Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › What ADHD actually is
A lot of people with ADHD quietly believe they are not clever. Usually it comes from reading a page four times and taking nothing in, and concluding the obvious thing about themselves.
That belief does a great deal of damage. It keeps people out of courses and jobs they could do, and it makes them give up on any new strategy the first time it wobbles. Where formal testing is available it can settle the question in a way that reassurance from a friend never quite does. Short of that, look at what you have actually managed in the areas you find interesting, since that is a truer sample than the pages that would not go in.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He gave you hearing, sight, and minds (Quran 32:9). The mind you have is named there among the things you were given, whatever a school report once said about it.
ثُمَّ سَوَّىٰهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِۦۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
Then He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 32:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of the cognitive neuroscience of ADHD sets out what is understood about the specific thinking systems involved, and is candid that this has translated into diagnosis and treatment less than people assume. The useful part is that it describes particular systems rather than general ability. It is a review rather than a study of how people rate their own intelligence.
Rubia K. (2018). Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Its Clinical Translation.. Frontiers in human neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Not taking something in is a problem with attention holding the material, not with the ability to understand it.
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
If you reach the bottom of a page and nothing has stayed, reading it again more slowly usually will not fix it. Change something about how you are reading instead.
If you have not been assessed because of money, waiting lists or simply getting to appointments, that is a barrier and not a lack of seriousness on your part.
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.