Agile Soul: ADHD Management

Very interesting lecture of Russel Barclay on ADHD. What it is, and what it means.

It's a biological disorder that effects the brain, and not the senses.

ADHD people know what others know, but they don't know how to use this information to do something with it. So it's an executive disorder, rather than an attention disorder.

Symptoms for ADHD :

ADHD people ...

... have poor persistence towards a goal.

they live in the moment. The 'now' will make them forget their goal

... have impaired resistance to responding to distraction

it's not that they see more than others, they just can't resist to respond to a distraction

....have deficient task re-engagement following a disruption

where a normal man will re-engage his task after a disruption, ADHD will not. They've forgotten about the task.

....have impaired working memory.

The working memory is a specific part of our memory dedicated to remembering what we're doing. With ADHD, this memory dysfunctions.

….have impaired verbal and motor inhibition
….are highly impulsive

They’re impatient, cannot wait
If someone is not impulsive, by definition he cannot have ADHD.

….have a greater disregard to future consequences
….show excessive task-irrelevant movement and verbal behaviour
….will show decreasing restlessness with age

The restlessness becomes more internal.

What does ADHD do ?

ADHD affects 5 of the important systems in our brain :

Inhibition and resistance to distraction.
Non-verbal working memory( sensing the self )

This is also the part of our brain that makes us time-aware. Therefor ADHD people will come late, be unprepared, continue on doing the same thing for a long time, ...

Verbal working memory ( private self-speech)

People with ADHD are unable to discuss in themselves and go over several options before choosing.

Emotional and motivational self-regulation

ADHD people have no internal motivation. Therefor they always need external motivation.

Planning and problem solving

So, to understand ADHD, you should know :

ADHD creates a ‘Time Blindness’ or a temporal neglect syndrome ( Myopia to the future)
Those with ADHD live in the moment
It’s a disorder of

Performance, not skill
Doing what you know, not knowing what you do.
The when and where, not the how and what
It’s not an Attention Deficit, but an Intention Deficit Disorder

Inattention to mental events and the future.

Since it’s a biological disorder, medicines for an ADHD patient are like insulin for diabetics.

Highly brilliant people with resources have shown to nicely compensate for ADHD. However ADHD is not to be considered a gift, even those who are able to compensate, will benefit from treatment. ADHD is like having a strong car, but not the adequate breaking system.

This (personal) summary comes from a highly interesting talk that can be seen on youtube.