Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › What ADHD actually is
ADHD tends to run in families, and the differences in reported rates between countries say more about how a country counts than about its people.
It is common to find, part way through your own assessment, that you are recognising a parent, a sibling or a child. That is not a coincidence and it is not anybody's doing. Where a country keeps careful lifelong records of everyone, more gets found and followed up, which is why so much of the best long term evidence comes from a handful of places.
Qur’an and Sunnah
It is He who shapes you all in the womb as He pleases (Quran 3:6). What you inherited was shaped, not chosen by you and not inflicted on you by your parents.
هُوَ ٱلَّذِي يُصَوِّرُكُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡحَامِ كَيۡفَ يَشَآءُۚ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلۡعَزِيزُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ
it is He who shapes you all in the womb as He pleases. There is no God but Him, the Mighty, the Wise
Qur’an 3:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
One study of adults with ADHD looked at a gene variant and adverse life events together rather than separately, a reminder that something heritable is still shaped by what happens to a person. Single gene association studies of this kind have often been hard to replicate, so the design is more instructive here than the specific result.
Müller DJ, Mandelli L, Serretti A, DeYoung CG, De Luca V, Sicard T, Tharmalingam S, Gallinat J, Muglia P, De Ronchi D, Jain U, Kennedy JL. (2008). Serotonin transporter gene and adverse life events in adult ADHD.. American journal of medical genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric genetics : the official publication of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Inherited tendencies cluster in families, and what a health system records decides how much of that is ever seen.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
They are too clever to have ADHD is one of the more expensive mistakes in this field. Being able to understand something and being able to start it, order it and finish it are different abilities.
The same mistake costs far more when you have no money behind you. Legal trouble is not handed out evenly, and that sits on top of the earning difficulties ADHD already brings.
Set jobs at the level the child can manage now, then build up. A task pitched at their age that ends in a row every week mainly teaches them they are hopeless at chores.