Parental mental illness lead to choice of ADD by child?

[Anonymous]

Based on my report to my therapist, she believes that my mother has borderline personality disorder (Stop Walking on Eggshells) and my father has narcissism and obsessive compulsive disorder and is bipolar.

Needless to say, interacting with my parents can be a chaotic, risky event.

As my behavioral role model, I used to behave like my mother. I copy some of my father’s OCD.

I wonder whether my ADD is a reactionary coping device to the mentally ill adults I grew up with.

Anyone share this speculation?

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[undetermined]

It is interesting what a different perspective can bring…I wonder if my father’s OCD and my mother’s depression are the result of undiagnosed and untreated ADD?

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[Patte Rosebank]

By even considering the notion that your ADD is a choice, you set yourself up for blaming yourself for your mistakes and struggles. Which makes as much sense as Helen Keller blaming herself for being unable to see or hear.

ADD is NOT a choice. Nor is any other mental condition. If it were a matter of choice, there wouldn’t be any people with mental conditions, because those conditions make life so difficult.

The way your brain functions is determined by your genetics, or (much more rarely) by a brain injury.

If one or both of your parents (or other close blood relatives) have a certain mental condition, you have an increased risk of having the same condition. In other words, your behaviours are similar to your parents’ behaviours because you inherited their genetic tendency to those conditions, NOT because you choose to behave that way.

Also, ADD often brings along co-morbidities like OCD, depression, and anxiety. This is because, if you have to struggle to do things that everyone else finds so easy, and you’re always (justifiably) afraid of screwing up, you’d be pretty anxious and depressed about it, too!

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