What is ADHD?
ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is a term doctors use to encompass all attention deficit disorders. It's a very common impairing neuro-psychiatric disorder that affects you throughout your life.
How is ADHD diagnosed?
For a diagnosis of ADHD, you have to be experiencing either inattentive symptoms or hyperactive/impulsive symptoms. You may have both or have the combination of the two, which is the most common.
The second thing is that the symptoms must cause trouble. The impairment must occur in at least two settings, be that at school or work, at home or in social settings.
The third thing is that symptoms have to begin in childhood, but that doesn't mean that you have to be diagnosed as a child. Many individuals have symptoms that start in childhood, but the social structures created by school and parents have helped to hide the disorder. As people get older, they go from being managed by others to managing themselves or managing others. This can prove to be very difficult for someone who has ADHD.
The fourth thing is that the symptoms have to be from ADHD and not another disorder.
Why do people think of ADHD as a childhood disorder?
One reason may be that the disorder’s criteria uses childhood symptoms and many people don’t think about how the symptoms may change and manifest in adulthood. For example, inattentive symptoms become much more prominent for adults as compared to the hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. Adults know that it's not appropriate to climb on top of a desk and runs around at the office.
