Well here's the opinion of someone who has it.
But first I want to deal with some things here...
AMA aside, all I'm relating to you is what my mother, someone very active, in the psychological and educational communities who deals with ADA issues and students with disabilties ranging from ADD to blindness said that many insurance companies are rejecting claims for costs associated with the dianosis of Adult ADD.
When she researched it further she found that it's being driven by a disagreement in the A
PA who first presented ADD as a problem. The APA is now saying that ADD is a childhood disorder and cannot be diagnosed in adults. Of course there is argument over this fact, but if the APA is questioning the validity of ADD in adults then one could LEGALLY say that a diagnosis made as an adult is now null and void, and you could get a psychologist to atest to that fact.
This is much like the FDA changing the guidelines regarding obesity. One minute anyone with a BMI of 30+ is obsese, the next it's 25+. They could come out tomorrow and say, now it's a BMI of 40+. It's simply a definition, and when you no longer fit the definition you no longer have the problem...by definition.
Now. Here's my opinon on the reality of ADD/ADHD.
First off they're misnamed. I do not have a disorder. A disorder is defined as an ailment that affects the function of the mind or body. This would imply that ADD is a sickness and needs to be cured (much like people did and some do view homosexuality).
By calling it a disorder you indicate that A) the people with it are sick and B) they need to be cured.
It's this belief that is causing people to drug their children out of their minds.
So it is only with this norrow view that I will agree that ADD is not a "disorder".
It is further misnamed by including the word deficit. This indicates that people are lacking attention, but ask anyone who has ADD and they will tell you that the problem isn't a lack of attention, it's actually an over abundance of it.
We pay attention to absolutely everything. I can't tell you how many days I have longed for a sensory deprevation tank. The problem is that unless I can't hear by own body I know that it will drive me nuts.
The best way for me to describe how I feel is that it's like there is a constant radio static in my head. Get in your plane sometime, tune in two very busy tower freqs and put them both through the cabin speakers, turn on your iPod, then play a DVD on your laptop, and start the engine. Listen to all that for the entire day. That's my brain.
I get very little relief from that din. Except for the times I can manage to hyperfocus. Hyperfocusing is the paradox of ADD as we know it today. Hyperfocusing is that ability to focus on something at the expense of everything else. I've hyperfocused on things and had to be force out of burning buildings (literally). The problem with hyperfocusing is that it's not like we can choose to do it with anything. It must be something that we care about, a paper that we want to write, a video game, a TV show, you name it.
"Normal" people see people with ADD hyperfocus and they say things like, "If only he cared about his school work as much as he does that dumb video game."
So it's not that we have a lack of attention it's that we have too much.
Some theorize that the ADD brain is evolved from the brains of pre-historic hunters, who needed to by able to not lose track of their prey, their hunting party, and any predators that my by stalking them. So their brain needed to be agile and flip from one task to the next without missing a beat and without losing sight of the other tasks. Whereas the gatherer's brain needed to be able to focus on one task, picking berries or what have you, for a very long time. As time marched on and we became more of an agrarian society the hunters didn't need those skills anymore. The industrial revolution came along and we needed them even less, but for some reason some people's brains never made the shift from dynamic to static. It's probably a good thing too, because a lot of those people are very creative. Even our stereotypes reflect this, I mean the artist who only works when "inspired". The writer who can't deal with the hustle and bustle of city life and must hole in a cabin in the woods to work, or how about the entrepreneur who runs a business like a madman. I mean check this out
http://www.additudemag.com. They're running an article this month about top executives with ADD. The owner of JetBlue is one of them.
And yes, everyone at somepoint experiences the symptoms of ADD, but NOT EVERYDAY. It's the chronic nature of the symptoms that make ADD a problem, or more appropriately it's the chronic symptoms combined with a lack of coping mechanisms that can be problematic.
The answer, however, is not drugs, but education. People with ADD are very able to slow themselves down and work a task through to completion, but they need to learn how to do it without drugs, because if they don't the minute they go off the drugs they can't cope.
So IMHO ADD is real. I live it everyday, but it's not a sickness it simply is having a brain that functions differently from the rest of the world. It's not a bad thing, but teachers, parents, employers, etc. need to understand that drugs aren't the answer in this case.
You cannot correct the normal function of someone's brain.
If you want more info PM me and I can hook you up with a bunch of resouces.
Later.
Naunga
