Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Shame and stigma
The famous ADHD success stories are real and they are also the exception. The commoner story, for someone whose difficulty was never identified, is quietly dropping out of things and disappearing.
Both halves need saying. Strengths talk that only features the founder who made millions can turn an ordinary struggling week into a personal failure to cash in your gift. Said the other way round it works better: the strengths are real, and so is the reason to get proper help rather than waiting to turn out lucky.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Go and seek news of Joseph and his brother and do not despair of God's mercy (Quran 12:87). The instruction is to go looking rather than sit with the loss, and it is given to a man with years of grief behind him.
يَٰبَنِيَّ ٱذۡهَبُواْ فَتَحَسَّسُواْ مِن يُوسُفَ وَأَخِيهِ وَلَا تَاْيۡـَٔسُواْ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِۖ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يَاْيۡـَٔسُ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّا ٱلۡقَوۡمُ ٱلۡكَٰفِرُونَ
My sons, go and seek news of Joseph and his brother and do not despair of God’s mercy- only disbelievers despair of God’s mercy.’
Qur’an 12:87read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The updated European consensus statement notes that adult ADHD remains underdiagnosed and undertreated across many European countries, with consequences for chronicity and impairment. That is the ordinary background the success stories are drawn out of. It is expert consensus rather than a trial, so it reports where the field stands rather than settling anything.
Kooij JJS, Bijlenga D, Salerno L, Jaeschke R, Bitter I, Balázs J, Thome J, Dom G, Kasper S, Nunes Filipe C, Stes S, Mohr P, Leppämäki S, Casas M, Bobes J, Mccarthy JM, Richarte V, Kjems Philipsen A, Pehlivanidis A, Niemela A, Styr B, Semerci B, Bolea-Alamanac B, Edvinsson D, Baeyens D, Wynchank D, Sobanski E, Philipsen A, McNicholas F, Caci H, Mihailescu I, Manor I, Dobrescu I, Saito T, Krause J, Fayyad J, Ramos-Quiroga JA, Foeken K, Rad F, Adamou M, Ohlmeier M, Fitzgerald M, Gill M, Lensing M, Motavalli Mukaddes N, Brudkiewicz P, Gustafsson P, Tani P, Oswald P, Carpentier PJ, De Rossi P, Delorme R, Markovska Simoska S, Pallanti S, Young S, Bejerot S, Lehtonen T, Kustow J, Müller-Sedgwick U, Hirvikoski T, Pironti V, Ginsberg Y, Félegyházy Z, Garcia-Portilla MP, Asherson P. (2019). Updated European Consensus Statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD.. European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You mostly hear about the people it went well for, which quietly sets the bar in the wrong place.
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
Some people will not believe this exists whatever you show them. You are allowed to give a short honest answer and then let the conversation go.
Sensing that you got something wrong socially, without knowing what, tends to turn into watching yourself constantly. That watching is usually what makes the next conversation go badly, not the original mistake.
When you have stopped believing you can change anything, the reflex is to avoid and to scroll. What breaks that is not encouragement, it is one small thing actually finished.