Evidence That ADHD Is a Genetic Disorder
One thing to note about ADHD research: The bar for getting diagnosed with ADHD in a clinical trial is much higher than getting diagnosed with it by your family doctor. All of the symptoms involve a great deal of leeway and personal interpretation, and in a clinical trial, they are really, really strict about that stuff. A doctor, who has a financial incentive to prescribe ADHD medication is much more likely to bend the diagnosis towards positive.
There is no shortage of writings by smart people arguing ADHD is over diagnosed. I am also of the opinion that it is. But I also think ADHD is a real disorder. I have no doubt that the findings of this study apply to people who really have ADHD. I also have very little doubt that this study doesn't apply to the vast majority of kids who have been diagnosed with it.
As a child of 8 years old, I was given 120MG of Ritalin per day. I rarely slept the first 2 years. If I did it was around 6am for an hour or so. Then I had to take my morning dose for school. They also wanted me to take a pill to sleep, which felt so horrible I cannot even explain it. I was a zombie in the morning if I took it, then onto the morning ritalin dose. I would just do pushups in my room until 3am some nights just to get the energy out.
Yes, I did well in school while I was on it. Yes, I stayed out of trouble when I was on it. But I was not myself. I felt as if I were on drugs. I did not learn "how to learn" or "how to get things done" without being on drugs. When I finally kicked the habit in college, I was a mess. I couldn't do anything that took more than 30 seconds of concentration. I had to learn how to live life without drugs. For a condition I may or may not have had. It took me to more years to finish my last semester of college because I could not function. Years later I’ve relearned what I should have learned as a child – how to discipline myself and get things done.
The DSM IV/V has a very loose definition of this "DISORDER". The genetic basis I don't doubt, because at one time in our evolution it was a selective adaptation that made us better at hunting, preventing accidents, and trying new things. Now, because our society resides in cubicles, desks, and institutions, it's a "DISORDER" that needs to be medicated.
Just be good parents and give your child an environment where his or her differences can thrive. Find some open space and let them loose for several hours a day. Homeschool them with creative and intriguing lessons tailored just to them. Do whatever you can to allow their abilities become advantages rather than brand it a disorder and ruin their self-esteem by sending them to the nurse twice a day to be force-fed a pill they don’t need.
Don't just give them a pill. That's lazy and detrimental to them in the long run.
The over-prescription of these drugs is epidemic and I can't stand by and watch comments say :
"Each year a parent doesn't take actions is a year lost for a child" to convince people to medicate children for what used to be a genetic advantage (and still is given the right environment).
Each year a parent doesn't take actions to provide the right environment for their child's natural ability to thrive (rather than be told to have a disorder) is a year lost for that child.
This is welcome news. I recently got diagnosed and after taking the medication, I've found a great increase in the quality of life.
There are a few who are very anti-drug when it comes to this condition and their children. Let me tell you from personal experience, these people are doing more harm to their children than good. Education is important.
Depending on the severity, each year a parent doesn't take action is a year lost for their child.
I'm one of those people who wishes they were diagnosed as a kid.
I've been diagnosed by two different psychiatrists with ADHD. I've been on Adderall (XR) at dosages up to 80mg, Strattera, Wellbutrin XL + 10mg Adderall (actually my favorite, but not so effective), and now I'm on Concerta (Ritalin) 27mg/54mg.
The 27mg dose of Concerta is minimally effective without affecting my sleep, so sometimes I need to boost it. I hate stimulants though, and I wish I could get along fine without them but it's just not possible. Strattera worked good but the "sexual side effects" were too weird for me to continue on. Wellbutrin + Adderall worked okay (with the benefit of me generally being a bit happier) but my psychiatrist after moving didn't want me on two medicines that can raise your blood pressure.
I ended up going to 6 different schools between 8th grade and graduating across 4 different cities. Despite that, I graduated high school with a 3.5 and started college as a Sophomore. My first semester in college I got a 1.8 and thrown in academic suspension. The next three years would be really rough. After that, I went to my family doctor and got adderall, and that helped out a lot at first, but it wasn't a miracle drug and I still had to really force myself to concentrate in weird ways to get through school, and that's really where the adderall helped. Towards the end, school got easier and I enjoyed it more, but I could also sit down and do homework.
I've gone off meds completely for a few months at a time almost once a year, and I just can't do it. I wish I would have been diagnosed with it as a kid and had the behavioral therapy along with it instead of having to wing it for the past 6 years, but that's in the past. I also wish there was a non-stimulant that worked really well without side effects too, but for now, I'm happy with the Concerta.
I'm 26, and I was diagnosed with ADD last year, at the suggestion of my dad, who was not diagnosed until his 40's. It took me almost a year to start actively researching ADD, because I grew up in an upper-middle-class community where it was primarily over-diagnosed in unmotivated kids whose parents were convinced that brain dysfunction was the only thing that could possibly keep their children from being A students. To say the very least, I was skeptical.
When I finally began learning about ADD, I was startled by how standard my story was. Reading Driven To Distraction was a watershed experience for me; at times I was convinced that they had simply copy-and-pasted my academic transcript: "Dreamer," "Has a creative mind that would produce incredible results if he applied himself once in a while," "Inconsistent. What happened to the A student sitting in my classroom last year?"
In perspective, so much suddenly made sense; not just my experiences in high school, but beyond that as well. I failed only one class in my entire academic career, a programming course in my second year of college. How ironic and confusing that my only failure would be in the subject for which I had the most passion. Now it made sense. Only two or three years ago from today, I almost lost my job because my output was so inconsistent. I barely scraped by and recovered, but the experience shook me. Now, I understood.
There are many forms of treatment, all of which I have experimented with. When it comes to medication, it took me a long time to settle on Adderall, which lets me focus like a normal person without any appreciable side-effects. The drug was a game-changer for me, like the first time I put on glasses.
I think I'm glad that I wasn't medicated as a kid, if only because of a deep uncertainty about medicating something as malleable as a child's brain. Conversely, going 25 years without diagnosis has also drastically affected every part of my life. (I have no idea how my dad dealt with it for almost 50 years.) This was also something that I grew to understand as I learned more about ADD; undiagnosed, it can lead to perennial struggles with depression, self-esteem, poor impulse control and a host of others. I think the most important thing about ADD isn't necessarily medication or even "treatment" but simply awareness.
"Laziness" is a symptom, not a root cause. If we can be mindful about the signs of ADD in childhood, we have already taken a huge step towards improving the quality of life for people with the disorder, and everyone they interact with. I'm sure there will be debates about how to treat it for many years to come, but simple awareness can only help.
Another popular (anecdotal) explanation why this disorder is more prevalent in America is that somehow the same genetic trait that motivated inviduals to pack up and move to another continent, when amplified (after hundreds of years) is somehow responsible for hyperactivity.
Basically "the settlers were a restless folk" they all come to America and breed with each other, after hundreds of years you end up with a good number of people who are "too restless to function".
Anway that is one popular theory, not sure if I personally endorse it but it would seem to be somewhat supported by this find.
Of course the counter-point could be that doctors + parents + pharma companies are just more eager to diagnose it in America, and I can see that happening too somewhow.
> Children with ADHD have a significantly higher rate of missing or duplicated DNA segments compared to other children
The problem with this study is they looked at kids who had been diagnosed and were on long term drug therapy. This is similar to studies that show that ADHD diagnosees on long term drug therapy have "brain damage", which matches the brain damage of long term stimulant users. The findings are not an indicator of ADHD, they are indicators of brain and genetic damage from long term drug use.
Much more effective than Ritalin, and safer, for treating ADHD is the prescription drug Desoxyn. It's not used as much because of the stigma of taking methamphetamine hydrochloride. I mention this because everyone agrees that methamphetamine is not an innocuous drug to take long term, the same goes for Ritalin, they both have very similar effects on brain chemistry.
For me, ADHD isn't a disorder as much as a collection of personality traits. I have a bunch of traits I constantly have to look out for to ensure I complete work, and I've built a system so that I can cope really effectively, w/o medicine.
To argue that it's any other case is sorta weird.
ADHD is a real problem, but the rate at which it's diagnosed, and the rate that kids are just thrown Ritalin and other drugs is alarming. A child's brain is a very plastic environment that is still developing. The impact it can have on the brain is not as predictable as a developed adult.
It would be foolish not to try more sensible approaches like diet/exercise/parenting FIRST, and if those have no impact, then consider alternatives. However, this is not how parents of today approach problems. They want the quick fix: give my child a pill/shot/instant gratification, so I can get back to my job.
Also, this article is from Sept 2010.. not exactly news is it?
I think this article understates one point. ADHD is already known to be highly heritable, which already tells you genes are involved.
Also, the first association between ADHD and polymorphisms affecting the dopamine transporter was found in 1995.
This study is nearly a year old. Even at that, it is not an example of the first eidence that ADHD is a genetic disorder. There's at least one other study from 2009 (http://www.research.chop.edu/publications/press/?ID=475) that had similar evidence.
This is a debate about a pseudoscientific norm set by a bunch of "experts" who evidently dislike children and have convinced millions of parents their children are sick because they fidget in class.
First, I do not believe ADHD is an disorder. It's a certainly a condition, but it's not an disorder. And so I say this: ADHD is a genetic advantage and not a generic disorder.
The term ADHD is meaningless. It is simply the level of activity deemed excessive by the "expert" making the diagnosis.
Interesting. Is there any way I can volunteer my DNA for them to have a play with? I was on Ritalin all through school.
"ADHD" is not a medical condition. It is the level of activity deemed excessive by whichever "expert" is making the diagnosis. It was voted into existence by a show of hands.
"ADHD" is not a medical condition. It is the level of activity deemed excessive by whichever "expert" is making the diagnosis. It was voted into existence by a show of hands.
The term ADHD is meaningless. It is simply the level of activity deemed excessive by the "expert" making the diagnosis.
Genetic? I highly doubt th... Squirrel!
