Category: ADHD

8.2% of people have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, double the previously reported rate.

Many people say their attention is gotten poorer in the digital age.

But, is it just a regular inability to focus, or is it a ‘disorder’?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD or ADD, can cause people to have problems with simple day-to-day tasks, like paying bills.

It may even cause someone to lose their job, through persistent lateness or failing to perform routine tasks.

The World Health Organisation has released the latest version of an adult test for ADHD.

The answers to these questions have been found to reliably predict people suffering from ADHD.

1. How often do you have difficulty concentrating on what people say to you, even when they are speaking to you directly?
2. How often do you leave your seat in meetings and other situations in which you are expected to remain seated?
3. How often do you have difficulty unwinding and relaxing when you have time to yourself?
4. When you’re in a conversation, how often do you find yourself finishing the sentences of the people you are talking to before they can finish them themselves?
5. How often do you put things off until the last minute?
6. How often do you depend on others to keep your life in order and attend to details?

To each of these questions, the options are “never,” “rarely,” “sometimes,” “often” or “very often.”

Answering “sometimes,” “often” or “very often” to four of the six questions indicates the test-taker may have adult ADHD.

However, the questions are designed as a simple way to screen people.

In other words, they can give you an indication, not a diagnosis.

Many people, though, have ADHD without being diagnosed with it.

One study suggests that 8.2 percent of people have adult ADHD, double the previously reported rate.

People with ADHD are often prescribed drugs like Ritalin or Adderall.

However, additional psychotherapy can be useful for some and has fewer side-effects.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Usun et al., 2017).

The mental health condition affects up to one in twenty.

Leonardo da Vinci — one of the world’s greatest polymaths — may have had ADHD, research concludes.

Da Vinci displayed many of the symptoms of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), including:

• Constantly jumping from one task to the next,
• procrastination,
• sleeping little,
• and a voracious curiosity.

These are some of the classic symptoms of ADHD, a disorder involving restlessness of mind and body, including constant mind wandering.

Part of da Vinci’s prodigious output in many areas of art and science could have been down partly to his ADHD.

Incredibly, though, da Vinci considered himself a failure — perhaps a symptom of depression and anxiety that can go along with ADHD.

The study’s authors write:

“According to his first biographer Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo died lamenting ‘that he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done.”

Professor Marco Catani, the study’s first author, said:

“While impossible to make a post-mortem diagnosis for someone who lived 500 years ago, I am confident that ADHD is the most convincing and scientifically plausible hypothesis to explain Leonardo’s difficulty in finishing his works.

Historical records show Leonardo spent excessive time planning projects but lacked perseverance.

ADHD could explain aspects of Leonardo’s temperament and his strange mercurial genius.”

These is also evidence da Vinci’s brain was wired differently.

He was left-handed and probably dyslexic, with language localised to the right side of the brain (language is localised to the left side of the brain in most people).

All these are common in people with ADHD.

Mind wandering probably fuelled da Vinci’s creativity at the early stages of creativity, although it likely hampered his ability to get projects finished.

Professor Catani, who treats conditions including autism and ADHD, said:

“There is a prevailing misconception that ADHD is typical of misbehaving children with low intelligence, destined for a troubled life.

On the contrary, most of the adults I see in my clinic report having been bright, intuitive children but develop symptoms of anxiety and depression later in life for having failed to achieve their potential.

It is incredible that Leonardo considered himself as someone who had failed in life.

I hope that the case of Leonardo shows that ADHD is not linked to low IQ or lack of creativity but rather the difficulty of capitalising on natural talents.

I hope that Leonardo’s legacy can help us to change some of the stigma around ADHD.”

The study was published in the journal Brain (Catani & Mazzarello, 2019).

Physical evidence in the brain for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

People who have ADHD have slightly smaller brains than average, new research finds.

There was also evidence in the brains of those with ADHD for delayed development.

Dr Martine Hoogman, the study’s first author, said:

“The results from our study confirm that people with ADHD have differences in their brain structure and therefore suggest that ADHD is a disorder of the brain.

We hope that this will help to reduce stigma that ADHD is ‘just a label’ for difficult children or caused by poor parenting.”

The research compared the brains of 1,713 people with ADHD with 1,529 normal controls.

ADHD is characterised by:

• impulsiveness or hyperactivity,
• and serious problems maintaining attention on one task.

Many children continue to experience the symptoms of ADHD into adulthood.

The study found that in ADHD the overall brain volume was slightly lower, as was the volume in certain key areas of the brain.

Dr Hoogman explained:

“These differences are very small—in the range of a few percent—so the unprecedented size of our study was crucial to help identify these.

Similar differences in brain volume are also seen in other psychiatric disorders, especially major depressive disorder.”

The study was published in The Lancet Psychiatry (Hoogman et al., 2017).

Shiny brain image from Shutterstock