
High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD - tokenadult
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=6698
======
mad44
Years ago, when I was a phd student, I had been to the psychologist at the
university health center because I was unable to concentrate on anything. I
had filled the ADHD diagnosis survey they gave me beforehand, and I was
convinced I had ADHD. The psychologist discarded the survey and focused on a
personal problem I had that time (my dad has been in a very bad accident). She
told me there is nothing wrong with me, except that I was having a bad time.
Her evidence was that I had a brilliant academic record (best student
researcher, my GPA was not that good though). After all, when I am really
interested in something I could concentrate very intensely for a couple of
hours on that thing. She asked me if I would like to have some help with time
management and organization techniques. I told her that I had read so many
books on that, that I could give a seminar on it myself.

I was actually very relieved with her diagnosis, because, well, it sounded
good, and I dislike the idea of medicating myself. But my problems came back
frequently to haunt me. There have been numerous days when I couldn't get
myself to do a simple task such as paying bills (just the physical act of
writing checks and mailing). It sounds weird, but when I have many things to
do, my brain shuts off and reacts by refusing to do anything at all. I know
about getting things done and every conceivable productivity technique, but I
never can get myself to put these in practice. I am very disorganized, and
this costs me a lot. I am doing considerably good in my academic career, but
doing awful in taking care of trivia.

I always took pride in doing OK without having to take any medication, but I
guess I could do much better with medication. It hurts sometimes to endure
these symptoms, but I have been able to carry on so far, so good. I don't
know, after reading this article, I think maybe I should be seeing a
psyciatrist this time, and get a second opinion.

~~~
jamesbritt
"I don't know, after reading this article, I think maybe I should be seeing a
psyciatrist this time, and get a second opinion."

Please, do yourself a favor. Don't suffer. Take drugs.

Been there, glad I did. They're not a cure-all, but they certainly help.

And, yes, under a doctor's supervision. Try to find a doctor who will work
with you, and give you the leeway to try different things until you find
what's best for you.

~~~
liminalist
Yes, I have to second this. Almost 50% of adults diagnosed with ADD have a
substance abuse problem by the time they get help for it, and something like
30% have major depressive disorder.

If you don't get actual medical help, there's a very good chance you will slip
into either self-medication or major depression or both in the long run. Been
there, done that, lost years of my life in the process. Learn from my life,
please.

------
aswanson
A friend of mine got perfect math SATs at 12 and started taking college math
at 13. He never got past freshman year to graduate, just jumped from school to
school repeating freshman year, dropping in and out of college. I think he had
trouble with anything that required long-term logical reasoning that could not
be done in 1 shot.

He constantly rocked back and forth and could never sit still, even into his
20s. His eyes always darted back and forth when talking with people. I don't
know what he's doing now -- he seemed to be overclocked with very little cache
and ram. Wonder what became of him.

~~~
whacked_new
For high level abstract, symbolic reasoning, low cache and ram is a critical
impairment. At that level SAT math really means nothing. In fact, college math
at 13 doesn't even seem that impressive -- I believe after Kumon level J you
get into calculus and plenty of grade-school kids take this.

It could have been a genuine problem for him, but even with the best drugs, I
wouldn't expect some kind of "unlocking your potential" moment.

I remember reading a study that found the biggest difference between high-
performers and their peers precisely that of attention control. It involved
looking at lights moving in a particular pattern. When the pattern was
detected, normal people showed increased brain activity. High-performing
individuals showed decreasing brain activity, presumably because they
optimized the pattern recognition process, and focused all the resources
there.

~~~
tokenadult
_I believe after Kumon level J you get into calculus and plenty of grade-
school kids take this._

Here's some quantification of the number of students who take calculus before
the "usual" age in this era:

<http://www.maa.org/columns/launchings/launchings_05_07.html>

~~~
whacked_new
I suppose those are USA stats. I come from a place where Kumon is a household
name. I never went to one, although when I learned about it from my friends in
5th grade, I was actually jealous that my parents didn't send me there.

------
russell
Another myth, even among doctors, is that this is a condition of children who
run up walls and across ceilings. Not so. It afflicts adults who are not
hyperactive. It is characterized by periods of intense concentration and other
periods of complete inability to focus. It is pretty easily treatable with
amphetamine type prescription drugs, which help them to calm down and
concentrate, exactly the opposite effect from most of us. Unfortunately it is
harder to diagnose in high IQ adults, because they are better at disguising
the symptoms.

~~~
cstejerean
"It is characterized by periods of intense concentration and other periods of
complete inability to focus."

"They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in
harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks"

Crap, I guess I really might have ADHD. Would effective and safe is the
prescription medication?

~~~
tokenadult
_"It is characterized by periods of intense concentration and other periods of
complete inability to focus."

"They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in
harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks"_

What's scary for parents is that a lot of that sounds like "teenage boy," and
I'm not sure how well I understand differential diagnosis of ADD as contrasted
with adolescent brain restructuring. I know young people whose parents have
told me that the young people have ADD, and some of those young people are
BRILLIANT. Some other young people I know seem every bit as disorganized, but
who am I to diagnose someone, even my own child, without a lot of clinical
experience?

~~~
rarrrrrr
I'm sure I'll get downmodded for even mentioning this, but in the natural
health community we don't believe that ADHD is really a brain disorder,
certainly not to the extent the APA maintains. I find it absurd that close to
1/4th of school age children in some schools supposedly need to be on brain
altering pharmaceuticals. Why don't we see this in other countries?

Some dietary triggers for the ADHD like behavior commonly mentioned are
artificial colors, sugar, MSG, and processed grains (and a lack of sufficient
nutrition in general.)

For instance, there was a segment in the movie SuperSize Me describing a
school for behaviorally problematic children. The staff found they could
improve things by changing only the school lunch selection.

~~~
tokenadult
_Some dietary triggers for the ADHD like behavior commonly mentioned are
artificial colors, sugar_

Rather than downmod I'll ask a follow-up question and request research
citations to back up that statement mentioning two distinct triggers for ADHD
behavior.

~~~
rarrrrrr
[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1659835,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1659835,00.html)

That was at the top of Google and describes a 2007 study in The Lancet.
There's plenty more if you go looking.

The trouble with dispersal of natural health information is that the
pharmaceutical and food industries are two of the biggest advertisers in
mainstream media, have enormous influence, and they both profit tremendously
from an ignorant public who's willing to buy low cost low quality foods and
then take drugs to treat the resulting symptoms.

~~~
tokenadult
_The trouble with dispersal of natural health information is that the
pharmaceutical and food industries are two of the biggest advertisers in
mainstream media_

That should have nothing to do with publication in peer-reviewed scientific
journals, which is what I was really asking about. [After edit: I see the Time
magazine link you posted refers to an interesting study in the journal The
Lancet, which is very well regarded. Now I'll have to look that up and follow
up further citations. Thanks.] Scientific journals can have their problems
too, article by article,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

but that's where I'd like for carefully verified information about what
triggers ADHD.

I'll read the Time article in light of the link I've just posted here, which I
recommend highly and often to readers of HN. [After edit: I see the Time
article ended with a suggestion, from an expert, that it might be a good idea
to eat more "organic" foods. Interestingly, there is also a lot of research on
phytotoxins suggesting that many "natural" sustances found in plants, which
after all evolved defenses of various kinds against being eaten by animals,
may sometimes be many more times risky for human health than some "artificial"
substances commonly found in lower doses in typical foods. But again thanks
for posting the link, which gives me something to follow up on.]

------
rjurney
Would be interesting to see the results of the same tests with a group of 120+
IQ ADHDers on Ritalin/Adderall/etc. I would think the impairment would go down
significantly.

~~~
russell
Adderall helps a lot. I have family members with ADD. One says it helps a lot
with insomnia, as well as concentration. (Apologies, I accidentally hit the
downmod button.)

~~~
rjurney
I love Adderall. Without it, I can't even take the trash out. With it, I can
plan months and years in advance.

~~~
wheels
My feelings are mixed on such. I was on Ritalin as a teenager and I felt like
it stripped me of my creativity and started refusing to take it. I had trouble
focusing a lot of the time (though I also have the ability to hyper-focus).
I've taken a few times illicitly since just to have a reference point, and I
still find that the mental gymnastics that I've had to develop as an adult
(I'm 28) to try to get myself to hyper-focus on the whole are a better coping
mechanism than taking amphetamines on a regular basis.

I feel like scatter-brained-ness is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, it
contributes to difficulty in staying "on-topic" on a regular basis; on the
other hand, I feel like it's been the mechanism that's allowed me to broaden
my interests and to absorb a lot of information in usually disconnected areas
and sometimes connect pieces that might be less natural for others without
this "affliction".

This is of course an anecdote, and I believe as others have pointed out
concentration is spectrum and there are extreme poles where medication may be
the only option, but I'm leery of it becoming a catch all solution as it has
become in the US (but not in other developed countries).

~~~
aswanson
Does alcohol help with the ADD? I remember around that age that moderate
drinking would dampen some of my scattering and made me feel as though I could
focus more.

~~~
wheels
Not predictably. Right now often jumping into a debugging session I'll have a
glass of wine or so, but historically if I look back over the most productive
phases of my life they've varied between times where I didn't drink at all to
where I drank too much.

The most effective coping mechanisms have been combinations of removing
distractions and sometimes short meditation. More recently I find if I'm
distracted that going running for 15 minutes will help clear my head. If I
find myself procrastinating too much I often run Freedom.app for an hour or
two at a stretch to help drop me into the zone. When I'm working in an office
I tend to start extremely early or extremely late so that I'm alone at the
office for long stretches. When I'm working from home (I live with my co-
founder) I tend to shut the door for long stretches and occasionally notice
that I shift my sleeping schedule so that a large block of the time where
we're awake is mutually exclusive.

------
CalmQuiet
I've got quite a lot of distractibility, but my office mate _really_ does. He
got connected with the work of Edward Hallowell, specifically "Driven to
Distraction" ( <http://www.amazon.com/isbn/dp/0684801280> ) and has since had
his doc get him on ritalin. It's just been a few weeks, but he seems a lot
more focused _to me_.

It's making me wonder if I need to talk to a doc about trying me on one of
those meds. Doesn't seem like it's much of a risk, does it?

[I've struggled mightily to _force_ myself to focus - to no avail - and _know_
that I could be way more productive if the mind would obey better :/ ]

------
ScottWhigham
I come from a bit of a different perspective here in that I started out taking
Ritalin as a kid - I was probably 8 or 9 instead of in my teens. It was
awesome. Ritalin showed me what it was like to be "normal". I took it for
about a year and, for me, once I had seen "normal", I was able to just settle
down. I still hyperfocused and was fidgety but I was able to recognize those
times whereas, before Ritalin, I had not known that what I was doing was
odd/different/good/bad.

------
j_baker
I don't think this is really anything new. In fact, my IQ was used to help
prove I'm ADHD (basically, with my high IQ, I shouldn't have had such a low
GPA).

~~~
rjurney
My 'IQ' hid my ADHD, because until highschool I got by without studying or
paying attention or doing homework. I'd ace the tests, and it was enough to
pass. In highschool, I needed to study or at least pay attention and didn't.
Teachers said I was smart, but lazy.

I think its a pretty common situation. Nevermind that some people are
independent learners, and the public education system is ill suited to this
style of learning.

~~~
jibiki
> I think its a pretty common situation.

Yes. That sort of story is quite common even among people who don't have ADHD.

If you are in 8th grade, and you are capable of learning all the material
without doing any homework, then it is just not rational to do homework.

------
grandalf
I was diagnosed very with mild ADD and have had my IQ tested and it's pretty
darn high.

I went to the doctor and asked for Ritalin once during college and I found
that I used it just like caffeine -- I'd be extra focused for a while on
getting things done and then I'd realize I was staying awake way later than I
planned. But I'd be tired the next day, and so the Ritalin seemed like it was
more of a stimulant than a treatment, with one pill equal to about 10 shots of
espresso.

I never refilled the Ritalin prescription -- it was no fun being medicated and
staying up late and then being tired the next day. I noticed that I was far
better at doing mundane tasks that required focus, but FAR less curious and
less prone to switching tasks if I was bored.

Notably, I read tons of linux man files at the time and learned how to use a
lot of command line utilities that I'd never had the patience to learn before.

But I'd also find that I'd read articles that were actually quite boring and
upon finishing them I'd regret wasting the time.

There are a lot of occupations where my Ritalinized state would be an
advantage. But one thing I love about my current approach to life is that I am
able to leverage my own strengths. Sometimes being a bit scattered is a huge
benefit. I also get the "hyper focus" common to people with ADD and there are
days when 4 hour chunks go by as if they were 10 minutes and I realize I've
accomplished incredible feats of productivity (and yet I remain energized).

Once in a while (maybe once every 2 weeks) I have a very scattered day. I have
come to appreciate those days as good opportunities to restore balance. I use
them to do extra exercise, eat extra healthy food, pick up the guitar, take an
afternoon nap, etc. They are my brain's way of telling me that it wants a
change of scenery.

I also find that regular, vigorous exercise and a bit of caffeine in the
morning is far more effective than Ritalin was at giving me the ability to
avoid being too scattered.

The best insight (which I actually learned from a comment here on HN last
year) is that when I do find myself procrastinating it's my brain's way of
telling me that I'm not happy with some decision I've made -- maybe an
approach to some code, etc. So I use it as a cue to revisit what I've done and
most of the time sure enough there is something lurking that was bugging me,
and once I address it my productivity is back to normal.

Bottom line: I view mild ADD as a huge asset. I am extremely productive and
while I have not yet managed to achieve my desired level of financial success
I think I have plenty of ability to get done what I want to get done and
tremendously enjoy the creative process and focused work involved.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Thank you for great insights. Gives me pause about... possible mixed-blessing
that ADHD (at least if mild) can be - or the drawback of being _too_ focused
(beyond what real discrimination would want).

One issue for me: I find that caffeine makes me physically jittery and
muscularly tense. I wonder what _smaller_ doses of ritalin might have done for
you (or might do for me)?

~~~
grandalf
Yeah good question. My suggestion would be to talk to the doctor about side
effects and request the option of trying each of the pharmaceutical treatments
(perhaps for a month each) before making a decision about which you ought to
be on.

I do recommend trying them, at least to satisfy your curiosity... and some
people really find them helpful.

One thing I should also mention is that I've found that other aspects of diet
seem to correlate with ADD symptoms. Getting plenty of exercise, taking an
omega 3 supplement, drastically reducing sugar, and eating a fair bit of leafy
green veggies are all things that I attribute to helping me focus more
quickly. There are probably some websites/books dedicated to this topic, and
it might be worth exploring.

------
ninguem2
I know someone like that (high IQ/ADD, diagnosed by a psychologist) who
refuses treatment. I think this person would benefit a lot from treatment but
I have been unsuccessful in getting my point across. Any suggestions?

~~~
rjurney
Assuming they don't have heart issues, get em to try someone else's
ritalin/adderall once? If it has an overwhelmingly positive effect, they might
seek treatment. If not, it only lasts a few hours.

------
rjurney
Anyone else find it humorous that the posts by those with ADHD that take pills
for it are much shorter and concise than posts by those that have untreated
ADHD?

:)

