ADHD in adults is challenging but highly treatable

I was the "Hyper active" boy I was also the "zombie" ( as mother put it) on Ritalin at one point.

But my mother (an actual mother not a parent having kids to then complain the government doesn't have free day care) decided she would rather have the crazy son than the drug controled zombie and this while also raising 3 other children.

I am still full on ADHD approaching my 60s and I am doing Ok the only problem are others unwilling to accept me as I am.

It is interesting to note if tomorrow I put on a dress makeup and said I was a woman suddenly everyone has to accommodate me and change things for my benefit.

And if there was a pill to change LGBTQ people into "straight" would we be advocating and actively pushing the meds on them.

I am not bipolar, schizophrenic, etc...

I am no danger to others or my self I just don't sit still or think like the rest , so therefore drugs me is the solution not for my benefit but because it is easier for society to do that to me than accommodate me.

Nearly 60 and still Drug free and doing fine.

Hype! A good teacher with patience can handle learning disabilities with NO drugs.

Of course it doesn't make money for the pharmaceutical industry though.

Keep psych OUT of education, please.

BertieWooster

Today 08:35 am JST

Sorry this time don't blame the pharmaceutical companies.

It is 100% on society and especially parents and teachers today.

Class sizes are smaller than any time in the past, families have 2 children at the most but for some reason a single ADHD child in class or in the family is too much to handle to much disruption.

And both parents an teachers "demanded" something and the pharmaceutical companies obliged them.

My niece is also ADHD and my sister did not want here in drugs, but the school and government in Canada forced her on them, calling it negligence/abuse to not "treat" her with available meds!

So now during school months she is forces to take drugs and has lost appetite, weight, on breaks and summer holidays is the only time she is not on drugs as my sister and she herself don't like them.

She turns 18 this year and once that happens the government has no power over her and like me she will stop the drugs.

Antiquesaving,

I sympathise. I've heard many similar stories.

My nephew was diagnosed with ADHD. His mum took him off ALL sugar and his behaviour changed 180 degrees overnight.

Drugs are NOT the solution and psych is completely clueless.

BertieWoosterToday  11:13 am JST

Antiquesaving,

I sympathise. I've heard many similar stories. 

My nephew was diagnosed with ADHD. His mum took him off ALL sugar and his behaviour changed 180 degrees overnight. 

Drugs are NOT the solution and psych is completely clueless.

This is stunning news sir. You should apply for a new company and sell foods, etc etc with no sugar.

Sugar certainly has energy issues and can set up a energy boost, crash cycle, but I hope you aren't saying that omitting sugar is the cure. There are different types of sugar, eg fruit, pastas, etc etc. Clearly you're referring to refined sugar, and pumping your kids with refined sugar and junk food is not healthy ADHD or no ADHD.

ADHD was first noticed as far back as the 1700s. well documented by a Scottish doctor, and I don't think refined sugar was the main cause then. You also need to explain by ADHD everyone just wants to pick out the over excitable kids but ADHD is a spectrum where a lot of ADHD kids have not attention and low energy and aren't hyper active. These kids are ADHD but are low energy low stimulus ADHD. I don't if you really are a professional and have a WIDE knowledge of ADHD but I think you need to understand the LOW attentive types of ADHD can benefit from some meds and they become more awake, more alert and are able to focus, and listen better. So there are two ends of the spectrum. Not just the media stereotype.

Patients who do not benefit from the meds are free to stop taking them, but if some patients benefit they can choose to continue. Nobody is forcing anyone to take these medicines.

As this is supposedly a Japanese first paper, I'm going to talk the situation of medication for ADHD in Japan.

Ritalin is banned for the treatment of ADHD in Japan, and it is only allowed under a very restrictive license (almost no medical practitioner can actually prescribe it) to treat narcolepsy.

This is because an scandal that happened back in the 2007s about a 25 year old man that was using Ritalin and committed suicide. The media tried to link his suicide to the use of Ritalin, since apparently the hospital he was attending to was prescribing way more than necessary doses of Ritalin to him.

After this, and in typical Japanese Government manner, the Japanese government overreacted to this scandal by first, voiding the medical license of the hospital that did this, and then by basically making it imposible for medical practitioners to prescribe Ritalin.

Since Ritalin was the only available medication approved in Japan to treat ADHD, basically people with ADHD were left without any medication to treat ADHD for 6 years, until in 2013 Concerta was approved for use in ADHD.

Now, ADHD patients have to also go through extra hops and bureaucratic bs just to get Concerta.

First, their doctor has to be registered in the ADHD register system (yes, there is such a thing), and they need to take some government approver e-seminars in order to get registered in the system, and be able to prescribe Concerta.

But it doesn't end there, patients also have to be registered in the system (in other words, there is actually a national database right now which have all of the data of ADHD patients around the country), and starting 2020 with a new system, patients with ADHD are given basically an ADHD ID card, that they have to bring to his doctor every single time they need to get their prescription of Concerta.

One of the main symptoms of ADHD is Inattention, which means, ADHD patients are actually pretty prompt to forget to bring this card with them, which means that since 2020, it has become pretty common that ADHD patients have to wait extra days to get their prescription.

Not only that, ADHD patients can only get 2 weeks worth of Concerta, and the doses they can get are actually pretty low compared to international standards.

Also, if for some reason the patients lose their pills (for example, once again, because of their inattention they throw the pills to the garbage), which isn't that uncommon, they cannot get prescribed the medication, until the 2 weeks they already were given.

This means, people with ADHD cannot get advance prescriptions for travel or things like that.

In other words, the current health system of Japan makes the life of ADHD patients worse than it should be just because of a dumb media scandal back in 2007.

Patients who do not benefit from the meds are free to stop taking them, but if some patients benefit they can choose to continue. Nobody is forcing anyone to take these medicines.

That is incorrect.

In much of the west the government is forcing children because the so-called experts say it is better.

Refusing can get your children taken away by child services and then they are forced to be medicated

@Antiquesaving, no the government at least in the US is not forcing kids to take ADHD medications. Our little boy is ADHD and on the Autism Spectrum. Like other parents we have tried different prescription meds with varying degrees of success. The need that drives use of such meds is to allow he child to sit still in a classroom with other kids and learn. Absent the meds the child's behaviors interfere with the child's ability to learn and it disrupts the entire classroom, making it impossible for the other kids in the class to learn or for the teacher to conduct his or her lessons. It is not all a grand plot to control people and living with such a kid I grow tired of people making such claims.

Later in life it can affect one's ability to hold a job and be productive. We in the end gave up on meds because after trying three because they simply had no effect, but other parents we know have had good results with them. Talking to a local psychologist about ADHD, Autism and meds he mentioned the place I work, which is filled with scientists and engineers has a lot of very senior well regarded members who are on meds. Every individual is different. I know at least one other adult with ADHD who's life is going nowhere fast courtesy of being kicked out of school and only having a GED earned in a continuation school. Not controlling or treating ADHD can have life long consequences.

I will pick a nit with the author however inasmuch in our experience a form of behavior therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis seems to be highly beneficial. It teaches both the proper way to respond to situations and it teaches them how to recognize when they are becoming agitated and regulate it before they spin up like the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. It has helped our little man hugely. That and teaching him something called "Zones of Regulation" has improved his behavior greatly.