Probably over diagnosed by people self-diagnosing. Probably significantly under diagnosed officially/clinically.
And the above is true for a LOT of conditions, not just ADHD.
My daughter has a learning disability. Dyslexia and some weird kind of error with certain fine motor skills. The diagnosis from everyone? ADHD-put her on drugs. What drugs would you like? If one drugs doesn’t fix her, we’ll try two drugs.
Thank god my wife and I resisted. Nobody could explain what was going on and how drugs would fix it. I ain’t gonna lie, her elementary school days were rough. But now, straight A college student in her junior year.
I’m sure there are people looking for it, but my experience was default diagnosis by doctors and schools pushing adhd onto kids where it wasn’t appropriate.
There’s a very vague term called NLD or Neurological Learning Disorder with which I was diagnosed at the time. Iirc a big part of it is issues with fine motor skills because of bad communication between the two brain halves. Also gets misdiagnosed as ADHD quite often.
I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia as a kid which was a wildly vague fine motor skills disorder that made me near unintelligible prior to speech therapy. I still have issues slurring words from time to time, but it’s not significant.
I don’t think anyone knew what was going on with me tbh. But I def have ADHD, and there’s suspicion I’m autistic as well. I’m working on getting a neuropsych eval done now to try and understand better.
Doctors are idiots when it comes to this stuff. ADHD should be diagnosed by a psychologist, just like any other neurodivergence.
Psychologists can only really diagnose mood disorders, not psychiatric conditions. Because ADHD is a psychiatric disorder, psychologists absolutely should NOT be diagnosing it. If they suspect ADHD in a client, their job is to refer the client to a psychiatrist who is able to make such a diagnosis and prescribe medicine to manage it.
Source: bachelor’s degree in psychology
cough cough OCD cough cough
Being acquaintances for a while with someone with OCD was enough to tell me that the vast majority of people with “OCD” do not have OCD.
I’ve noticed this too. Even people telling me i have OCD because i sort certain things in certain ways. (i do NOT have OCD. I just can’t stand some things if they are not in my order.) But people are very quick to diagnose other’s. wich is okay imo as long as there is reason to believe so, so that you can go to the doctor and check wether that’s true. Problem is people don’t know that they don’t understand the illness/disability/etc. à la dunning krüger effect.
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I don’t have numbers but my personal experiences tends to show me what it’s over diagnosed, at least in California. Got many people around me that are diagnosed, with meds, and they take it as part of their identity, bringing it up all the time.
My kid talked to a therapist a few times for some minor anger issues, and he’s already talking about getting him diagnosed for ADHD. He’s the top student in his class, can focus for hours building anything he wants, is outgoing, and gets along with all his friends. He just has a few emotional outbursts at home, which don’t affect his functionality or happiness. I don’t understand the point of a diagnosis. It feels like a label would just follow him around and box him in, so we decided not to pursue.
“He’s the top student in his class”
With studying, or without?
In my experience, being top of the class without working for it is a great way to wind up crashing and burning as soon as one gets to college and suddenly isn’t the smartest in the room
That’s kind of what happened to me. Never needed to study in grade school. Had to scramble and learn how to study in college.
Still didn’t register why I had so much trouble focusing or remembering stuff until the last year or so.
My kid talked to a therapist a few times for some minor anger issues, and he’s already talking about getting him diagnosed for ADHD. He’s the top student in his class, can focus for hours building anything he wants, is outgoing, and gets along with all his friends. He just has a few emotional outbursts at home, which don’t affect his functionality or happiness.
So…your child is exhibiting symptoms of being high-functioning ADHD, according to their therapist?..
I don’t understand the point of a diagnosis. It feels like a label would just follow him around and box him in, so we decided not to pursue.
The point of a diagnosis is to allow them to get help with things that are challenging for people with ADHD. It’s not something that is going to do them any harm or cause them to be discriminated against, contrary, if it is a correct diagnosis, it can be of great help. I did but get an official diagnosis until I was in my 30s and had a very similar experience in childhood, with my parents but moving forward with diagnosis. Not having access to resources when I was younger caused measurable harm and issues that I could have otherwise avoided.
Would you mind elaborating? Understanding what your issues where that were addressed by help could help see what I’m misunderstansing. I obviously want to do what’s best for my child.
Not the person you replied to, but I definitely had emotional outbursts but was the top student in my class. I was diagnosed as ADHD in graduate school, at the age of 23. Meds were life-changing for me - I not only had classic ADHD, so I had study patterns to unlearn (studying with music + TV + snacks + distractions) but I also had Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria - basically, I would hyper-focus on any perceived critical comment, rejection, slight, etc. I would contemplate whether I could ever show up in class again after a side comment from a teacher. It took so long to unlearn that (and some antianxiety meds as well). If your kid actually has ADHD, the best thing you can do for them is have them work with a therapist to learn coping skills and the proper way to do things. Meds may enter the picture eventually, but a therapist that works with ADHD and autistic people primarily will be the most helpful. Little things - fidget toys that help you pay attention to auditory stimuli, weighted lap blankets to work at your desk, etc. help so much sometimes, and they’re relatively simple fixes, but if you don’t know to look for the issue, you don’t find a solution.
He’s the top student in his class oh no. He’s gifted? Get ready for potential burn out in teen years or college years. These problems can change over time, and its impossible to predict how these conditions will play out, but I’d like to warn a parent your kid might need special attention / support considerations apart from a neurotypical child.
Please, diagnose your kid even if you think he doesn’t have ADHD
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.
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.
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.
If I could snap my fingers and not have ADHD I’d do it. People think ADHD is just being scatterbrained and hyperactive and think its at best quirky and at worst annoying but a lot of the hallmarks of ADHD cause a lot of suffering just existing in society. eg. executive dysfunction/impulsivity, emotion dysregulation (seemingly feels like your emotions are harder to control which is part of the rejection sensitivity), difficulty building and maintaining relationships, difficulty holding jobs, being unable to quiet your thoughts late at night (80% of us have insomnia/delayed sleep patterns to one extent or another) and being very prone to boredom that can often feel almost physically painful. And of course, society treats you as if your personality is shit because what people see is someone forgetting things, making bad snap decisions and generally being annoying. So a lot of us dont think highly of ourselves because thats often how we are conditioned. To think we are lazy, uncaring, annoying and thoughtless/impulsive.
I’ve also got ADHD, so I understand the struggle. But personally I think ADHD has a lot of upsides as well. People with ADHD are often really fun to be around, they have often really different perspectives on the world and see things that other people don’t, and tend to take everything in their stride. ADHD people in my experience are better at out-of-the-box thinking, handling stressful and chaotic situations, and extremely capable when they’re interested in something.
The reason that ADHD feels debilitating is because capitalist society forces us to conform with neurotypical behaviour, because conformity is more important than outcomes. If ADHD people were allowed to work their to own schedules, and allowed to focus mainly on tasks which interest them and offload things that they find boring/tedious, it would go a long way towards getting the best out of people with ADHD. If it’s handled well, they can easily outperform neurotypical coworkers, it’s just very much about harnessing the chaotic energy that we have.
ADHD feels debilitating because there are things you have to be able to do to function in any society that ADHD makes more difficult than it is for everyone else. I have to remember to take medication that keeps me alive. I have to put my contacts in or I am metaphorically blind as a bat and it feels a lot better to actually be able to see things. I have to interact with other people in an acceptable manner i.e not blurting out the first intrusive thought that comes to mind. I have to eat and drink when I should. Yeah I literally forget to do that a lot because I am engrossed in some activity or another. I have to go to sleep at a normal hour or I wake up feeling like shit because my circadian rhythm is fucked up. There are just some things you will never ever avoid doing even in a luxury space communist utopia.
And while there are some advantages to ADHD like creativity, hyperfocus and being less likely to die of obesity related diseases due to hyperactivity, it is not fucking worth all of the other stuff that caused me to want to be tested for it. Not because society forces normality on me but because I want to do a lot of stuff without having a wrestling match with my own brain.
My wants and needs are important to me and those wants and needs are often incompatible with the ADHD tribe that I was born into.
I’m not trying to say that ADHD isn’t a disability, I’m saying that the worst parts of it come from society being intolerant of our needs. You’re not lazy or selfish, you’re doing the best you can <3
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.
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?
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.
Other people see you differently than you see yourself. And you wouldn’t necessarily realize you were part of the autism tribe because as far as you were concerned, everyone is in the same tribe as you. You wouldn’t really know what it was like to experience things with a different tribe’s mental wiring. Just like I didn’t really figure out that my brain literally worked differently than 95+% of the population (ADHD) until I was very thoroughly an adult.
because as far as you were concerned, everyone is in the same tribe as you
I definitely don’t think that way. I’m aware that I am different from other people.
Reposting from my other comment:
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.
She confirmed I’m not autistic and thought it was hilarious that anyone would assume that about me. She’s known me for years and she has experience in that field. She knows better than just randoms at a meet up group would.
It also doesn’t help that many folks use Adderall and other ADHD meds recreationally.
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I see this rhetoric a lot and I really dislike it and find it actively harmful to people with ADHD.
ADHD, at least mine, would absolutely still be a mental illness outside of modern society. My doesn’t care if I’m remembering where I put down my phone or where I put down my sandwich, I still misplace them either way. At work being without my medication makes it difficult to keep track of my responsibilities. At home it makes it difficult to keep track of doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning the house. You don’t suddenly lose all responsibilities and idle tasks without a modern society, your responsibilities and tasks just become different. And my ADHD couldn’t give two shits what those responsibilities and idle tasks are, I’m going to struggle with them either way without medication.
Dismissing ADHD as not a mental illness but a symptom of modern society is not only incorrect at it’s most basic level, it also implies that people like me could be “normal” IF “x, y, or z” conditions were met. That idea is just blatantly untrue and just perpetuates the dismissive and uncompromising stance that many people take towards individuals with ADHD.
You should listen to the album Cave World by Viagra Boys (if you haven’t already). Don’t let the bands name fool you, it pretty much hits on everything in your comment but to the tune of Swedish post punk
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.
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.
Forgive my naivety, how do you get rich off demonising adhd? It would stand to reason that bucks are made by over diagnosing and selling superfluous treatment, what would I sell you after adhd is demonised?
They’re selling another product.
Conmen like Tate and their ilk would love to sell you on the idea that Adderall is evil.
You’re just abusing adderal to get on par with NTs
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.
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.
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.
Thank you!
No problem, hope it was helpful. I will review further when I have time.
what is ASAB in this context?
A typo. It should be AFAB, assigned female at birth.
All Snakes are Bastards
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.
What does ASAB mean?
It was a typo that has been corrected to AFAB. The edit may not have federated to your instance yet.
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.
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.
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?
Well its like they said, for 200,000+ years humanity was out foraging berries and hunting gigantic beasts to survive out in the wild and now were expected to sit still and focus while being trapped in a gray cubicle with florescent lighting and a fake plant on a desk doing who knows what boring task 8 hours a day every day 5 days a week 50 weeks a year for 50 years. Out in the wilderness itd be useful to be the one in your tribe that finds new food sources and needs to be physically active and alert often later at night. But in a gray cubicle in some soulless office building? not so much
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.
Definitely not in women - the opposite is true.
Probably under diagnosed with people who actually have it.
No.
Not overdiagnosed. Broadly defined.
Seems like too many people fall under the criteria, but that’s how psychologists defined it.
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.
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.
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”.
And all of those people in the past who were “really into trains”
