alt Hacker NewsAs a person with severe ADHD, who has never taken any medication, I find this study troubling. It uses statistical correlation to indicate causation.
People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society. At the same time, the effects of ADHD medication numb their responses and emotions to what seems outwardly stable and normal but deep inside it is an inhibitor of development.
So excuse me for saying so, but I don’t buy into the conclusions of this study at all.
Replies
> with severe ADHD, who has never taken any medication
> going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
1. How could you know ADHD medication numb their responses if you've never taken meds?
2. I hope you have the live you deserve. You seem like a happy person.
Well, you've made some incorrect assumptions. You seem to think yourself verysmart, so you should understand a snap judgement like this is worth very little. You don't need psychological treatment alongside it and the results are pretty obvious and immediate. Try it or don't, but I have trouble seeing the value in your narrow and uninformed opinion.
The other problem with the study is that it does not take income into consideration. This is my largest pet peeve with so many studies, they're basically ignoring a major indicator of quality of life and then make weird conclusions.
> It uses statistical correlation to indicate causation
it makes no assertion like that.
> People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
what privileges?
Ooh, let me count the privileges I get, starting at zero.
Zero…
There, done. What treatment for ADHD has done for me in the real world is drastically cut my anxiety and stress. Turns out the most challenging parts of my life involved knowing I had to do a thing, or I’d get fired or evicted or sued or such, and being utterly incapable of getting myself to do it until it became a crisis. What a piece of crap I must be, right, for ignoring the things a responsible adult would be doing!
And then I started taking meds for it, and found out I could, just, decide to sit down and gather my tax paperwork, or write that report, or balance the checkbook, even though those things didn’t need to be done for several more weeks. At first, it was utterly liberating. And then it was kinda soul-crushing. I could’ve been living like this the whole time, minus all the stress and self esteem issues and anxiety? And then it was liberating again. Well, bummer life use to be like that, but it’s not anymore, so yay!
And it didn’t do a single thing to my emotions, other than removing about 90% of the anxiety from my life.
(I have to get this in before the inevitable jackass opines: no, life isn’t suddenly “easier because you’re taking meth”. I get no stimulant sensation whatsoever from my dose of Adderall. My morning coffee has a much stronger effect. It just allows me to decide what I should be working on at any given moment, even when no one’s angry at me. It is not an energy booster in any way.)
What a wild, unsubstantiated take. It's wild to suggest ADHD medications are dulling emotions and wild to suggest that this effect is less damaging than the developmental disorder which is unmedicated moderate to severe ADHD. I have watched this disorder destroy people to the point of homelessness. I've had my own struggles with it in the past. And your comment isn't even accounting for comorbidities such as severe anxiety or depression, or complications from broken executive function such as not taking care of your body, not exercising and not eating healthily. I don't think you know much about ADHD at all.
No offence, but how do you know what the effect of the medication is, if you've never taken it? Your description doesn't match my experience.
I'm unsure about the inhibitor of development bit also, do you mean physiological, intellectual, emotional... ...software?
Are you able to clarify what special care and privileges are you thinking of? I have seen a psychologist a few times, but I can't afford to do so nearly as much as I need to.
I mean, does it though...? The strongest claim they make is that "timely diagnosis and treatment" (via medication) "may reduce the risk", which seems like a pretty indisputable statement based on the observed corellations.
Anyway, as a side note:
People on ADHD medicine are also going through mental health treatments and get special care and privileges in society
the effects of ADHD medication numb their responses and emotions to what seems outwardly stable and normal but deep inside it is an inhibitor of development
odds are you don't have severe ADHD.
What mental health and special care privileges are you talking about ? Other than having to have a special aid in school nothing has been of benefit.
It sounds like you are confusing ADHD meds, which are stimulants (basically speed) with benzos, which they give for depression/anxiety. First you have to understand what ADHD even IS, which is a lack of executive function. All that means is it is harder to know what to do out of the millions of things floating in front of your brain every second. Stimulants, which usually make people feel more wired, tend to make those with ADHD feel more calm. Because they aren't flitting between thoughts and the stimulant empowers them to have a more normal executive function to actively choose what to pay attention to.
Worth noting this feeling of calm comes solely as relief from spastic thoughts. Your body still responds in every other way as you would from taking a stimulant, and yet people feel calmer and more orderly because their baseline thoughts are so frenetic.