4. ADHD - Science =Truth, Opinion = Garbage

The world of the ADHD parent or any ADHDer is complicated and difficult already. We think we know how to handle a certain situation or a certain symptom after years of experimentation and hopefully some research. Then someone says something totally different from what we have learned and perhaps even makes fun of our framework for dealing with ADHD -  and we are thrown into doubt and confusion. This is particularly accelerated in the computer world. The internet gives an audience to anyone with an opinion, unlike research which can’t even be conducted without approval by some controlling and expert body of individuals who understand research, truth and science.

Some of these people with opinions are relatively harmless - and clearly they are speaking only for themselves. Of course, that’s their right. But sometimes we hear people who act like they are experts and are telling us things that make us doubt our hard-earned knowledge about ADHD. Recently, I received an email from a listener to my podcast who was concerned about someone else’s video that she had watched, which caused her to doubt all of her beliefs about her children’s ADHD. The supposed expert on this show was claiming that ADHD was a stress response. She also claimed that the lack of maternal parenting also caused ADHD. This expert also indicated that stimulant medication was only a “Band-Aid” and that it frequently caused panic attacks.

These opinions caused my listener to become concerned, thinking that perhaps her perception of ADHD as a neurologic condition that is strongly genetic was perhaps not correct. I reassured her that the research strongly indicates that ADHD is a neurologic condition - that there are differences in the biochemistry and even in the neuroanatomy of an ADHD brain compared to a typical brain. The heritability index of ADHD is 70 to 80%, which is extraordinarily high. That means that ADHD is inherited and runs in families. The biochemical research also indicates that ADHDers tend to have lower dopamine than neurotypicals (those who don’t have ADHD). Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in various brain functions including pleasure, motivation, and motor control. It’s released by neurons when you experience something enjoyable or beneficial  - and is associated with the brain’s reward system.

This whole episode indicates how important it is for us to be able to evaluate information accurately. Here is an example of misinterpretation which shows how far off-course things can get:  I remember from the 1960s when we had practitioners claiming that schizophrenia was caused by rejecting mothers, the so-called “schizophrenogenic” mother. This view of schizophrenia had a brief period of popularity before it was resoundingly disproven. But for a long time, mothers of schizophrenic patients were unnecessarily feeling guilty. In actuality, nothing they did or failed to do was a factor in the schizophrenia occurring in their child.

As members of the ADHD community, we all have to trust the established science. That science must be supported by significant research that consistently tells us what is truth. We have to avoid the opinion statements that are not supported by any factual data. We will always have to deal with those individuals who come up with some different approach that is not supported by research and only seems to work for them, but we certainly must return to believing established science.