The Forums › Forums › Emotional Journey › Stuck in Regret/Anger › Confused… › Re: Confused…
Hey Momma,
You have landed on a site that leans toward the “it’s a gift” theory of ADD. The best I can tell, this is a minority view among mental health professionals. The following paragraph is excerpted from an International Consensus Paper On ADHD published in the Child and Family Psychology Review (Vol. 5, No. 2) in June 2002. It was signed by over 80 internationally prominent clinicians and researchers:
“ADHD is not a benign disorder. For those it afflicts, ADHD can cause devastating problems. Follow-up studies of clinical samples suggest that sufferers are far more likely than normal people to drop out of school (32–40%), to rarely complete college (5–10%), to have few or no friends (50–70%), to underperform at work (70–80%), to engage in antisocial activities (40–50%), and to use tobacco or illicit drugs more than normal. Moreover, children growing up with ADHD are more likely to experience teen pregnancy (40%) and sexually transmitted diseases (16%), to speed excessively and have multiple car accidents, to experience depression (20–30%) and personality disorders (18–25%) as adults, and in hundreds of other ways mismanage and endanger their lives.
… ADHD should be depicted in the media as realistically and accurately as it is depicted in science—as a valid disorder having varied and substantial adverse impact on those who may suffer from it through no fault of their own or their parents and teachers.”
— http://www.russellbarkley.org/content/Consensus2002.pdf
ADDers do have talents. Some have extraordinary abilities. But it’s not at all clear to what extent any of these personal talents stem from Attention Deficit. What is clear is that ADD generally comes with a serious downside. IF ONLY it were just a racing mind.
Of course, Attention Deficit is what we here frequently refer to as a “spectrum” disorder—it comes in different flavors, from mildly annoying to brutally life-shattering. I have no experience with “mildly annoying.” Perhaps that does somehow have a defibrillating effect on the brain with few serious side effects. I do, however, have some experience with the latter. It is categorically a “disorder.”
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