How ADHD Affects Adults | ADHD - Not Just for Kids (Full Documentary) | Only Human

ADHD used to be just for kids but not anymore for some it's a rude awakening it wasn't like oh maybe I have ADHD was I'm so anxious I'm gonna die what is life like for an adult with ADHD I was feeling overwhelmed none of the things that I tried were we're really helping I'd be talking to him and he would just be like over there and like there's a light it looks the thing and daddy hey I'm talking to you why are some just finding out now every time I diagnose the child I'm also generally identifying a parent who has it as well if it's so common why is it so misunderstood I still hear you know well how could you possibly have gotten to be a doctor if you have ADHD does the stigma keep us from finding the answers well I won't doctors treat it's controversial they don't want to get involved with stimulant medication it's life-changing to see the impact of that it's it's profound ADHD it's here it's real and it's not just for kids [Music] you know what let's put Tim the foot of 20 formula can be keep them on the trucker to see how to draw a line drive it up say they look tough you look pretty tough background and Hackett Sammy Anaya is an award-winning cinematographer he works in a high-stress environment making hundreds of creative and technical decisions a day he has a great eye great instincts and he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder better known as a DD or ADHD honestly for me it wasn't like the last thing on my mind I didn't think that I was a DD at all I didn't really know that much about it I just always associated a DD with like hyperactivity disorder in children even thought probably that you grew out of it maybe as you got older I just didn't know anything about it one of the early myths and there were many concerning ADHD was that you would grow out of it dr. Russell's shocker is a psychiatrist at sick kids hospital in Toronto you don't see adults climbing on kitchen counters because they can't sit still what they don't grow out of as they get older is impulsiveness or in attentiveness so what you do often see when you're interacting with your adult friends is people who really can't concentrate on the conversation they're restless individuals without necessarily getting up and moving around and adults develop a whole repertoire for hiding that the symptoms can be managed if they get diagnosed in the first place but many adults struggle for years with ADHD symptoms that have gone unrecognized or misread as anxiety or depression this may be why Sammy went looking for help in the first place I was going through a particularly tough time in my life and I started seeing a therapist for the first time she was the one who sort of suggested that she thought I was very a DD and I didn't believe her at first and then I start doing the research and I started reading about it and it was like all the signs were there so I decided to go and for a period of testing ADHD is what what and medicine we call a syndrome which is largely defined by restlessness inattentiveness hyperactivity and impulsivity and when those symptoms occur together we tend to make a diagnosis of ADHD diagnosis involves a check-up to rule out other possible medical causes of the symptoms a comprehensive checklist developed by the World Health Organization helps identify keys signs and symptoms do you have trouble wrapping up the final details of the project what's the challenge you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that looks why I have problems remembering appointments or application and you avoid or delay getting started how often do you fidget or squirm with your hands or feet but you have to sit down and feel overly active and compelled to do things that you were driven by a motor adults being assessed for the first time are also asked to provide a history of their behavior as a child looking back Sammis ADHD symptoms now seem obvious symptoms like chronic procrastination I was terrible at school unless like it's something that I'm really excited about doing I can make a million excuses why not to do it and I and I was yeah I was terrible distractibility is another symptom I would sit down in my class I would open my tip my notebook and I would you know start taking notes forty-five minutes later I'd looked at in my notes and I've just written those two lines and I couldn't remember the last 45 minutes difficulty organizing thoughts or actions you know I I wrote essays that teachers would say like we're the ravings of a madman like like stream of consciousness you know then the next thing you know you're two months into the school year and then you're six months in the school year and you're behind and you just never feel like you can get out of it ADHD sounds like an excuse doesn't everybody procrastinate lose track of time and forget things the fast answer is that that's true right for example we all procrastinate to degree right we all sometimes get bored easily and sometimes we have trouble paying attention dr. Mayer Hoffer is a psychiatrist and ADHD specialist in Toronto it's not that hard to see when those aspects have entered into that realm where it interferes with your capacity to live the life that you're supposed to leave in that sense that's a huge distinction ADHD can look a lot like normal behavior taken to extremes so it can be easily misread that can have an impact on relationships distractibility is a huge thing if he's not on any type of drug we'd walk down the street and I'd be talking to him and then he would just be like over there and like there's a light lips the thing and and I would have to say Sammy hey I'm talking to you like you know stay in the moment Sarah and Sammy are a married couple with the two-year-old son they had just started seeing one another when he learned about his ADHD the diagnosis made his behavior easier to understand and accommodate time was a huge thing I would call it Sammy time like I would always expect send me to be at least an hour late if he was coming home I just had to kind of adjust my expectations so that I wasn't always getting mad at him because I just began to understand it that was just the way the brain worked the cause of ADHD has been narrowed down to the pathway in our brain that helps tell us whether a behavior is rewarding like food or sex or something to avoid like stress or danger the transmitter that passes these chemical signals from one neuron to the next is called dopamine ultimately it signals receptors in the brain to stimulate our executive functions secular function is starting a task staying on task organizing materials regulating emotion very important one and being able to use working memory drawing on things in your past and applying it to the future dr. Ainsley gray is an ADHD specialist and the medical director of the springboard clinic in Toronto if you think of that prefrontal cortex as being like a symphony orchestra and the conductor of that Orchestra when he's on the job all the musicians are just playing beautifully however if that conductor checks out the coordination becomes compromised so we feel that the neurotransmitters that are feeding the conductor in our brain are insufficient in quantity or quality what causes this shortage of neurotransmitters the other two inches of the brain is the cortex that's the highest most evolved level of the brain then you have your millions of connections and neurons that make up your brain and then it kind of funnels down towards the brainstem here at the base of your skull in the brainstem if you will you have a beeping mechanism which sends the signals from the brain stem up through the brain substance to the cortex to get the cortex up and running what I'm like yes I am sequential and logical and I can screen out distractions external and internal I can edit on the fly and be nimble in my thinking what happens an attention deficit sorry is you have a functioning brainstem it's sending out signals all right but these signals on their way up to these particular areas are getting blocked or sidetracked it may seem surprising that this hyperactivity disorder is generally treated with a stimulant when you use a stimulant half an hour later like any self-respecting still it's at the level of the brainstem now instead of sending out signals like this it starts sending signals like this harder faster stronger more frequent signals these signals are gonna go up some are still gonna get blocked you're sidetracked but like water over the top of the dam because there's more of them these signals get up over around under through to these areas transforming than this into that so you get what's called the paradoxical response the opposite intended response of using a mild stimulant and a person becoming more hyper agitated wacky bouncing off the walls talking faster they become more focused concentrated organized better able to acquit themselves well in their genius ADHD affects about 4.4 percent of adults but only a small percentage has been diagnosed or treated how did the rest get missed some may have been treating themselves [Music] adrenaline is an effective way to increase dopamine so high risk occupations like racing firefighting and emergency response are all magnets for thrill-seekers with ADHD there are many public figures with ADHD whose fame and fortune came with a healthy dose of adrenaline Sammy was fortunate to find a career that serves his ADHD well that's my sweet spot that's my comfort zone like when I'm on set and there's always problems and things that crop up that you have to deal with an address like in the moment make decisions on the fly it's a pretty good job for somebody who needs something that requires him to hyper focus it was incredible thing about Sammy is he's the most calm presence on set it's a total contradiction in a lot of ways to our home life every ATT person in the world can pay attention in fact they have the capacity sometimes to be able to hyper focus on things that they're able to be interested in off times to the detriment of all the other things that they're supposed to be doing what ends up happening is that you overwork so you're not trying to solve the problems in your life you're actually ignoring it and you're using your work because that's the thing you're good at and that's where you thrive and you're just sort of like disregarding everything else and so you're miserable the constant need for an adrenaline rush can be downright dangerous it can lead to addictions to shopping food sex gambling drugs booze and especially tobacco while 20 percent of the population in North America still smoked for people with ADHD it's closer to 40% double the rate what's going on we're really struck by this ADHD smoking link so that we wanted to know what nicotine can do and individuals with ADHD and term self symptom reduction and also what it can do in terms of emotional regulation to learn more dr. Jean Garrick lunched a study of smokers who also took ADHD medication but the study almost didn't get off the ground it's just it seemed like there was nobody out there they would either smoke cigarettes or take stimulant medication but not necessarily take both the volunteers they eventually found were nicotine patches for two days and placebo patches for two days electronic Diaries prompted them every hour to document their own ADHD symptoms a blood pressure monitor kept track of physical activity and stress levels the final data confirm doctor Garrick suspicions nicotine reduces ADHD symptoms that's because unhealthy as it is smoking acts like many ADHD medications it raises dopamine levels this is what we're expecting to see what was a surprise to us was that nicotine also reduced anger nervousness and stress ratings and individuals with ADHD teenagers with ADHD are twice as likely to take up smoking as their peers and they tend to begin at a younger age so what effect could smoking have on identifying ADHD in the first place nicotine use can cloud the recognition of ADHD symptoms in a way that the person may not remember having any ADHD symptoms whatsoever because he's continuously self-medicating less nicotine six out of ten Canadians who ever smoked have now quit how many might have been self-medicating undiagnosed ADHD before he was diagnosed and treated Sammy occasionally smoked and he found other coping strategies to get by but they were never quite enough and things didn't get any better as he mature they got worse as you get older and your problems you saw that same brain and it's it's still got all the stuff that needs to get processed and it goes on and on and on and it's just and it's and it becomes crippling it becomes crushing and and and I'm not making any excuses but but you just start making really bad decisions and in a way your life starts becoming not a really good great place to be [Music] it's such a hugely important societal health issue you know now if you're not able to compete in a tougher world and eighty people find it harder and harder and harder to compete its disaster for people an adult with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD could be in for all kinds of problems with work and finances relationships and marriage substance abuse eating disorders unsafe driving and problems with the law dr. Lynn Stewart is a psychologist who helps evaluate mental health programs in Canada's federal penitentiary system so in 2011 we did a study on all incoming federal offenders to the Correctional Service of Canada they were screened for ADHD we found that sixteen to seventeen percent would have achieved a diagnosis of ADHD and a further forty percent would have had at least moderate symptoms of ADHD it's estimated that five percent of adult males worldwide have ADHD why are the numbers so much higher in prisons I think failure self control defines criminality at least repeated criminality and self-control problems are a major feature of ADHD we found that those who had higher levels of ADHD had more whose conducts more transfers to segregation and on release they came back to custody faster and at higher rates as the result of the study all incoming prisoners to Canadian Penitentiary's are now screened for ADHD those who are diagnosed gets streamed in to therapeutic programs I think it's critical to identify it and address it early I hear sometimes from the offender like what is wrong with me why am I doing this I think it would be helpful for them to know that and there's a way around that isn't the ADHD already stigmatized enough is it really a go to jail card I think it's important to say that most children who have ADHD won't go on to have a conduct disorder and those who have a conduct disorder won't go on to have antisocial personality disorder but that almost everybody who has repeated criminal histories has had a failure of self-control and probably would have earned an early diagnosis for ADHD is there a way to prevent ADHD some of the risk factors are out of our control like family history every time I diagnosed a child I'm also generally identifying a parent who has it as well and what role does gender play anything is like a big iceberg and in that majority underneath the waterline most of those are women up next ADHD gender and genetics as long as you can remember have you had difficulty getting organized yeah absolutely infinite daydreamer acted impulsively Sarah and her husband Sammy both work in the film business juggling the demands of career family and ADHD felt irritable had problems remembering appointments or obligations fidgeted or squirmed with your hands or feet when you have to sit down for a long time yeah that's that's my husband's yeah in a nutshell and he still has some difficulty with some of these things even when he's on the medication but with that said like I'm exactly the same way in a lot of ways so it's very weird and that saddens me we have to actually sometimes have to help each other when Sammy's like well I think you're kind of a little 82 you know I'm like what am i and where does it begin and where does it become like just like an actual condition there's a big difference between personality quirks and a condition like ADHD it was once assumed that ADHD was just a boy's thing that's likely because hyperactive boys are hard to miss but girls and women can have it too they're just sometimes harder to spot by and large girls tend to have a subtler presentation of ADHD so not necessarily the daydreamer but difficulties with focus or attention or distractibility dr. laura gerber is a pediatric and ADHD specialist I might be looking at you you may think I'm listening to you but you might not realize that I'm totally focused on the buzz of the fluorescent light there's a large population of girls who may have the inattentive type of ADHD and they often the young ones that are at the back of the classroom they're not bothering anybody but they're tuning out they're not learning optimally when they talk about an iceberg and they say the largest part of the iceberg is the part below the waterline that's attention deficit disorder vast majority of eighty people are not hyperactive and in that majority underneath the waterline most of those are women for years ADHD research focused mainly on males the pool of research on females is slowly increasing we now know that while boys tend to show symptoms by age five girls may not until age 12 and flying under the radar can have consequences later in life classic case of attention deficit disorder is the 19 year old female University student they go off to university and everything starts to fall apart it doesn't fall apart because they're partying too hard or they're not mature enough or you know they didn't take their circumstances seriously is because for the first time in their life the sort of external exoskeleton of their life wasn't there and then things didn't go well and then they were left with this feeling of not as good as everybody else and not as smart as everybody else and that's in Laney shows up at the University Health Service and the psychiatrist will say something like well so tell me what brings you here and the young lady says well I'm not doing very well and Scott says well how do you feel about that and then he relates as well not too good and this consciousness is how long have you been depressed for her and the first 45 seconds of the interaction the sky' interest has moved young lady from what she's come for I'm not doing very well that's a function Carmen and this guy just has Slovenian Lee right into the psychiatrist comfort zone depression and anxiety anxiety and depression it's kind of stunning to me that a lot of people that I dealt with different counselors and therapists didn't notice this about me it wasn't mice my psychiatrist first instinct at all for Medina abdelkader it was the pressures of grad school that revealed her ADHD when I came to trying to do my Master's is let me by myself so I didn't have that social support and I had a really hard time staying organized and I would go every single day and I would sit and I bring all my books and my laptop and my highlighters and my good intentions and I would just sit for hours and hours reading going through down the black hole of the internet and all these really juicy topics that I was studying I just couldn't I couldn't stay focused and I have all these ideas and I just can't I just can't sit down for a long enough to get them down it wasn't like oh maybe I have a to you is I'm so anxious I'm gonna die so I need to do something about this many successful people who are university graduates they have professional careers all of a sudden will hit a wall a level of impairment that results in their running into difficulties susan Gottlieb's ADHD managed to fly under the radar until her early 40s thanks in part to her first marriage there was a lot of structure in in my life for those 20 years or so but when that was over and things changed very dramatically and children came into my life then and there was no structure there was no plan it worked and then it didn't work I felt from a functional standpoint that I couldn't do the kinds of things that I that I was always used to doing through just drive and willpower and intelligence okay listen I won't keep you but I just wanted to talk to you I think we should be buying something here Susan works for the investment arm of a big bank she's a high achiever and good at her job but ADHD can stay hidden until you reach a tipping point and certainly being on an antidepressant for example which is what one doctor recommended that maybe soothe my stress but didn't help me function better and that's really what I needed to do the medication is treating their mood or their anxiety which is only a secondary symptom of the root of the problem being ADHD increasingly both women and men have been discovering their ADHD in places like this a pediatricians office so every time I diagnose a child I'm also generally identifying a parent who has it as well 95% of the time that adult has not yet been diagnosed so it's actually quite rare in my experience for an adult to say yes I was diagnosed as a kid yeah do you want this my spoon Gracie with her Kiwi or the other kind the spark thing I'm somebody who has ADHD myself I wasn't diagnosed until I was 31 so after I had finished medical school and residency so a late adult diagnosis all three of my children have it and so I experienced ADHD in the office all day long and I live with it myself so it's something that is close to home I guess you would say the tendency to develop ADHD can be inherited but how does it start running in a family in the first place here in the Florida State Center for brain repair they may have found the answer to this and other questions to study a neurobiological disorder like ADHD an animal surrogate is useful mice are good candidates they share 97% of our genes but how do you give a mouse ADHD the same way that some humans get it we knew from human studies that from other spokes there's a higher risk of ADHD in their offspring smoking doubles the ADHD risk in humans dr. McCarthy and her team wanted to see if it had the same effect on mice we exposed a female mouse to nicotine for three weeks we can easily dissolve it in drinking water of the mice and then she's bread with a naive male Mouse and nicotine is ongoing during her pregnancy so the developing brain is exposed to nicotine from conception until birth once they're born they get tested to see if any of them have ADHD symptoms we break down each of the ADHD symptoms like hyperactivity inattention impulsivity and deficits in working memory and we can test each one of those using our animal models to test for deficiencies in learning and working memory McCarthy uses this Barnes maze it's a platform beneath the bright light and a noisy clattering fan there are 40 holes that a mouse might use to escape the light and noise but only one leads to a quiet hideout under the platform there are visual cues to help orient the mouse for a normal Mouse it takes about two weeks of daily training to learn and remember the fastest escape from the noise in life this mouse has been training for just as long but it's showing all the signs of ADHD it covers a lot more ground waste more energy and makes more mistakes but remarkably it finds the escape hole in the same amount of time as the normal Mouse for us that's most interesting it's not that they cannot learn the task is - they have a different way of learning it to test for impulsivity they use the bar stool we call it a bar stool because that's basically what it looks like and normally what a mouse will do then will go to the edge of the platform and they'll sniff around and get used to that environment but mice that we have found that we're calling ADHD like or impulsive like will tend to sniff for their nose over the edge a lot more frequently than the normal mice and actually jump off after testing the mice whose mother was exposed to nicotine how many are they finding that acquired ADHD every single mouse in the litter has ADHD like symptoms every one of them but it doesn't end there McCarthy and dr. Pradeep b-day have uncovered disturbing new information about ADHD heritability some research we have now done that shows that the effects of prenatal nicotine exposure actually can be seen in multiple generations in the 30s 40s and 50s cigarette smoking was highly prevalent in fact some physicians would advise pregnant women to smoke cigarettes to deal with morning sickness for example so it's a sobering thought I think that we may be seeing some of those effects in the current generation there may be a smoker generations back who has increased the ADHD odds in your gene pool could this be a permanent threat luckily our smoking is declining so perhaps two or three generations from now we may not see the effects of cigarette smoke exposure however there may be new environmental toxins or environmental stimuli that may produce these transgenerational effects that we don't even know about today the search for new medical treatments for ADHD is part of a multi-billion dollar industry but there's an ongoing search for non pharmaceutical solutions to using coaching behavior therapy and even gaming contrary to what we thought we actually make new neurons you can teach old dogs new tricks next up fills and skills whenever ADHD is mentioned there's usually discussion about the medications and reluctance to use them so when I see patients in my office say the problem that you have has squat to do with illness it has everything to do with function no different than why a person wears glasses you have a functional problem you put your glasses on it allows your perfectly healthy eyes the opportunity to operate at the peak of their intended biological capacity all I'm gonna be trying to do is put a pair of glasses as it were on the inside to allow your perfectly healthy smart capable brain the opportunity the peak of its biological capacity these glasses for the brain are stimulant medications they've been the gold standard for ADHD treatment for more than 50 years so there's good evidence they're safe and effective for adults and children but the increase in the number of children identified with ADHD in the past decade as set off alarm bells about the potential harms of over diagnosing and over prescribing especially in the US where the percentages are the highest but treatment doesn't always end with meds at the end of the day you need to have good executive functioning skills and medication isn't going to do that for you it'll help you acquire those skills more easily but it's not actually going to give you those skills here at Sick Kids Hospital dr. Jennifer Crosby has been testing new therapies for ADHD one executive function at a time there's a number of different kind of cognitive processes that fall under this umbrella term of executive functions one of the domains that we started with was response inhibition can you stop what you're doing quickly based on new information in your environment let's say you're driving along at a reasonable speed and ball comes out between two parked cars that's when that ability is invoked it takes an ADHD person about a hundred and fifty milliseconds longer to respond to a prompt the difference between a hit and a miss all right so sometimes you're gonna see this and what that means it's a signal for you to stop okay the mega team project is a video game based cognitive rehabilitation so what we have done is we have taken our understanding of the underlying cognitive deficits in ADHD to come up with an intervention to strengthen those and ideally what we've tried to do is come up with something that's engaging and fun for kids there you go excellent mega team was co-developed by sick kids in ehave a medical software company founded by Scott Woodrow Scott has a vested interest his son as ADHD and that's one of the main reasons why I did this I didn't want to medicate my child the medication deals with the symptoms of the condition it doesn't deal with the underlying condition itself when they're off the medication their condition comes back 50 kids have been recruited to try to sharpen their response inhibition skills progress is monitored online later there will be a follow-up to see if the training had a positive effect on behavior beyond a quicker trigger finger this ability to stop a speeded motor response is what you need to keep your mouth shut when you have an impulse to say something or keep your hands to yourself when you have the impulse to do otherwise future plans are to build the game out to target other cognitive functions and to test if it can help adults as well the neuroscientists have discovered over the last few decades that we actually contrary to what we thought make new neurons even in late age so we have the capacity to change rewire you can teach old dogs new tricks I'm thankful for that I'm living proof the stakes are high in the games played here at the epicenter of Canada's financial district world markets breaking stock reports and investment analysis Susan Gottlieb is plugged into it all it uses all my skills and keeps me excited about going to work every day that's why it was so frustrating for me when things weren't working the same way Susan's symptoms improved after being diagnosed and treated for ADHD but she felt she needed more the medication I think prepares the way it gave me hope that maybe I could solve these problems but I didn't still didn't know how many business people turn to executive coaches to help improve their performance Susan went to Robert Powell a coach who specializes in ADHD so let me ask you can the rest of your company survive without you for two hours Oh without a doubt without a doubt yeah that e milk is just it's addicting it is it really is between the phone and there are pills that can help but it's it's a behavioral change and it's hard because it's a lifetime of responding in a certain way what's the most important thing you have to do I have to call clients review portfolios that type thing you know so when I'm hearing you say that yeah I'm getting overwhelmed yeah I'm sure you have hundreds of clients yeah very complex portfolios but the key is to stop the feeling being overwhelmed yeah is you want to break it down into a specific behavioral step okay remember what it was that gives us a 300 percent greater probability of success yeah I got a book it you got a bucket I got a book at the of your phone here I always have my phone hey the best approach to treating ADHD is three pronged one is they need to learn new behaviors in order they can function better number two is the pharmaceutical treatment and number three is some emotional support on the personal side it really has to be about my family and being with them being with the girls I've got to use the time more productively so that I'm not there at the office at night so remote the motivation for reserving this time is besides for helping your clients it's allowing you to spend the time at your kids yeah that's great yeah sounds very motivating for me mm-hmm very much so this is very practically how I can change my thinking how I can learn and how I can repeat these steps for all of the things that are gonna come up in my life and come up on a daily basis I now have the tools and they help me in every part of my life life after ADHD diagnosis it's not like I was able to get this treatment and now I'm cured but having that awareness just helps me to forgive myself when I'm not perfect I wouldn't want to get rid of the ADHD years I think it's wrong to think that everybody has to have an even keel and I think there's room for everybody right the final stretch staying on course with an uneven keel yeah math challenge you didn't do the bonus it's not okay she's a busy mom a pediatrician and she has ADHD I still hear you know well how can you possibly get gotten to be a doctor if you have ADHD but the reality is it has nothing to do with intelligence there's lots of successful people out there who have it but that that perception is still there so in summary we just wanted to kind of wrap up by saying that ADHD is not just about the DSM checklist and that it's both exciting and exhausting in what little spare time she has Laura Gerber also gives seminars to other medical professionals about the signs and symptoms of adult ADHD I mean it came from a place of frustration it was intimidating I won't lie because I know that there's a lot of them that have those outdated views that it's a childhood illness and they've been skeptical about whether it's an issue for their adult patients and the parents that I've sent back to them I've been very pleasantly surprised how well people have responded Madina Abdelkader found help for her ADHD medication and movement as a sport rowing is incredibly technical so I find that with other types of exercise I can kind of zona oh but you can't with rowing when you do bad things happen there was such a difference between free medication and post medication and so what that helped me to do is just sort of explain to myself what's going on and just kind of forgive myself for when it doesn't go perfectly because I'm like okay this is it's not this is not me failing necessarily this is just you know one aspect of my life that I have to work on and the medication helps with that the exercise helps with that four months after we first met Sarah and Sammy Sarah went to a specialist and confirmed what they had suspected for a while Sarah as ADHD yeah the first thing I did was I called my mom and I just cried because I was like oh like my life has been hard I think it's great now but it's been hard I never quite understood why it was so much more difficult for me before we even knew that I was a DD I think we always knew that there was a really good chance that Cleo would be we don't have any intention of really doing anything about it at the moment other than just encouraging him and loving him and for watching him develop we'll just take it one step at a time I think it's wrong to think that everybody has to have an even keel worlds-- made up a lot of different people I wouldn't want to get rid of the ADHD years because they're often they're charming and they're they try they dabble they try different things they're adventurous and I think it would be lost if we started to temper that too much right an ADHD brain struggles with many challenges but when it's treated and managed it's a brain with a unique perspective on the world it just has to be recognized in the first place you you

Channel: Only Human

Views: 781,319

Keywords: documentary 2021, How ADHD affects Adults, ADHD affects adults, Only Human, Only Human channel, adhd women symptoms, adhd women in relationships, adhd documentary bbc, adhd documentary 2017, adhd documentary uk, adhd documentary 2018, only human adhd documentary, adhd not just for kids, adhd not just for kids documentary, the nature of things adhd not just for kids, adhd myths documentary, adhd full documentary, only human full documentary, only human documentary

Id: jyUVc0Iteb0

Length: 41min 16sec (2476 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Emich12]

33 here, just got diagnosed a few months ago. Crazy to look back at so many years of my life and how miserable I was not being able to focus on anything. I just thought I was inherently lazy. Also a big thing I now realize after getting on medication is how much anxiety I had about everything I wasn't doing. Basically worried to death about tasks and obligations, but too paralyzed to do anything but endlessly jump between irrelevant thoughts. Mental torture all day.

Anyways, medication has made my life 10x better. I was afraid of the stigma the medication carried through recreational use in college, but when used correctly it's a gamechanger for everyday life. Not just for focusing on work and tasks, but now I can actually be present with my family and enjoy it.

[u/sixtus_clegane119]

I need to get back on adhd medications, my executive function is awful, and I need to do something with my life.

At 32 my adhd is still raging strong.

Spent 10 years on clonazepam intellectually wasting away, now I have been forcing myself to read for hours on end, but there is only so much I can do when I am not in the mood to focus

[u/shoutymcloud]

I work as a doctor - i cannot even begin to describe the enormous uptick in adults coming in saying they have all the diagnostic characteristics of ADHD and while it’s true for some of them, the majority of them are actually just people who struggle with self-control, have difficulty focusing on tasks that don’t interest them (like many people), smoke to much pot, have anxiety, etc. You do not need stimulants because you want to scroll your phone while you should be listening to a first year lecture in calculus. That being said, for people that do have ADHD, medications can be life changing.

To clarify: I’m being accused of bias against patients inquiring about ADHD. I diagnose and treat patients with ADHD often; i also work closely with 2 psychiatrists and my partner is a psychiatrist - I’m able to discuss cases with all of them. I also readily refer people that are struggling and need to help. I am arguably too liberal with my diagnosis of ADHD. My point was regarding the volume of people that come into my office suggesting they have ADHD and then find their symptoms improve/resolve after they regulate their sleep pattern, minimize substance X, appropriately treat their anxiety or depression, turn their phone off during lecture etc, etc. I am in no way suggesting this is not a real disease or doesn’t require treatment.

Also - diagnosing many psychiatric illnesses is incredibly nuanced. These are all phenomenological diagnoses; based on patients subjective experiences. I could walk into the clinic down the street and answer the questions on medical history in such a way that i would meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD - and so could anyone else. It’s hard, this is hard, many people need help, but stimulants can be very dangerous for some people. It’s difficult because there are people that have ADHD self medicate with stimulants of abuse (cocaine, crack, meth), but it is impossible to diagnose ADHD in the setting of substance use. Anyway, i could talk about this for hours (and have); just want to save some face and identity that i am not kicking people out of my office who are struggling and suggesting that have ADHD.

Be well everyone, thanks for the award.

[u/[deleted]]

Wow, 41 minutes long and the slow steady talking. This was definitely not made for somebody with ADHD to watch. LOL

[u/Zopstrosity]

Please be a good documentary 🙏. I've struggled with ADHD my whole life and it really blew up in my face last year. Only after that and having to move back home with my parents have I started researching what ADHD really affects in my life and I wish I had known sooner. Mentally I'm doing better than I have in a decade.

[u/JMCrown]

Weren’t posts like this recently exposed as shill marketing for pharmaceutical companies?

[u/DukeVerde]

...Why does "ADHD: Not just for Kids" sound like a Trix Cereal slogan? X_X

[u/[deleted]]

save*

[u/vaxxed_beck]

I just turned 55 a month ago, and didn't know the symptoms of ADHD until a few years ago. The symptoms certainly sound like me. It also might be a contributing factor to why I have had such a difficult time keeping a job. I have a difficult time staying on task and my brain feels like it's racing. Also, I have a generalized anxiety disorder, so that plays into this.