-output problem, such as memory retrieval and active working memory, and display a wavering “up and down” mental pattern with extremely variable levels of intense thought, hyperactivity, failing memory, and sexual appetite. […]

Those with SCT symptoms typically show a later onset of symptoms in comparison to ADHD. They have greater difficulty with academic tasks and far fewer social difficulties when compared to those with the combined and predominantly hyperactive/impulsive ADHD subtypes. Selective attention difficulties of those with SCT manifests itself academically, in that they are prone to making more mistakes while working. Those with classic ADHD do not have this difficulty.

Those with SCT have difficulty with verbal retrieval from long term memory, but may have greater visual spatial capabilities. They have deficits in working memory which has been described as the ability to keep multiple things in mind for manipulation, while simultaneously keeping this information free from internal distraction.

Consequently, mental skills such as calculation, reading*, and abstract reasoning are often more challenging for those with SCT. They also have a more disorganized thought process, a greater degree of sloppiness, and lose things more easily. They tend to have a greater degree of comorbid learning disabilities. Instead of having greater difficulty selecting and filtering sensory input, as is in the case of SCT, people with other types of ADHD have problems with inhibition.

Studies indicate that comorbid psychiatric problems are more often of the internalizing variety with SCT, such as anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. Their typical shy nature and slow response time has often been misinterpreted as aloofness or disinterest by others. In social group interactions, those with SCT may be ignored. […]

The executive system of the human brain coordinates actions and strategies for everyday tasks. Dysexecutive syndrome is defined as a “cluster of impairments generally associated with damage to the frontal lobes of the brain” which includes “difficulties with high-level tasks such as planning, organising, initiating, monitoring and adapting behaviour.”

Adele Diamond has recently postulated that the core cognitive deficit of those with ADHD-PI (ADD), is working memory, or, as she coined in her recent paper on the subject, “childhood-onset dysexecutive syndrome”. She states:

“Instructional methods that place heavy demands on working memory will disproportionately disadvantage individuals with ADD”.

“Language problems often co-occur with ADD, and it is suggested that part of the reason might be that linguistic tasks, especially verbal ones, tax working memory so heavily. Spatial and artistic skills, however, are often preserved or superior in individuals with ADD.”

“The working memory deficit in many children with ADD is accompanied by markedly slowed reaction times, a characteristic that covaries with poorer working memory in general.”

“Individuals with ADD have difficulty maintaining a sufficiently high level of motivation to complete a task…They go looking for something else to do or think about because they are bored…to remedy a general lower arousal level…”

* I can do a LOT of reading, but only if it’s super interesting/engaging.

Especially affecting parts are bolded, but everything here is accurate.

19 Famous People with ADHD

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:30:52 -0500

19 Famous People with ADHD

Individuals with ADHD are less able to moderate or otherwise manipulate or suppress the emotional...

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:08:40 -0500

Individuals with ADHD are less able to moderate or otherwise manipulate or suppress the emotional reactions they experience. Consequently, they are likely to show more impulsive and hence more extreme or severe emotional reactions toward events than do others of their age. This emotional dysregulation has been considered an important part of the conceptualization of ADHD.

The emotional impairments of children and adolescents with ADHD may include poor self-regulation of...

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:05:28 -0500

The emotional impairments of children and adolescents with ADHD may include poor self-regulation of emotion, greater excessive emotional expression, especially anger and aggression, greater problems coping with frustration, reduced empathy, and decreased arousal to stimulation

More than 80% of children and adults with ADHD are likely to have at least one other psychiatric disorder and more than 50% are likely to have two.

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:00:14 -0500

Thus, ADHD is associated more often with at least one comorbid disorder than without any.

High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD, Yale Researchers Find

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:48:24 -0400

High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD, Yale Researchers Find:

hollywoodhippie:

New Haven, Conn. — Superior intelligence is no defense against the effects of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, Yale researchers have found.

About three of four ADHD individuals with an IQ of more than 120 – a score that ranks them in the top nine percent of the U.S. population – showed significant impairments in memory and cognitive tests when compared to people with similar IQ’s who do not suffer from the disorder, according to the researchers.

The report, to be published in the September print edition of the Journal of Attention Disorders, is now available online: http://jad.sagepub.com/pap.dtl

“Many of these people are told they can’t be suffering the loss of executive function (the ability to plan and carry out many day-to-day tasks) from ADHD because they are too smart,’’ said Thomas E. Brown, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

The high-IQ, ADHD group lacked self-management skills and the ability to focus. They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks, the study found. In fact, 73 percent of the ADHD population showed significant deficits in five or more of the eight measures of executive function.

“Each of these individuals might be compared to a symphony orchestra of very talented musicians who cannot produce adequate symphonic music because the orchestra lacks an effective conductor,” the authors wrote.

Philipp C. Reichel and Donald M. Quinlan of Yale are co-authors of the paper.

For anyone who wants to continue lumping ADHD and stupid!!

"So yes, from most of my teachers as well as my father, I learned that I was pretty worthless; that I..."

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:21:46 -0400

“So yes, from most of my teachers as well as my father, I learned that I was pretty worthless; that I was stupid and lazy. That my problem was that I refused to apply myself and spent too much time daydreaming, or reading novels, or playing games (role playing games, mostly). That everything I enjoyed was a personal flaw, and that everything I failed at defined me. And this has stuck with me for a long time.”

- Guest Post from Lisa: Invisible Ableism

YEAH SO THIS POST IS PRETTY MUCH MY LIFE. Bolding mine.

(via notemily)

Ditto. This is the paragraph that got me:

In retrospect, being marked as gifted was mostly negative. It meant I had morepressure to perform well, that I should be a straight A student, but I never managed this. My report cards are littered with “doesn’t pay attention” and “doesn’t apply herself” and other negative assessments that read to my parents as “Lisa doesn’t fulfill her true potential.” Now, of course I wanted to, but to me grades felt almost like an arbitrary lottery. I never got grades commensurate with the effort I put into class, and no matter how much effort I did put in, I’d get in trouble when my report card had too many Cs and Ds. There was a reason I could make it to the spelling bee state finals and do calculations in my head, and yet still couldn’t maintain any kind of consistent quality of work.

(via adorianmode)

Deeply Problematic | Paperwork & homework, anxiety & ADD: institutionalized and internalized ableism

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:57:42 -0400

Deeply Problematic | Paperwork & homework, anxiety & ADD: institutionalized and internalized ableism :

The world has a tendency to view things as valid only if they are backed up by papers and documentation. This is true of history - documents in Latin and Greek are much preferred to oral histories - and to real people. Social security cards and birth certificates confirm we exist. Grades and diplomas confirm we’re smart. Medical histories and proper insurance confirm that our bodies are worth care. And though I’m a writer, I’ve consistently failed to get official elements of myself on paper has always been a challenge I fail. Whether it’s homework or paperwork, my ADD and anxiety make filling out the forms that determine my worth as a human a daunting, stressful task at best and avoided until near-disaster at worst.

"I never intend for things to get this way. I ignore something for one day, and pretty soon..."

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:56:44 -0400

“I never intend for things to get this way. I ignore something for one day, and pretty soon it’s eighteen days later and I still haven’t done it. Then my responsibilities become wrapped up in so much guilt and helplessness that I have to ignore them because I’d rather feel good about myself.”

- Allie Brosh