Stuff You Should KnowToday, the conclusion of the two-part episode on ADHD.
Hello, everyone, In case you're listening to these episodes out of order, we gave a heads up in episode one that we have a kind of a grown up talk about ADHD in these two episodes, So we wanted to say, if you're a parent with a kid who has ADHD, maybe listen to it yourself first before you share it with them. On with the.
Show, Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jars here again and we're starting up part two of our double episode on ADHD.
That's right, And if you remember in part one we discussed ADHD.
Some people have it, some.
People don't, and we're going to talk right now about how you can figure that out, and that's called diagnosis. Right now, where we are scientifically is that the biggest factor on whether or not you have ADHD or not is hereditary. If you have kids and you have ADHD as a parent, your kid has about a fifty percent chance of having it as well. And like we mentioned in the first part, a lot of adults from especially our generation Gen Xers, are now getting diagnosed in their thirties forties, fifties because they found out that their kid has ADHD and they're like, wow, little Chucky Junior looks a lot like big Chucky.
Yeah, that's a symptom. I thought that was charming exactly.
Cattle's a bug.
And even if they don't recognize it in them, there's a one hundred percent chance that their spouse will be like, I really think you have this too.
Yeah, but there are some other factors, right.
Yes, there's issues during pregnancy, that's a big one, usually exposure to alcohol or tobacco, premature delivery, if you didn't weigh very much when you were born, if you were exposed to lead as a kid, if you had a brain injury as a kid. There's a lot of concern about some other stuff. I think you said at the very outset of part one. There isn't any research that suggests watching too much TV or living in a go go go world. There is some research that suggests that blue number one and Blue number two food dies may actually at least exacerbate ADHD symptoms, But for the most part, they think it's a combination of genetics, the environment you were raised in, and then possibly like actual environmental factors like being exposed to lead or your mom, you know, smoking when she was pregnant with you.
Yeah, and just to kind of clear up the TV and the screen thing, watching TV or being on screens too much or too much TV quote unquote isn't going to help give you ADHD, but there is a connection there. If you are a kid with ADHD, the pool toward a screen is going to be way stronger than a kid who doesn't have it. That short attention span is gonna really crave like the flashy graphics that video games or cartoons can deliver you, it'll deliver that steady dose of dopamine. They've done studies, it was. I found one a large study of five year olds that compared tension span of kids who watched less than thirty minutes per day of TV with those who spent more than two hours in front of a TV, and of course we mean you know, screens basically.
And pretty dramatic results.
The kids who watched the most TV had almost an eight times more of a chance of meeting the ADHD diagnosis criteria, and it even outranked other things that cause attention problems like you know, lack of sleep or parents stress eutonomic stress stuff like that.
So there's a link. It's not going to get you ADHD.
But if you have a kid with ADHD, then you should probably just monitor screens even more. You know, you should be doing that anyway, but maybe even more so.
Yeah, because those sites are designed to release dopamine and train you to come back and do it again and again and again. And so kids with ADHD who don't normally have a flood of dopamine when they get it, they really learn to do that thing that gives them that dopamine, which again doesn't give you like a feel good rush, It just comes along with that and tells your brain this is a really important thing to do, so do it again and again and again.
Yeah, for sure.
It's also like the age of your kid is really important when you're trying to diagnose if you're pre preschool aged or younger or I guess that counts as all ages younger than preschool, but.
You know what I mean.
That that can be a lot tougher because there are other developmental delays that may look like ADHD that change and you may not be able to get a good diagnosis until they're you know, six, seven, eight, years old, and even when they're older, like you know, teenagers.
You got to rule out a lot of stuff like.
Learning disabilities, mood disorders, if you have like vision or hearing problems or a sleep disorder. A lot of that stuff can can fool you into thinking you have ADHD.
So it can be tricky, it can be.
So there's two lists. There's an inattentive list and then there's a hyperactive list. Yeah, and each one has I think nine like criteria things like you know, you lose things frequently, you appear to zone out while people are talking to you, stuff like that. And if you have six out of the nine on the inattentive list, you have inattentive type ADHD. If you have six out of nine on the hyperactive list, you have hyperactive type ADHD. And if you're really running up the numbers and you've got six of nine on inattentive and six of nine on hyperactive, you've got the combined version of ADHD. Adults, it's the same thing, although the criterias adjusted a little bit. For you know, runs around rambunctiously in class. You don't do that, but say you feel restless at it during meetings like it's really hard to sit still.
You may be mentally doing that exactly.
I would love to jump up and spin in a circle, right right, But a kid will actually do that. Where's the adult in the meeting will just struggle through that exactly.
So the criteria is essentially the same, it's just kind of adjusted for adults, and then for adults it's five of nine yeah, for either lists. And then also with kids. When you're diagnosing kids, you look at their educational records, you talk to their parents, you talk to the guidance counselors. You get as much information as you possibly can to properly diagnose somebody with ADHD, because there's not one like here's our ADHD test, whether it's a blood test or a written test. You're basically pulling all of these disparate info together to put together like, Okay, this kid has ADHD and it's this kind Yeah.
And that's why you know, parent teacher conferences are super valuable.
I think when you first start to have to do that stuff.
You're just like, oh God, kill me, I gotta seriously, like, because your experience is from when you're a kid, Like what a waste of time.
But it's not at all.
When you go in there as a parent, you know how your kid is at home. You don't know how they are at school because you don't have a little camera in their classroom where you can just sit around and watch what they're like.
So rich parents do, right, Yeah, maybe so, but.
You can really glean Like I think when you have challenges with a kid at home as a parent, you're dying to know if it's just you or if it's just the way it is at home. In other words, obviously not just the parent's fault, but you're wondering. So you're you're like when we get in there with Ruby's teachers, we're always just like, so, what's going on?
What was she like? Does she have trouble with this or that?
And sometimes it's like, yeah, she has the same trouble with this or that at home, And sometimes it's like no, it's not at all at school.
And so it's really super enlightening.
Yeah, that is super enlightening. Does it make you feel better or is it more just like it just answers the question that you have.
Yeah, just I think you know, knowledge is power, So just knowing that stuff that.
Dude, we should start doing that with you and Jerry. They needed to be adult versions of parent teacher conferences.
Oh that's a great idea, you know, I would be so anxious.
Oh no, it'd be good. We do it over drinks.
Okay. One other thing, you can find a lot of really great accurate diagnostic tests on sites like TikTok, which have lots of misspelled words in the title. So those are always really great to test whether you have ADHD or not.
Be aware of that. I mean, social media stuff can help. There's lots some good resources. But what was that study? Like half of that stuff on TikTok was just wrong?
Yeah, if I think fifty two yeah.
When it came to this, yeah, more than half.
Yeah. So one of the big questions that we're still answering today, and if you haven't picked up that we don't have a full grasp of ADHD in any way, shape or form yet. That's correct. But one of the factors that we're trying to figure out is the prevalence of ADHD among kids and among adults, and it's kind of all over the map. It does seem like we're starting to kind of zero in a little bit. We're figuring out like the criteria to really like to really diagnose ADHD, and it seems like the numbers are starting to get a little smaller as time goes on and we get a little better with recognizing ADHD.
Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I know that you found some other numbers, but we'll just go through them and you can just say.
If I'm wrong.
Between ages of three and seventeen, so school age kids in the US United States of America, around ten percent have been diagnosed with ADHD. That number does get bigger with age because a lot of times you won't get tested until a little later, and some you know, diagnostic testing requires money, and sometimes a lot of money.
I mean, you can do.
Like a just a sort of a psychiatric evaluation maybe if your kids go into a therapist or something, and they may just look at criteria and ask a few questions.
But if you want like.
A real deal diagnostic diagnostic evaluation, like those aren't cheap. And that sucks because, like these numbers are kids who have been diagnosed because they were able to be diagnosed. So I'm sure there are a lot of situations where that's not possible.
There's also a shortage of psychiatrists in the United States, so it's often there's a long wait list to even be seen from that psychiatrist, so you have to pay a lot of money too. Not all psychiatrists specialize in ADHD, so you really need to find from an even like smaller pool to choose from of psychiatrists. And then also once they diagnose you that the outlay of money is not over there, like you have to keep seeing them and they charge you every time for that. And psychiatrists are medical doctors, so their fees are not on the par or on the order of a psychologist or a therapist. They're four or five times more on average. Probably I'm pulling that out of thin air, but it's very clear that you're going to pay more for your psychiatrists than you would for a therapist.
Yeah, for sure.
Generally still boys are more likely to get that diagnosis than girls, about thirteen percent to six percent. There's also variations by race. I believe the highest percentage Black kids are at twelve percent, ten percent for White kids, eight percent for Hispanic kids, and three percent for Asian children, which is just super interest.
It is interesting, for sure, and there's got to be some clue in there somewhere like, Yeah, that seems like there's that's weird that there's a difference because I think all of those numbers were for kids in the United States.
Yeah, it was.
I think globally they've come up within a twenty seventeen study across the world that five almost five point three percent of kids have ADHD. And there's a there's a question like, Okay, is this over diagnosed because I said that the prevalence rate seem to be kind of getting a little smaller as we zero in better and better. But the diagnostic or the rates of diagnosis have really picked up where they really did at the beginning of the twenty first century. Between two thousand and five and twenty fourteen, diagnoses of kids with ADHD doubled, doubled. That's crazy. That's a huge increase doubled. It's almost like one hundred percent more.
Yeah, And you know, there's just no scientific consensus right now on whether it's an over diagnosis or whether it's just we know more now and there's less stigma. There's more kids getting tested now there. You know, the criteria changed in twenty thirteen from the DSM four to the d S m five as far as that threshold, So all of those things probably factor in.
To the doubling.
I would think, Yeah, one thing though, if you are taking your kid into be tested, make sure that it's since they kind of evaluate the kid against the expectations of their grade level. If they're young for their grade, Yep, that needs to be taken into account because they can easily be misdiagnosed because they're actually not at that grade level yet, because they're not of that age quite yet, even though they're in that grade.
Yeah, and with COVID kids, you know, potentially missing out on depending on what happened where you were, on a lot of valuable school. So yeah, it's important to look at because because Ruby is young for her grade, so in some cases she's like eight or nine months younger than some of her classmates. And then when you throw even though she did COVID kindergarten, which was a real boon, they did their best, they it wasn't like regular school. Still, so teachers and educators are having to sort and parents are having to sort through all of that.
Still chuck.
Just to kind of give a hat tip to some of our listeners in other countries, I saw that the NHS says in the UK five percent of kids have ADHD. In Australia they estimate six to ten percent of kids have ADHD, Canada rich five to seven percent.
Not bad eh.
And then our friends in Germany can expect a percentage of four point three three for the number or for the percentage of kids that have ADHD in that country.
Funderbar.
So what about adults, because as we now realize, adults have ADHD too, or they probably had it in childhood and it was just undiagnosed and they just didn't get diagnosed until later in life. That's typically what happens.
Well, my friends, let's take a break and find out those results right after this.
Definitely should.
Childhood each other?
Y s K. Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia. How about the one on border like disorder that are nder border that one before, but it was so nice I learned this.
Why everybody listen, all right?
What a cliffhanger that was our adult listeners on the edges of their collective seat seats seat collective seat.
Yeah, collective, yeah, because it's collective, collective soul.
Collective soul. That's a good one.
The rate of the condition into adulthood is all over the map. Some you might look at one thing that says about five percent, because you know, that's kind of what it is for kids, ish, and then you might read something else that said, now like seventy five percent adults have it. It's really really startling when you start looking into this as an adult. There was a study from twenty twenty one that found that it can fluctuate over time, and you know, it's kind of what I was talking about being on a spectrum. But about nine percent of those diagnosed as kids, they said, had quote unquot fully recovered in young adulthood. So I don't know if what that means though that that like our systems in place such that they've learned to manage it.
Yeah, that's the weird thing is there's no known cure for ADHD. All of the stuff that we use for is just managing it. But I think one of the reasons also that they were like it's just a childhood disorder that you outgrow is because some people actually do so.
You actually can way, so that maybe the nine percent or part of that nine percent.
I guess, But to pull one of your old old school wards and it seems shinky to me, like I don't understand how. Yeah, I don't understand how you could outgrow something that arises from your brain being literally different than other people's brains. Yeah, I don't get it. But maybe we just don't don't understand it quite yet. But it is true. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but for the most part, it does seem like if you have ADHD as a kid, you have it as an adult as well.
Yeah, and if you're in a adult with ADHD, you're probably seeing it play out with organization and focus, you know a lot of times with your job, but in just in your life as well, because it's always there. You might have some pretty severe mood swings. You might be a procrastinator a lot of times, you're misdiagnosed because it might make you really anxious. So there's like, now you have anxiety or it might really bum you out with these mood swings, and they might say, oh, you're just depressed. All of that could just be ADHD or a kill morbidity.
Yeah, and we'll talk about cole morbidities in a second. I got it. But with adults, you know, again, the adults don't get up in meetings and run around the table and they're like, just go ahead, I'm listening, you know. Instead great, they're just going to sit there and just you know, use all of their energy to not do that, and then also to try to focus on what's being said. And then girls with ADHD, Chuck, tend to fall through the cracks much more frequently for a couple of reasons, but the main one that I saw is that girls are so expected to be like demure and quiet and self possessed that girls learn to mask their symptoms earlier than boys do, who can get away with being more rambunctious than girls can, so it goes undetected. And then finally when they grow up and have a family, there's like I can't there's too many plates, I can't do this. I'm just exhausted and I'm not doing any of this the way that I'm supposed to be. And they'll usually get diagnosed with depression and then anxiety or something like that, but if they find the right doctor, they'll be properly diagnosed as ADHD.
For sure.
You mentioned comorbidities. Autism is a very interesting one. Thirty to eighty percent of people with autism spectrum disorder are also diagnosed with ADHD. In about twenty to fifty percent of people with ADHD also have autism spectrum disorder.
And you're just like, why aren't they the same percentages? But it turns out that ADHD is actually more common than autism, so that, yeah, is solved.
For sure, and there's a lot of overlap there.
I think before twenty thirteen with the updated criteria in the DSM five, they thought that was like a mutually exclusive thing, and some people this is much the minority for sure, but there are some researchers that do think it's just sort of a single condition manifesting in a couple of different ways. But most researchers don't think that. They think it's like, you know, two separate things that live alongside one another a lot of times.
Right, And Chuck, I just I just realized, I don't know if we've shouted out Livia this whole time yet for helping us out with this one. But she did a great job.
She did a great job. And before I forget the other.
Thing, as far as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder is, you're more likely to just do better if you have one or the other than if you have both. That may feel intuitive, but I think it was you know, Bear saying.
Did I interrupt and interject that Livia thing.
No, it's fine.
Depression is another one, Chuck. I think kids with are people with ADHD are five times likelier to have depression than neurotypical peers, and they're not exactly sure why. A lot of people are like, well, it's obvious. I mean, like, it can be a really hard life to have ADHD, especially when it's undiagnosed and untreated, so of course people have depression. Other people are like, no, we're talking about actually like clinical, like brain based depression. It's possible that there's actually they share similar roots in the structure of the brain, and that might account for it that there's a lot of overlap physically between depression and ADHD.
Yeah, for sure.
And about forty percent of kids, and I think we touched on this a little bit in Part one, also have anxiety, which just makes it all tougher to deal with because it kind of feeds on itself. Thirty to fifty percent of kids with ADHD fit the criteria for a couple of other conditions, one called oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder, which we should maybe cover.
We could probably cover both of those in one episode at some.
Point, we should. Man One of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen in my life was on a plane and this kid was just kicking the back of my chair and on stop hard. And I turned around to you, like, what the heck's going on?
You said, don't Josh, no, right, And.
The parents were there with them, and they just gave me a look like what do you want us to do? We can't do anything. Yeah, And I've never seen two people look more tired and more defeated in my life. And their kid was probably only three or four, and it was just like, like I still today, I just feel so bad for those people because that's your kid, and like there's not a lot of understanding or treatment with that, and certainly not out in the general public, who turns around like you know, what are you doing? Why is your kid doing that?
Yeah?
And in the old days, like you would tie your kid to a plane seat or something a barbaric like.
That, yeah, which I'm sure helps a lot.
All right, So.
If you don't have ADHD, like me, It helps you grow older because you do get a little wiser and you do gain empathy, hopefully at least I have. Yeah, so it's hard to put yourself in someone's shoes until you are close to someone with ADHD and then it, like I said, it really benefit it's everyone you can if you can lead with empathy and understanding, like in your case with that kid even and that's coming from someone with ad ADHD recognizing maybe this behavior and a kid. But it can be hard if you don't have it to understand this stuff.
Yeah, So people like low empathy generally with people walking around who know about autism or probably like yeah, that's that's that has to do with autism. Turns out it's a huge symptom with ADHD too, and probably the exact same stuff applies to people with autism. But with ADHD, it's not that you don't care, you couldn't care less or whatever. You do care. You just either lack the ability to, like you said, put yourself in that person's situation, so your empathy can be triggered, or you lack emotional empathy, which is where you're like, oh man, that's terrible that that happened to you, but I'm not feeling empathy, Like I don't feel it. That's the difference. They're not sure how many people with ADHD have low empathy and exactly how it works, but it is a huge problem because again, like they're if you can't if you can't empathize with people, that's a basic human thing, and that will really cut down on the number of connections you have with people. Because if somebody's telling you something and they've just you know, inserted that pop like the end of it, and like this is what happened, and you're like, oh uh, like you're just taking their words at face value and you're losing the emotional component. It's missing, it's not landing on you. And they're just like, well, what is wrong with you?
What?
Like you did you not hear what I just said? And you can stop and think about it and be like, oh, yeah, that's crazy, but like in the moment, it's not, it's not there.
Yeah, yeah, totally another And this is something I never knew anything about until we started researching this, but false memory or falty memory can.
Be issue if you have ADHD.
And it's not just well I just don't remember things as they really were.
It can literally be like a false memory.
They've done tests with kids and they showed that kids with ADHD are much more likely to remember things that weren't on a list. And this is sort of the key here. Not only that, but be really emphatic that those memories were correct and trying to defend those memories. And that can be not only a frustration, but a real challenge, especially as you get into adulthood to sort of be able to construct your autobiography of who you are, because that's all based on your memories.
Yeah, because if you can accept that you have false memories and that you embellish stuff that you don't remember inadvertently you don't know that you're doing this, you start to question all of your memories, like which ones are true, which ones are made up. That's a huge problem individually, but also as far as relationships go. You're accidentally inadvertently gaslighting the people that you're like, no, that totally didn't happen, or you said this, I didn't say that. And to get to a point where you can trust the other person's version of events what you're doing, you're having to disavow your own version of reality and rely on somebody else's version of reality. And that's probably the hardest mental thing a person can do in their life, is abandoned, like just like not trust their view of reality and be like, okay, I trust your version instead. It's one of the hardest things you could possibly ever do. And that's what it requires to not accidentally gaslight people and not get arguments all the time because your memories are false.
Yeah, and I imagine you know, you keep kind of going back to this. How so much of this can lead to a lack of ability to connect with people in different ways. I imagine when you find your person or your person's in your life, it may be maybe a smaller number than it would have been otherwise, but I'm I would think that maybe some of those connections, because so much trust is involved, can be even deeper sometimes.
Yeah. Oh, for sure, if you can find somebody that you feel like you can be yourself around and just let your guard down and they accept you as you actually are, you hang on to those people for sure. And that's true whether you have ADHD or autism. For sure, Like if that's how whenever you find those people. But it's like you said, they're going to be much fewer and farther between because you're lacking that initial easiness of like, oh I like you, Oh I like you too, Let's start hanging out more and cultivate a friendship naturally without even thinking about it. Each relationship is a lot of work for people with ADHD. So yeah, of course you're going to have fewer of them.
Yeah, for sure.
You and these are you know, we're kind of going through just sort of like what it's like to live with it. So some of these our downers, but you are more I believe, twice as likely to be injured in life if you have ADHD, which sounds kind of weird, but it makes sense. You know, if you're distractive or distracted, or if you're impulsive, if you take more risks, that's going to lead to more injury in life. There's also this very very strange thing called the ADHD sway, where it's a literal physical imbalance, a postural imbalance that's associated with ADHD, which could be a short stuff on its own, maybe.
I think so you have found this hilarious video I think on Instagram of somebody saying, like, what it's like walking next to somebody with ADHD. And because the ADHD person will accidentally walk in front of you or walk like kind of sway too close to you or something like that, you end up the guy who's like walking along next to this girl who's talking to him, and like he ends up having to like climb over like a jungle. It ends up having to walk through a bush and like all this all this stuff, and the person with ADHD is totally oblivious that all this is going on. But it's because of that that ADHD sway. They don't as far as I know, no one knows exactly what it is, but they think it could have something to do with the differences in brain structure, has something to do with the balance as well, because it's in the brain as well as in the ears.
Fascinating. All right, we're in.
The act one, two, three, four, five, We're headed toward the act six.
Wow, is this the one where the guns go off?
Oh?
I hope not.
So we're headed toward act six and we will talk more about the destruction of masking behaviors right after this.
Definitely large chrysk.
Lately, I've been learning some stop about in.
Volume.
How about the one on border like disorder orner before but it was so nicety e.
Body listen.
Stop.
So Chuck, you promised that we're going to talk about masking. So I feel like my back's against the wall. I have to start talking about masking, which I will right now.
Okay, okay, are you masking right now?
Sure?
Yeah?
I think at all times people with ADHD mask to varying degrees. For sure. I feel very comfortable on the episode.
But you know, yeah, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was kind of just joking. What is masking? Let me ask you.
That masking is camouflaging your symptoms to blend in better.
And how bad can that get? And how bad is that for somebody?
In some ways it's necessary and needed just to navigate the world just to blend in and not to blend in like don't look at me, but to seem but to be able to interact with people in levels that they're not like, huh, what's wrong with you? They're paying attention instead to what you're saying or you know, the value that you have. Yeah, you have to if you have ADHD and autism. A lot of neurotypical disorders, if not all of them require you to mask to be able to just kind of live in the world. Right, So in that sense, it stinks. And there's a lot of I think you kind of mentioned it either earlier in Part one. Some employers are starting to create more neurodiverse, inclusive workplaces where it's just like, just be yourself. But traditionally, if you want to just make it in the world, you have to mask to some degree, right, And so in that sense that's okay, or at the very least that's not the most insidious version of masking. The problem with that is that starts to carry over throughout other parts of your life, and you find that you eventually develop a version of yourself that you assume other people would prefer to be around, and in a lot of cases you're probably correct. And so in addition to, you know, all of the exhaustingness that it keeps from not you know, getting up and running around the conference table during a meeting and being like, now go ahead, I'm just keep going, I'm listening you. You. Also, your self esteem takes a real nose dive because what you're training yourself is that your you is not good enough. You have to you have to hide yourself for people to accept you or value you. That's the most insidious part of masking.
Yeah, I can't imagine that to even It can get so bad where you lose your sense of self because you're masking so much. Obviously, something like this can manifest in bad ways. Swings, anger, those are symptoms that can be associated with ADHD because of the masking, and you know, regulating those mood swings. Being unable to to be sort of generally in a stable emotional state can be very, very challenging, and that takes a lot of energy. And that's part of the fatigue that can come along with ADHD is you're if you're always on or playing a role that you think you should play to fit into work or life for the world, it's got to be exhausting.
It is.
So you're more irritable, So you're more prone to like get mad at somebody who cut you off in traffic, whereas like a neurotypical person might be like, huh, that guy's having a bad day, or what a jerk or something like that. You know, Yeah, you add all this stuff together, and research consistently shows that people with ADHD have lower self esteem and lower self compassion too than neurotypical people. And that's yeah again, like I said, it's a really insidious part of ADHD and just being neurodiverse in general. Again, it's not just ADHD people who have to mask. Anybody who isn't neurotypical will feel like they have to mask at least in some situations unless they make a conscious decision not to do that. It's almost like resisting an impulse and just being like, I am going to be me in every situation, and to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure that that's possible.
Yeah, and resisting impulses one of the challenges anyway.
Right, Yeah, exactly, good point.
So you know, as far as families go, we already mentioned that that can you know, family members maybe on eggshells. There have been studies that have shown that you may have a lower parental warmth and especially maternal warmth toward a kid with ADHD, which is super sad, more stress, more depression they found among among mothers especially, And if you have like one neurodiverse child, one kid with ADHD, and two or three other kids or just one other kid who is neurotypical, that can be really challenging for everybody, including the neurotypical kid. And they have found adults with ADHD have about a twice as likely a chance of getting divorced as a neurotypical couple.
Right, So, yeah, there's a lot of challenges just in living everyday life at home, even not even just at work or at the mall or something like that. There's some other real bummer downsides to having ADHD. As a population, you're very susceptible to addiction because again, like these things flood your brain with dopamine, so you learn to do those over and over and over again. So it's really easy to get addicted to just about anything if you have ADHD. There's a study of people who were in treatment in the US. I can't remember when it was conducted, but they found a quarter of them had ADHD and another quarter. Between twenty four percent and sixty two percent of homeless people in the US were found to have ADHD despite again only maybe three point one percent of adults globally having the disorder, so they're disproportionately represented in those.
Yeah, for surations. So here's the good news, everybody.
We've been through five acts and a third of some good things, some bad things, and real challenges.
We cried, we laughed, we cried.
For sure, it's a very, in fact, one of the most highly treatable conditions or disorder.
I don't even like saying disorder, you know.
But I guess that's how they list it that you can have. There are a few things you can do treatment wise. There is coaching, there's therapy, and there's medication. You may try one of these things, you might try two, you might try all three. As an individual or a parent, if you're helping your kid through the situation.
Well that's the most effective usually is all three of those.
Yeah, I mean, medication can be very effective.
As of twenty sixteen, sixty two percent of kids in the US that are diagnosed were on medication, thirty percent of those were only on medication, thirty two percent were on medication and behavioral treatment, and fifteen percent shunned the medication and just did behavioral treatment.
And that's kind of understandable for a parent to make a decision, and that many parents to make the decision like I don't want to put my kid on speed. Yeah, because again, like central nervous system stimulants are the go to drug for treating ADHD because it really really works. It's like flip a light switch, I understand, where like just even from the first dose, you're like, oh, this is what it feels like to be neurotypical. And one of those stimulants that is prescribed one type adderall vivance straterra, they are literal amphetamines. So the idea of putting your kid on amphetamines really does not sit right with a lot of parents, even though the state of understanding the consensus in the professional ADHD community, despite a lot of non professionals giving contrary advice for information, Yeah, study after study has shown that kids on stimulants for ADHD treatment do not get addicted to those stimulants, Like it just doesn't happen. And then it also doesn't set them up for increased addictions later in life, and it may actually decrease. Some studies of show the proneness to addiction of other stuff later in life even too. And I don't want to be just like a lackey for psychostimulants as ADHD treatment. There's a lot of different info out there, but from what I could tell when I researched it for this. The professional community generally agrees they are not harmful to be on, even long term.
Yeah, there are a couple of kinds. There's immediate release medicines that's sort of as needed, like a maybe up to four hour effective time window. You may crash really hard after that or get really tired or depressed after that. There are extended release medications that's sort of the morning pill that can last all day. Sometimes sometimes it's six hours, sometimes it's up to sixteen. Sometimes people tag team those take that pill in the morning and then either as needed or in the afternoon or evening one of the immediate release medicines. And you have to get screened, you know, for something like this. They're going to do like a cardiovascular screen for health risks and stuff like that. But it's sort of I believe they haven't found link to cardiovascular disease, right, But didn't they there was something about the heart you found that was contrary to that, right.
Yeah. There's a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that I think from like twenty twenty three that was like, actually, we studied some dudes in Sweden, and it seems like they were at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease from long term psychostimulant use for ADHD. So again it's possible that we just don't know enough or people haven't been on it long enough. But again, these things were developed in the fifties and kids have been on them since the seventies eighties at the latest when they started putting them on well effectively speed to treat this stuff. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of research that suggests they are harmful.
Right, if you don't respond well of those, if the side effects are no good, there are other medicines that you can take that are not stimulants alpha antagonists sometimes sometimes like they found that some medications to treat high blood blood pressure like clonidine, have you know, improved ADHD symptoms. So you know, talk to your doctor if this is something you're interested in, and you know, just we're not medical professionals, so you know, speak, speak to your doctor and like really do some research and dig in. It's you know, putting your kid or your adult self on a on any kind of medication, it's not something to take lightly. So just you know, really really dig in there and ask questions.
For sure, and no no shade on you if you're a parent, that's like, I don't care what you say. I'm not putting my kid on speed for sure, totally totally get that. Like I respect anybody's to about that, because it doesn't mean that you don't care about your kid. I respect anybody's decision about stuff like that.
Of course.
So I said that the most effective I guess approach to treating ADHD is not just medication, but also different types of therapy and then also some other interventions like exercise and nutrition, and when you put all that together, it's much easier to treat ADHD symptoms. And one of the first things, especially with kids with ADHD, is family training, where you teach the family how to teach the kid how to act and behave like what's expected of them, what the consequences are, and not just the kid, the whole family is supposed to fully understand and be very clear on all of the house rules and the structure of the family. And I guess so the younger kids can effectively tell on the kid with ADHD when he misbehaves or she does. And I saw the authoritative parenting type is the most effective, which was described as high control with high warmth and high support. Oh interesting, but also that means okay, so high warmth, right, does that mean that some parents make a decision to not be warm to their kids, like they think that that's the best way to raise kids?
Well, I mean, sadly, sure there are all kinds of parents, but I feel like that probably high warmth probably means extra warmth, like being really attuned to providing that extra warmth would be my.
Guests on fire, like a furnace of a parent.
You mentioned exercise.
Of course, that's good for everybody when it comes to mood regulation and your brain functioning at its highest. But for sure, if you have ADHD, it can increase dopamine, it can improve your executive functioning. If you have a lot of pen of energy, especially if you're a kid, you know, with hyperactivity, exercise can really can really help for sure.
Coaching is another one too, this therapy obviously, but coaching is huge in the ADHD community because you're not like, Okay, what's wrong with you, Let's figure out all your traumas and stuff like that. It's like, okay, you're having trouble with time management, Let's figure out what works for you for getting better at time management. It's a it's a legitimate way to approach ADHD symptoms. So are productive strategies where that will probably also come out of coaching sessions. And one thing that you'll learn very early on is phone calendars that are easily accessed, that you can put reminders on all the time, alarms on your phone, anything that can remind you can become like second nature to use it to really help you navigate ADHD symptoms and remember important stuff.
Systems, baby, that's the key, that's right, Getting systems in place ADHD or not. Systems are just the older I get, the more I realize it. If you don't have a system in place, then you're just you're just flailing.
You know. You got to get a system. They did, you know, outcomes are pretty good.
There was a survey This is a little bit old, but it's you know, I think it's probably still pretty pretty on par. But twenty twenty twenty twelve, twenty twelve survey of three hundred and fifty one English language studies, So I guess this is like a meta analysis of long term outcomes of people with ADHD found that seventy two percent of people treated had improved outcomes when it comes to everything from self esteem to fewer accidents behind the wheel, less rates of addiction, anti social behavior, increased employment, increased academic success. So seventy two percent if you are treated, that's that's great, that's really successful.
Yeah, there's a lot of good resources too for ADHD. There's a researcher named Melissa Orlov. She holds marriage seminars that really kind of paint ADHD in an almost exclusively positive light. And if you were a couple that's tried like traditional marriage counseling, you've been like, this isn't working. It's because that stuff's geared toward neurotic typical people. Hers is geared toward neurodiverse people. Melissa Orlov is very frequently criticized as being overly positive about ADHD. There's a researcher named Gina Perla who came out with a much more balanced look. It seems like an ADHD called is it You Me or adult ADHD, which is a yeah. And then Russell Barkley has written a lot of books too for kids and parents and adults, and he was the president of the American Psychological Association for a while, so he's no slouch no, And again, be very wary of who you're listening to on social media. But there are psychiatrists who specialize in ADHD who post a lot on social media. And Kim be really helpful on Instagram too that I wanted to shout out Perry Nichols mandanis it's great. And then the psych doctor Md. Sasha Hamdani, she has ADHD yourself and she wrote a book called Self Care for People with ADHD.
All great resources, and you know what, let's skip listener email all together and just encourage people to support one another, dig into those resources, try and lead with empathy and understanding.
You get much further in life. And rate and review our show.
Well put Chuck very nice. In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us. You can send us that email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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