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Company Claims EEG Scans Can Help Identify ADHD
Al writes "Technology Review has an article about a company hoping to expand the clinical use of electroencephalography. Thanks to better sensor technologies, data-processing techniques, and more detailed knowledge of the brain, EEG is expanding into completely new areas. A startup called ElMindA, is developing an EEG system to help doctors diagnose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Scientists have also used ElMindA's system to characterize brain-activity patterns in patients with ADHD, identifying statistical parameters that differ between normal people and those with ADHD." If "normal people" can sit through high-school classes without being distracted and grumpy, count me out.
Haven't people realized by now that ADHD is nothing more than a symptom of our education system and not a syndrome in and of itself?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
ADD isn't necessarily about school; it's about having the ability to pay attention and structure thoughts into actions. I was diagnosed with ADD at a young age and thought it was bullshit until I got to college because I was smart enough that I didn't need to pay attention to get good grades. When the ideas I needed to pick up were complex enough that I couldn't infer them on my own (data structures, anyone?), I noticed that I would listen intently to my professor in a class I enjoyed and come out with no idea what we just talked about.
Now in the "adult" world (it disappoints me that many adult are overgrown children), I know ADD is real because I'm certainly smart enough to write code that implements business rules, but I often lose track of important conversations. I constantly end up asking not for clarification of a topic, but just to hear things restated verbatim because the words went in one ear and out the other.
Your psychiatrist may be an irresponsible dirtbag that just throws stimulants at everything that comes through his door; incompetence is rampant in every profession. This does not mean that the body of established evidence for the existence and treatment of ADD is wrong.
One problem is the "no child left behind" philosophy, which can also equate to "no child too far ahead"
-- gid
As a former teacher, I can agree that there are some poor teachers, but there are also poor mechanics, ditch diggers, and doctors. Remember 50% of the doctors (or teachers) are below average. That being said, 50% of the PARENTS are below average. My point is that a teacher only has a child for a max of 6 hrs per day or 30 hrs per week. In today's world there are so many couples that spend the "required" 6 weeks at home to qualify them as a parent and then get daycare, grandma, etc to raise their child. Then are disappointed when the child has no direction. ADD becomes a quick solution. By labeling ADD parents are relieved of their responsibility because now their child has a disease. Some actually do! Many don't. So before we hang the education system I ask: Are you willing to spend more on education to attract better quality teachers? And, are you willing to take more responsibility for your own childs actions and development?
I was going to write a well thought out post about how I was also diagnosed with ADHD, but then I went outside to ride bikes instead.
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
My own anecdotes.
I do think that it's getting over diagnosed these days, but I was diagnosed with it "back in the day". I thank my parents when I can for not putting me on anything.
Even when I'm running the meetings I will find I will stare directly at the person talking and have no clue what they were talking about because in the last 30 seconds my mind has been on 50 different subjects, mostly about other work I'm doing.
ADHD is akin to having a little buzzer in your head that tells you you have to switch tasks or at least what you're thinking about. Some (good) days the timer is set to a nice 5 minutes. Meaning I can get in a solid 5 minutes of programming. Worst case days it's set at 30 seconds. Meaning every 30 seconds I have to switch what I'm either thinking about or doing. If I'm in the middle of a line of code. I have to check my e-mail. Go to the bathroom. Look around the room. Wonder why the light in that socket is out. Read the posters in my cube. Look at other peoples posters. EVERY 30 SECONDS. Having concurrent 'things' going helps. (Watching movies, etc) because I can listen to the movie and still keep working on what I'm working on.
I agree, it's hard for even 'normal' people to concentrate on boring stuff. The difference is that there are times that there are things I enjoy and should be concentrating on. Worst case scenario is sex. (And this should trigger some +5 Funny's at my expense) But there are some times where my mind is jumping to what is that noise downstairs, did I switch over the laundry, what am I having for dinner, etc. And trust me, it's not fun.
I'm looking at going back to grad school, and I honestly don't think I'd be able to do it. I'm going to talk to my primary care physician and see if I can test out some of the ADHD drugs. If they improve my concentration at work. I just don't want something that takes a while to 'build up'. I more or less want to be able to say "this is a concentration day" pop a pill in the morning and concentrate at work, and on the weekends be able to do my own thing.
(Since starting this post. I've responded to 2 business & 4 personal e-mails. Checked when the best time to plant garlic is (came up this weekend). Updated the mysql pages for a website I run. Opened 3 other php files. Opened the Facebook API page. And launched 2 instances of Matlab. I have 3 rows in my Windows task bar full.)
I'm an adult with AD(no H)D.
It would've been great if I'd been eating sugar or food coloring (had a healthy diet), or not exercising (always did), or watching too much TV (didn't as a kid, didn't have time to as an adult because I was always behind). It would've been great if my teachers were boring, or if my college classes were terrible, or my first jobs out of college were drone-work.
But they weren't, because ADHD is real. ADHD is what's left after all the denial and blame of external factors (which 99% of your peers can handle just fine, funny that) are removed. ADHD isn't some side-effect of soul-sucking corporate life: it's what might get you fired from the most energizing and exciting job you've found because you can't concentrate no matter how hard you try.
That's the problem with ADD: you can't concentrate on things you love, even when you're doing everything right. I'd be eating good foods (straight from the farmer's market) and exercising and taking tai chi and have half the concentration of people who lived off of ramen and jelly beans.
If you're an adult who might have ADD (or parents of a child with it), I encourage you to talk with adults who have ADD and are dealing with it effectively. Yes, I dislike having to take ritalin, but uncontrolled ADD was far, far worse.
The anti-meds (often scientology) crowd talks about kids being zombies on ritalin. You know what makes a person a zombie? Not having a life because it takes you 3-4 hours to do what fellow students can do in an hour. Putting in 12 hour days to get 8 hours worth of work done. Not being able to sleep for fear of when the axe is going to fall because you're permanently behind on everything.
Once I started on ritalin, I found what it was like to get a day's work done in a day, to have time to jump on new projects because I could accurately predict I had the time to work on them, to be able to contribute to meetings--to brainstorm not brainfog--rather than feel permanently 10 minutes behind.
Once I started on ritalin, I actually knew what it felt like to concentrate-- to look at a project and quickly set up planning to get it done efficiently (rather than start off the afternoon looking for a stamp and end the afternoon repainting the table, sans stamp, because everything was distracting and every project has "Priority 1"). Heck, if I forget my ritalin I can get by--not my best but much better than my pre-ritalin days--because I know what concentration and focus is.
Some ADD kids can get by in high-school or even community college without medications because their anti-meds parents follow them around to keep discipline, or because they're really smart and high-school never asks that much of you. But what happens when you're at college and everyone else is just as smart, and doesn't have (untreated) ADD? What happens when you've got a dream-job and your parents can't be whispering encouragement every half hour?
At some point everything external is what it should be, and you're still not able to focus. And it'll be time to deal with the reality of ADD. It's a brain thing, and modern medicine can help. Talk to your doctor, but before that talk to people who've been through this.