Most People Mistake These for ADHD | MedCircle

[Music] i'm kyle kiddleson with med circle welcome to our youtube channel if you have not been here before we are a mental health education uh company that provides online membership separate from youtube but of course you can subscribe here on youtube and get free content that we upload each week if you want more and more in-depth content go to medcircle.com today i am talking with dr judy who has a great series on med circle on adult adhd i'll link to that below this video in the description but dr judy i want to talk about the misdiagnosis of adhd and other commonly misdiagnosed mental health conditions what are some of the most commonly misdiagnosed mental health conditions that are like you they get misdiagnosed as adhd but it's actually something else well there are so many and i'm so glad that we're talking about this towel because it's so important you know when we talk about children's diagnosis of adhd versus adults diagnoses of adhd they're often times misdiagnoses and a lot of times when we're looking at a child who's not paying attention in school we rush this idea of adhd and yes sometimes it might even be medical for example allergies that's actually a really common uh reason why a child would behave as if they had adhd but actually it's due to a medical condition there are some other types of conditions though of a psychiatric or psychological nature that oftentimes mimic the symptoms of adhd but are not in fact adhd one of the most difficult differential diagnoses is bipolar disorder and how that differentiates from adhd or if it's truly a comorbid condition when somebody might be suffering from both of them and the reason is those two conditions are often kind of hard to distinguish because they share several symptoms in common like the mood instability the outburst restlessness talkativeness and maybe some level of in patience and also inattention but there are also some really important differences as well we also find that there is a lot of correlation between what looks like adhd and actually one of the major symptoms of major depressive disorder which is inability to focus or concentrate and also some difficulty making decisions and so sometimes people will say i think i have adhd but really actually what they suffer from is depression that hasn't been treated another example would be anxiety conditions when somebody has anxiety it interferes with their information processing skills and then they believe that they have adhd but actually once they treat the anxiety what look like adhd those symptoms go away or at least reduce drastically when we talk about developmental disorders autism is another one that is sometimes difficult to separate from adhd does it truly co-occur in this individual or are they actually just having symptoms of autism spectrum disorder and not the adhd that accompanies that also there is a huge component of misdiagnosis when we're talking about other issues that could cause cognitive dysfunction that could cause secondary attention difficulties this would be traumatic brain injuries concussions seizures cardiovascular events and also the effects of alcohol and substance abuse that they can actually produce symptoms that are problematic for somebody's cognitive functioning that look like there's a lot of problems in the attentional sphere have you heard of sensory processing disorder yeah sensory processing disorder and were you thinking about whether or not that actually has some correlation to looking like adhd when it's not i i was thinking that and i was also thinking about what is that because i don't know what that is to begin with sensory processing disorder is an interesting condition it is a condition where the brain has trouble receiving and responding to information that's coming through the senses and use uh used to be referred to as sensory integration dysfunction it's something where somebody also has some correlated symptoms that also again sometimes look like adhd sometimes they might be more uncoordinated um they might have difficulty engaging in conversation or in play again that mimics some of the difficulties that individuals with adhd have and sensory processing problems are generally identified when the child is quite young but they can certainly affect adults and the problem is because they can't integrate information coming in from their senses and so a big part of that is taking in oral information being able to make sense of it and then say something back to your social environment people think that they're being inattentive when actually the issue is that they're having problems integrating information from their census a study by michigan state university gave a percentage of children they believe were misdiagnosed with adhd i'll reveal that percentage after our next question but for our viewers watching on youtube go ahead and leave your guess on what percentage of children you think are misdiagnosed with adhd at least according to this study dr judy because so many of these disorders overlap in symptomology how can you really determine if somebody's experiencing distraction or inattentiveness due to adhd as opposed to anxiety what how do you do that well i think there's two main routes the first route is if you can take the time to go through a comprehensive evaluation that's obviously recommended because you can try to sort that out as quickly as possible a neuropsychologist does have the ability to sort out and sift out what looks more like what we call primary adhd condition meaning that that is actually the originating clinical condition or a secondary adhd condition which means that the person looks like they have adhd but it's secondary to another medical event like the effect of a concussion or the effect of substance abuse you can also go to a neuropsychologist who can sort of parse out how much of this really looks like bona fide adhd and how much of this is actually just the symptom presentation of a depression or anxiety or a bipolar disorder if you can't do that then you can see how the person responds to treatment so for example if you suspect that the person might have adhd like symptoms because of their depression well when you treat the depression and they say their focus is getting better then you have an answer but that takes a little bit of time to sort out in a different way and so i do think that a lot of times i do encourage my patients i say listen we did the evaluation honestly all all of the signs are pointing to the fact that your depression is most likely the most major explanation for your attentional difficulties let's really focus for the next three to four months on treating that depression and then after three or four months come back to me we'll do kind of like an abridged evaluation and we'll see how your attention and processing are going then and if it's improved then i think we have an answer and when they see that it's a really powerful feeling like oh okay like great i figured out what it was and actually i've been treating it this whole time and didn't realize it and great i don't have another diagnosis that i have to manage now makes perfect sense thank you uh that answer to the percentage of children misdiagnosed with adhd according to a study from michigan state university is about 20 and that's about a million children uh dr judy what is your response to that statistic 20 of children being misdiagnosed with adhd that really doesn't surprise me especially in children because developmentally they are changing so fast and that's why i think you know i know it's hard for parents it's your child and that n of one or n of two or three that's the most important thing to you in your world and you want to get them help as much as possible and as quickly as possible but sometimes children is going through a developmental phase sometimes it can be difficult or exhibit difficult behaviors or concerns or things that for example look like ocd after two or three months they go away naturally and there's actually nothing to be concerned about from a clinical standpoint and so i think that um that's probably part of the misdiagnosis is because children might be going through some phases and three or four months later it kind of resolves itself and or becomes something different it wasn't what you thought and so i think that that misdiagnosis happens for that reason i also think that it happens because there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen there's the parents view the babysitter's view the grandparents view the teacher's view everybody sees a different side of the child so i think sometimes when teachers say hey they're really inattentive in the classroom but at home you don't see any of those problems that's not actually adhd adhd requires that you are essentially exhibiting those symptoms in two major areas or situations of life um so there might be something else going on there might be something else going on in school like maybe they're being bullied maybe they're having difficulties with peer relations and that's why they look inattentive or sometimes they're bored i've had students who have told me i maybe i haven't been doing so well in class it's only because i'm so ultimately bored and then i'll evaluate them and they're extremely gifted and they really should be moved to an extremely gifted class and then once you do the inattention problems resolve we've talked about the common disorders that are misdiagnosed as adhd at the top of this interview anxiety autism sensory processing disorder to a degree in your experience is there one that ranks number one as most commonly misdiagnosed oh mood and anxiety disorders for sure i think that because it comes with an attentional deficit presentation for many people again if you're really depressed and in your thoughts how are you going to focus on anything you're not and also you're kind of having this low motivational aspect of being depressed and so that's going to affect your performance too anxiety if you're a ruminative person you're always considering your worries well your mind actually can't multitask very well so if you're in the middle of ruminating about something people will say hey this is the third time i've said this to you how come you didn't listen to me do you have adhd well maybe they don't but they've just been in their own thoughts worrying about something that's going on in their life right now and so i think that those are the most common that i see and it's probably because depression and anxiety are so common and so a lot of people will come in and they'll say i have both depression and adhd and then after a period of observation and treatment and evaluation we realize no you just have depression you don't have adhd and once we treat the depression the adhd conditions go away if this is prompting questions that you would like to ask to dr judy you can ask those to her tonight during our live panel use the links below to register she'll also be joined by myself and the other med circle doctors like dr dominic sportelli and dr romini uh hopefully we'll see you tonight to have more of this conversation and get more of your questions answered dr judy in regards to the treatment of adhd if somebody and i want to focus on a child here if a parent's child is diagnosed with adhd they go on to a treatment plan i understand that if the treatment's not working then either the treatment's wrong or maybe the diagnosis is wrong is there anything else a parent could be on the lookout for that could indicate hey adhd is not the right diagnosis for this child i think certainly when you see different problem behaviors or the lack of the problem behaviors in different situations that's something to keep an eye on as i mentioned with adhd it has to occur those problem behaviors have to occur in at least two major settings or more and if you're not seeing that you see that there's some differences and that's a reason to kind of have uh just a little bit of a um a heads up about thinking about you know what what what i want to do next do i want to go for a second opinion do i want to share this information with my doctors or even my teachers because you're saying that if the child is is is not focusing at school but is attentive at home that could be an indication that adhd was the wrong diagnosis right and just to play devil's advocate though what if i have a child that was inattentive at school and inattentive at home he got the adhd diagnosis he started a treatment and now he's much better at home almost great but he still has issues at school does that mean adhd might not be the case or is it just the treatments working to address the symptomology at home but there's still another issue going on in this school it depends on what the treatment is if it's medication treatment that probably wouldn't make so much of a difference in terms of the environment but if it's behavioral treatment where the responsible adult is supposed to be structuring then maybe that's not a misdiagnosis but you just need to be in a better communication with the school staff and the teacher to make sure that you guys are using the same rules so i think that's important i think if you see other emerging difficulties that aren't addressed or encompass an adhd diagnosis as you mentioned earlier sensory processing disorder comes with a lot of other stuff and it comes with things like difficulty just integrating information from your senses and making sense of it so if it's not just inattentiveness but it's like they they literally don't seem like they understand what you're saying or they're having other types of sensory issues or sensory sensitivities i think that's when you have to get them evaluated to see if there's anything else that's going on also sometimes people look inattentive only because they are having difficulty with certain tasks so the individual only is an attentive in math class for example and that's because they're struggling in math um they may actually have a learning disability and maybe adhd too or maybe not adhd with the learning disability so i think especially when the child is before the age of 18 public schools have a responsibility to provide the child with a certain level of education and also an evaluation process so that they can provide them with that education so definitely advocate for your child they should be tested through the school given all of the resources that the school has to offer and again if you're in a public school system they are required to do that for you excellent well again dr dom has a great series on childhood adhd and dr judy has a great series on adult adhd i know i'll see many of you tonight during our live panel and much more of you here on our youtube channel you can register for the panel below this video you can subscribe to our video right here i appreciate all of your support to help us make this mental health education available to more and more people i'm kyle kittleson thanks dr judy for being here remember whatever you're going through you got this

Channel: MedCircle

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Keywords: adhd, symptoms, signs, adhd symptoms, adult adhd, adhd treatment, what is adhd, adhd test, adhd medication, adhd in adults, adhd diagnosis, signs of adhd, symptoms of adhd, adult adhd symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, add, adhd in girls, how to adhd, attention deficit disorder, adhd help, mental health, do i have adhd, brain, attention, how to treat adhd, what is adhd disorder, adhd tips, disorder, anxiety, hyperactivity, treatment, psychology, health, medcircle, video

Id: tV3XcJw_HNs

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021