I was fortunate to have some FMRI (I believe that's the tech) work done years ago, shortly after I was diagnosed with ADHD. The imagining made it so blatantly obvious that my brain was different than normal brains. Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole.
There are certainly bio/physical differences.
That said, I came into this comment thinking I'd take the stance of "of course it's a disease," but I think I've warmed up somewhat to what I think is your argument: lets stop with the labels.
What holds me back from getting on board is that it's not like a headache. I can't just be like "oh, I'm feeling scattered" and take a pill when I need to. That "I'm feeling scattered" is 100% of the time.
So I'm still in the "it's for sure a disease" camp. But I really don't care all that much in the end - I just want to make sure people stop hogging what allows me to even have a job and family.
Do I believe I still have ADHD now? Sure I "have it" based on how the word is commonly understood.
The thing is at this point I've had doctors write down me having about 6 different conditions in the DSM, recurring or continual, no one doctor having given me more than 3 dx at a time. I've been prescribed over a dozen psychiatric meds over the years, all discontinued. So what am I supposed to think, am I just that unique and special and statistically rare? Or am I an edge case which is poorly described by the status quo diagnostic nosology? Is it useful for me to go to a doctor or friend or authority figure and describe myself as having the kitchen sink?
But in practice almost everybody I talk to from friends to doctors to family has a different set of labels they think of me as having, and I change which labels I use to describe myself to accomplish different goals, and deep down I don't think anybody really has a clue what they're talking about.
> Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole. There are certainly bio/physical differences.
I'd be careful about this. I've never seen anything to suggest that we could screen every child with FMRI scans to catch blatantly obvious indicators of ADHD or use scans as a definitive test for who should get medications. I honestly wish it really worked that way because it'd end all the hand-wringing about overprescribed medications and prevent a lot of kids from struggling unnecessarily, but unless something's changed pretty recently there's no one test that can identify someone as having ADHD.
Thank you for catching me on that. I neglected to mention that the imagining I'd done was actually unrelated to my ADHD. A pretty important detail that I hadn't considered.
Do you believe you have ADHD now?
I was fortunate to have some FMRI (I believe that's the tech) work done years ago, shortly after I was diagnosed with ADHD. The imagining made it so blatantly obvious that my brain was different than normal brains. Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole.
There are certainly bio/physical differences.
That said, I came into this comment thinking I'd take the stance of "of course it's a disease," but I think I've warmed up somewhat to what I think is your argument: lets stop with the labels.
What holds me back from getting on board is that it's not like a headache. I can't just be like "oh, I'm feeling scattered" and take a pill when I need to. That "I'm feeling scattered" is 100% of the time.
So I'm still in the "it's for sure a disease" camp. But I really don't care all that much in the end - I just want to make sure people stop hogging what allows me to even have a job and family.