ADD / ADHD Adult Symptoms can be summarized into the following categories:
- Inattention
- Impulsivity
- Physical Hyperactivity
This last is the ‘H’ in ADHD: Attention Deficit HYPERACTIVITY Disorder. This component afflicts only about 1/3 of people with Attention Deficit Disorder, and it is often not present in adults.
To meet the criteria for diagnosis, the behaviors must continue for more than six months, create a real handicap in at least two areas of life (work, home) and be inappropriate for the age of the person (don’t expect a four year old to sit still for an hour).
The criteria also requires that the behavior must have appeared prior to age 7. However, this disability was not well understood when many of us were children, and so formal diagnosis prior to age 7 may not always have been possible.
These three major categories of symptoms are very broad and require further further delineation. Much of this is interpretive and best discussed in terms of specific occurrences of behavior. A descriptive list of typical occurrences is presented in the online ADD self test.
There is certainly a social stigma applied to ADHD / ADD. These days, people are fast to say “That guy has all the classic adult ADHD symptoms and must be the poster child” if you are sloppy, or edgy, or appear to move from topic to topic quickly. It has taken me several years to be able to see my affliction as providing positive, instead of only negative, influence on my life. I’ve thought a lot about how to define reorganize my thinking to focus on ‘best light’ kind of issues and have included a quick rundown of positive attributes of the ADD mind. And, to balance, I’ve also developed a list of the negative characteristics typically found in people with ADD.
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