Re: If ADHD describes the symptoms, are we all suffering from the same thing?

[Anonymous]

I really don’t know whether to consider ADHD as a set of different disorders, or different presentaions of the same disorder. If you have worked with dementia patients, you will realise that even the same type of dementia in the same part of the brain will affect each person differently. And a lot depends on personality. Each person, in addition to having an individual genetic make up, also develops different neural pathways to another person as they develop and grow, which could account for the different presentation of disorders of the brain – because even other psychiatric disorders have multiple presentations. But so do other injuries and illnesses. One person may be screaming in pain from a fracture identical to that in a person who is sitting calmly without flinching. Our individual genetic make up results in all sorts of differences in disease/disorder symptoms. It could be enough to explain why ADHD presents in so many different ways. There still seems to be a common thread, or else why would we feel such a sense of “coming home” when we read the threads here.

Conversely I could argue that ADHD could be similar to dementia in that there are possibly multiple causes, as well as areas of the brain affected. If you have worked with patients with dementia, you soon learn to pick what sort of dementia a person has (vascular, Alzheimer’s, Korsakoff’s, multi infarct) and where in the brain it affects (frontal lobe, temporal lobe, whole brain). I could suggest that ADHD may be similar in that there are several causes (probably different genes for the most part, as well as maybe developmental hiccups, and environmental factors), as well as several parts of the “ADHD part” of the brain (so those responsible for different executive function deficits), and this accounts for the differences – hyperactivity vs lethargy, hyperfocus vs procrastination.

Admittedly, if you look at Dr Barkley’s videos on Youtube, he does a good job of explaining some of these symptoms and looking at them as having the same roots, despite outward differences. Such as hyperfocus and procrastination both being forms of perseveration (repetitive thought/movement) – so a person with either is “stuck in a loop”, either of activity or inactivity, and unable to break free. The brain’s choice of activity vs inactivity could be an individual difference due to a person’s personality (introverted vs extroverted, or similar) but the perseveration of hyperfocus and procrastination is an ADHD symptom.

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