Posted by kid_A on July 2, 2001, at 11:13:30
In reply to Adult ADD? What are the symptoms?, posted by AMenz on July 2, 2001, at 9:40:18
I am going to posit an opinion that may or may not gain any sympathy, that in fact what we think of as ADD may not be an 'illness', but rather a response to early environmental stimuli...I think a lot of information is comming out now that is of the opinion that medication like lithium are over-prescribed for children with symptoms that are related to what we think of as ADD, attention deficit disorder.
What we call ADD relates a lot to the way that a child is raised by their parents. Studies showed that the greatest number of children who had ADD spent over 30 or so hours or more each week in a child care center, rather than with a parent.
Children who are said to have ADD may also just be of greater than average inteligence, and bored by the stimuli that they are receiving...
Lithium when perscribed to children does a good job of 'controlling' the ADD, but not a very good job of curing it... When the medication was stopped, the symptoms of ADD returned... The children are basically anesthetised by the medication they are taking...
So I dont think its correct to say that an adult can develop ADD... only in the broadest sense of the words... I think if these symptoms develop, they do so very early in a child's life, when our emotions are very fragile and require the proper rearing to develop normally. Non-acute atention deficit, despondance, lack of interest in anything for any length of time, could just be symptoms of good old 'regular' depression...
poster:kid_A
thread:68717
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010701/msgs/68725.html