<p>Some comments make me think many don’t know the true meaning of attention deficit, plus or minus the hyperactivity. My brother was on Ritalin in the 1960’s. Son’s first grade teacher was concerned about him having ADD (no H) so we let him be tested by the school psychologist for this- testing included IQ testing as it had for his early entrance to kindergarten the year before. It turns out he was still gifted. Some of the same behaviors appear in both. I was involved in GT education as a parent and our school district evolved its program- including a list to help teachers differentiate between giftedness and ADD. Boredom in a child can appear as attention deficit, especially as the classroom can be so understimulating for the gifted.</p>
<p>Multitasking isn’t the same. I can believe we are teaching a generation to fragment their attention and expect small information bites with current use of technology. A key is- can these people spend long periods of time at an activity they are interested in? My son could, but with my family history and not being in the classroom I let the school pursue this (at taxpayer, not my expense). I also got a packet of information from our pediatrician that I read (and later returned). Some kids are appropriately diagnosed with AD(H)D and helped with medication while many are just plain underserved by our education system in meeting different learning styles.</p>
<p>I believe “Shrinkwrap” is a psychiatrist- call name seems consistent. I’m a physician, but an entirely different specialty.</p>
<p>ps- disclosure, I didn’t read any of the articles listed.</p>
<p>wis75 – I agree with your points of the gifted/ADHD overlap of visible symptoms. I neglected my son’s ADHD (inattentive) for years because I blamed it on his gifted status. I did the kid no favors. I sank a boatload of money into various tests, psychologists and doctors before finally having him medicated. He does not like the medication. We’ve tried a few different kinds. </p>
<p>eastcoascrazy - I appear ADD, but I know it is multi-tasking craze & cubicle life. Lots of noise in my work environment. Expected to answer phones & e-mails immediately while also working on projects and math calcs that require detail-orientation. Add to that 3 kids and all their schedules include, I know I’d love to slow things down. Unfortunately, my industry and my boss do not agree.</p>
<p>And NEVER bash my beloved Sesame Street. I will never be convinced Cookie Monster eats vegetables or B & E are life partners. I still have issues with Snuff. being seen by all.</p>
<p>I read an article a while back about how multi tasking and focusing take place in the same area of the brain. Fast paced movements from cartoons/tv, video games, texting, etc enhance your ability to multi task. When your multi task skill is honed, your focusing skill is reduced…interesting theory.</p>
<p>“Shrinkrap: I am very interested to know what you think about this? You are a psychiatrist?”</p>
<p>Yes. Most days I can see the viewpoint of each of the “debaters” I linked. </p>
<p>Right now I am at the joint meeting of the Canadian and Amercian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and we’ve been warned there is a big “expose” due out very soon, on 20/20, as well as a “Government Accountability Office” report in the works. Today t seems so much bigger than ADHD. Sigh… “It’s complicated”.</p>
<p>Most of us are the descendants of people who made the decision to uproot themselves and move to a distant part of the world – and perhaps such people are genetically atypical.</p>
<p>However, African Americans don’t fit this pattern. Their ancestors did not come here voluntarily. And Native Americans are not the descendants of immigrants. </p>
<p>Is the prevalence of ADHD lower in those two groups of Americans than in the rest of the U.S. population?</p>
<p>This immigrant theory makes a lot of sense to me for the reasons already given above. My brother-in-law left his home country in South America, despite being highly successful and economically stable there, to come to North America like 3 of his siblings (2 of which came because they married Americans they had met in South America, and 1 who came because was a vagabond). My BIL is a very restless person, and simply wondered if maybe he could do even better here. Knowing the job market in his field here from personal experience, my husband tried to discourage him. Gave him all kinds of facts. BIL didn’t listen and has spent years unemployed and now underemployed. Also, our capitalistic economic system is better-suited to certain personality types who are high energy and not risk-averse.</p>
<p>I think there are a lot of Americans that just want to lable everything. Other people have the same challenges, they just move on with their lives. Americans want to fix everything and the first step is to identify the problem. So someone comes up with a name and we are off to the races.</p>
<p>I think there are so many more important qualities that can determine whether a person decides to emigrate–ambition, curiosity, sense of adventure, emotional detachment and even irritability (if a person is always unhappy in his environment he might seek to get away) that it is unlikely there is a correlation with ADHD.</p>
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<p>I am a terrible multi-tasker, I can’t listen to the radio and cook properly at the same time. And I have very good concentration for tasks I’m interested in. But I am quite easily distracted by outside thoughts during conversations and when doing routine tasks–absentmindedness or ADD? I don’t know but definitely not related to multi-tasking.</p>
<p>As far as I know, the incidence of ADHD among blacks (not sure about specifically African Americans here involuntarily) is not lower. Some would say the incidence is higher, perhaps due to over diagnosis of black males in the classroom. It depends on how you collect the data.The rate of treatment with medication among blacks is dramatically lower, and not completely explained by income. This is considered quite intriuguing. The rate of treatment is highest among white males. </p>
<p>With regard to infants on medication, I can’t wrap my head around that either. I have never seen that, and I see a lot of kids in foster care.</p>
<p>Americans are much more prone to take drugs for anything. They all have side effects. Then side effects are treated with the next drug…and so forth. It is much better not to take drugs as much as possible… I have pitched many drugs until I realize to be carefull about doc’s visits. They are primarily push drugs on you. It is your body, treat it with respect, do not expect the same degree of respect from others, they have different goals.</p>
<p>I always hear this but have just never experienced it myself. I particularly have read so much about how doctors hand out narcs like candy just to shut their patients up. I have had serious back and neck problems for over 30 years, but have never even once been offered a narcotic pain prescription. I haven’t asked for one either. I’ve had many primary physicians, but was never encouraged to take any drug whatsoever until my blood pressure measured 194/100, 174/90, and 165/90 on three separate occasions. So I now take a low dose blood pressure med that keeps me at 120’s/70’s and lower. It really wasn’t much of an option since diet, exercise, and maintaining a normal weight has not helped at all. Maybe I’ve just chosen well when it comes to doctors.</p>
<p>“one in 20 kids in US diagnosed? at what point is ADHD a kind of normal?”</p>
<p>I believe at LEAST one in 20 is obese, and maybe one in 20 wears glasses.I bet one in twent adults has high blood pressure.</p>
<p>But I agree that the idea of “spectrum” diagnosis, ( and I think there is a “spectrum” of impairment from one community to the other) does make one question what is NOT “normal”. As with obesity and eyesight, I think of it in terms of increasing risk of a negative outcome. </p>
<p>With regard to environmental influences on the prevalence of ADHD, I certainly believe this is true prenataly, but otherwise environmental influences on " true" ADHD are probably relatively rare. Ingesting lead paint for example, causes what LOOKS like ADHD, but I don’t consider that “true” ADHD.</p>
<p>I believe the treatment of lead poisoning is removal of the lead, not stimulants. It’s possible those chernobyl kids respond well to stimulants, but in my experience, things that look like ADHD but aren’t, don’t respond predictably to stimulants. But we could probably ALL benefit from the psychosocial interventions.</p>