Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Ask about food two generations back. What the parents were like about it, what the grandparents were like, what the rules were at the table.
Much of how a person eats was learned long before anybody mentioned a diagnosis, and a fair amount of the shame around it was learned in the same kitchen. Mapping it out separates what came down the family from what belongs to the difficulty with stopping. It is usually a gentler conversation than the direct one as well, because it starts with other people.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We created you all from a single man and a single woman (Quran 49:13). What comes down a family runs deeper than looks, and the table someone grew up at is part of that inheritance.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقۡنَٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرࣲ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلۡنَٰكُمۡ شُعُوبࣰ ا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ أَكۡرَمَكُمۡ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتۡقَىٰكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرࣱ
People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware
Qur’an 49:13read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A nationally representative US survey found that public recognition of children's mental health problems, and beliefs about where to get help, were uneven. What families understand about these things varies enormously, so what someone absorbed at home is worth asking about rather than assuming. The survey measured public beliefs rather than eating habits, so it supports the asking rather than any finding about food.
Pescosolido BA, Jensen PS, Martin JK, Perry BL, Olafsdottir S, Fettes D. (2008). Public knowledge and assessment of child mental health problems: findings from the National Stigma Study-Children.. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Habits copied from a family look like personal failings until you can see where they came from.
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
Note who is a first degree relative and who is a second, instead of writing 'runs in the family'. Parents, children and siblings sit in one ring. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins sit in the next.
'I am disorganised' cannot be treated. 'The post piles up on the hall table until something ends up with a debt collector' can. Spend the time getting the problem down to something that specific.
With gambling machines the pull may be the lights and the noise as much as the chance of winning. That changes what you actually need to stay away from.