“ADHD is on a spectrum,” explains Bernhardt.
ADD IN ADULTS HOW TO
However in adulthood, hyperactivity may be far less noticeable than in children, largely because adults have learned how to control their movement.Īs with children, adult ADHD can range from mild to more severe. The other hallmarks are hyperactivity and impulsive speech or behaviours. “People with ADHD often aren’t able to prioritize what they need to focus on or to ignore what they need to shut out,” says Heidi Bernhardt, a registered nurse and the director of the Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada (CADDAC). The key symptom of ADHD is attention disregulation – not being able to focus adequately, and sometimes over-focussing. But adults with ADHD face numerous barriers in accessing a diagnosis and treatment – not the least of which is that the first-line treatment is not publicly available to adults in many provinces. While the medical community once thought kids outgrew ADHD, it’s now believed more than half of children with ADHD will continue to struggle with the disorder as adults, according to Doron Almagor, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and head of the Possibilities Clinic in Toronto.
“What if this were discovered at an earlier age?” he wonders. But he believes his career has suffered due to the delay in diagnosis. He takes a long-acting stimulant medication and talks to his psychiatrist to improve his symptoms. “I always had that traditional misconception that ADHD means hyper kids,” he jokes.īut Le Blanc is among an estimated 4% of adults who have ADHD. His family doctor referred him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with ADHD, based on standardized tests and interviews over a couple of sessions. He did some research online, and took a test. Then, in his late 40s, he heard someone mention symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that he related to. He was fired from a couple of his jobs and quit others, finding he couldn’t stick with jobs that didn’t fully engage him. Daily tasks, like paying bills or responding to an important work email, were inexplicably difficult. “I could tell people what to do, but I couldn’t do it,” he says. Russ Le Blanc has been on syndicated radio shows, worked in ad agencies and even performed as a motivational speaker.
0 kommentar(er)
