“Everyone Has ADHD” — And Other Insulting Things People Say To ADHD Patients
Why, In This Day And Age, Do ADHD Patients Face A Struggle To Prove That Our Diagnoses Are Even Real?
ADHD: no, “everybody” doesn’t have it. Even “just a little.” Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels
Browsing through a social media feed the other day, I came across a post by an “influencer” whom I hitherto respected.
I try not to throw people under the bus on the basis of one stupid remark — so I won’t go so far as to say that I no longer respect this individual — but the poster provided a strong wake-up call that society’s understanding of ADHD is far less evolved and empathetic than I had previously assumed it to be.
The poster was talking about the difficulties inherent in making it through any long ream of text.
He suspected — thinking out loud — that the internet had a lot to do with that.
It’s gotten us accustomed to browsing quickly through snippets of information, he reasoned.
And then he threw in a non-sequitur: or maybe I just have ADHD.
In response to a question about that throaway comment, he threw in something else: you know, we all have it these days.
I checked for pushback. There was none forthcoming. And before I could get angry or felt compelled to start an internet flame war, I closed the tab.
Are We Actually Arguing About The Fact That ADHD Is Real!?
Today, something about ADHD popped through another social feed.
And it flung my mind back to the conversation.
Had that actually happened?
Had I just witnessed somebody affirm — to other educated adults — that ADHD isn’t even a real condition? That “everybody” has it — at least to a mild extent? And had I just witnessed as everybody who read that post stood there in silence, apparently agreeing with what had been posted. Yes, I actually had.
My ADHD Diagnosis Story
Cross-posted from Twitter, lightly redacted, and expanded: medium.com
Will Sharing Your ADHD Diagnosis Destroy Your Professional Reputation?
Those thinking about sharing an ADHD diagnosis–particularly the self-employed — often worry about the effect it will… medium.com
And then I thought what a proper response to that should be.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds to track down resources designed to highlight the pervasive and damaging nature of this societal trope from ADHD advocacy organizations. But that felt a little too JADE-like to me (from another context, but a rule that I have found incredibly useful and widely applicable).
We can point, for instance, to the fact that the diagnostic process for ADHD is pretty tightly controlled depending on where you live in the world. ADHD medications are powerful and controlled substances. Even after you’ve been diagnosed, maintaining access to them can be tricky.
In Israel, I have to complete paperwork every single time I pick up a prescription — which is typically once a month. When I recently needed to get more in order to keep my supply going while in the US, the pharmacy needed to apply for a special permit from the Health Ministry. I needed to submit my passport, plane ticket, and prescription (the same one I’ve presented countless times).
When my doctor decided to increase my Vyvanse dosage during the middle of the month, the only means for me to pick up the new script was to physically return the weaker tablets. I forgot about the fact that I had left one in a car which I keep as an emergency backup (note: for obvious reasons, probably a bad idea). The pharmacist counted and asked me why one was missing. I had to go back and fetch it. Only then could I get the stronger dosage.
I can talk, as well, about brain scans.
About how the most advanced medical imaging that society has at its disposal has proven that the brains of studied diagnosed ADHD subjects tend to look functionally different than those of neurotypicals — and that those differences might be what’s at the root of the fact that brains of ADHDers have a hard time using the dopamine that their brain produces (before I butcher the science any further, I’ll stop myself here).
From what I have learned and understand about the condition, it seems that ADHD is more a neurological than psychiatric condition — although any condition affecting the locus of our thoughts and feelings is strongly liable to result in both manifestations.
About how — despite ADHD being a complicated condition with subtypes and variable presentations — the medical community does the best possible job that it can at helping us to live with the limitations that it poses.
Incidences are well-known.
Treatment approaches are standardized.
Diagnosis — for adults — tends to be a complicated and sometimes unfortunately protracted affair.
We know what factors increase the likelihood of an ADHD diagnosis. So why are laypeople still denying the fact that the condition exists?
ADHD’s Stigma Is More Than Just A Slight
But here’s what really gets me worked up when people make that throaway stupid comment about “everybody” having ADHD — typically qualified with “just a little” if the person making the remark realizes halfway through that he’s just universalized (and thereby denied) the existence of a very real health condition.
Sadly, the space for discussion that we’ve created around mental health conditions, as societies, is far from ideal.
Yes, even in this day and age that we commonly hold up as a model for how “evolved” we are and how much better we are than that ghastly time when we locked up the mentally infirm in asylums.
Stigma remains a problem.
Not just for ADHD but for just about any mental health condition ranging from anxiety to depression and bipolar disorder.
Every remark that implies that our everyday actions meet a diagnostic criteria, in a small way, delegitimizes the condition to which we compare our actions.
For if we all suffer from a condition, then we deny the fact that there may be a subset of humanity that suffers from the condition to an extent that requires some form of treatment.
If we keep our ears open, we’ll hear lots of these. Perhaps uttered by ourselves.
“Oh, I’m just a bit OCD about diary keeping. That’s why I lay out my calendar appointments like this.”
As somebody with more neuroticisms than I can keep count of, I totally get the intent behind remarks like this. But language is powerful, and often we are unaware of the subtleties in how it is perceived; and how different and more sensitives audiences (read: patient populations) may interpret our words.
What would I recommend doing instead? “Neurotic” or “finnicky” or “pedantic” would all be better substitutes that don’t draw an equivalence to a mental health condition that needs to be diagnosed by a mental health professional. None of those imply that the weird way you lay out your diary means that you’re suffering from the same condition that means that it takes somebody else two hours to leave the house because they need to wash their hands two hundred times in order to do so.
Unless you know for certain that you suffered from an actual panic attack — I’ve had a real one and they’re absolutely horrible — it’s better not to describe your minor freak-out upon learning of your credit card bill as “a panic attack.” “I got a shock,” is totally fine (ahem … I’ve been there recently). How about you were “taken aback” by the amount on the bill?
One of the useful things about the English language — something you don’t really appreciate until you compare it to a language with a smaller lexicon — is just how many words there are. There are synonyms and words that communicate fine degrees of nuance. It’s unlikely that you’re missing one. If not you can combine words that aren’t diagnoses into sentences.
Feel a little bit down after the weekend has reached its conclusion? You might be feeling a bit “sad.” But even though the distinction might seem slightly, it’s better than saying you’re depressed — which you could argue implies that you’re suffering from clinical depression.
Am I sounding high and mighty here? Probably just a little. Do I make these mistakes myself? Actually, yes. All the time. Not about ADHD. Because nobody needs me to convince me that it’s a real thing. But about other conditions. If you hear me making a slip up, please call me out on it.
We can all do better when it comes to attempting to understand the challenges that other people live with — even if we can’t fit them within the frame of reference through which we view the world.
hey may be totally beyond the pale of our lived experiences. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not real.
As a golden rule if you want to hold on to no other: don’t refer to a mental illness in the DSM unless you actually intend referring to that illness or a manifestation of it.
And certainly don’t pretend that what the medical profession has collectively determined to be a real thing is something that’s merely an exaggerated description of a condition that’s universalized among the human race.