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Comment by bendmorris | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that by:

>People thinking it’s not a real condition.

the person you're responding to meant statements like yours:

>Frankly, the symptoms you describe apply to pretty much everybody, and are just the things one deals with in life.

According to the NIH, prevalence of severe ADHD in children is around 4% [1]. This differs by degree from "the things one deals with in life" for most people - it's an extreme version that can be debilitating without treatment.

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit...

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You’re right. I didn’t like that bit of my comment, and was in the process of lopping it off when you were composing your reply. Apologies for not getting the edit done in time.

Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.

As a parent who has made this decision myself, I certainly wasn't "happy to" do it. But it's very clear to me that without medication, my child lacked control over his thoughts and actions, and it was affecting his life - school, friendships, etc. - to a degree that was very frustrating for him. He's happier and more successful now. And, it's not a "lifetime supply" for sure - many kids do grow out of it and stop requiring medication by the time they reach adulthood. Some don't, and they can decide where to go from there.

I have two children with ADHD and myself (non medicated). Having a child with ADHD is extremely hard. All we try and do is workout the way for them to navigate life with out destroying everything around them.

We haven’t had to medicate them yet but the decision would be a very considered one and weighed up to if it would change their lives for the better.

ADHD medication is perfectly safe and not addictive (at prescribed doses). If you don't want to take it, just don't do it.

Since the US makes it so hard to get (you have to renew your prescription every month) it's actually very likely you'll stop it.

For some values of “perfectly safe”.

From TFA: Qelbree "may increase suicidal thoughts and actions in some children with ADHD, especially within the first few months of treatment or when the dose is changed,"

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/topics/adhd/stronger-...

Tylenol is widely considered a safe drug even though overdose of 4x the normal dose is near certain death. You do have to watch out for these things.

In this case, medication tends to report silly things as side effects because they report every single thing the patients are experiencing. There's no frequency of reports here, but it could be just a few reports with no causation established.

I also have great hope for the psychedelic research that is starting to happen again. Anecdotally, I have highly improved focus control when under the influence of low doses of LSD or mushrooms (I prefer mushrooms because they feel more "organic", if that makes sense). I am preparing to begin a regular mushroom microdosing regimen, because that focus control does fade in-between experiences when I take 1g weekly. I'm not after the reality-altering properties of psychedelics (except the very rare use of DMT for a "kickstart", as the last big trip I had with that gave me six months of focus control and ADHD mitigation). I plan to take a quarter gram every other day.

> Mostly I’m alarmed that so many parents are happy to put their small children on a lifetime supply of medicine for something that’s not immediately life threatening.

I don't think you get it. My son can either be on medicine, or he can fail middle school, and high school and be uneducated. If you're volunteering to sit next to him, and redirect him to his work every 3 minutes, or pay for someone to do it, by all means, let me know. At the same time, he's brilliant, and can solve any problem he puts his mind to, and he can do the actual work, if he can focus on it.

Maybe re-think this without the judgement--good parents aren't happy about doing this. They are just less unhappy than the alternative.

This is exactly what it is like.

ADHD can be indirectly very life threatening. Untreated, it can affect every single aspect of a person's life. Even just society being a bit more forgiving of ADHD can improve that situation greatly. We really need to have a class of mental handicaps that are every bit as protected as physical handicaps. A sort of "mental ADA". This would obviously not include self-assessment simply because that would be too easy to game. But, for example, I was formally diagnosed with ADD/ADHD at the age of 8. Others in similar situations should absolutely be given affordances that others who don't need them don't get, because those affordances could actually be harmful to those who don't need them (similar to how stimulant medication is like speed to "neurotypical" people, yet it slows down those with ADHD). However, in the drive for "fairness", some insist that means treating everybody identically, in a "one size fits all" mentality, which disadvantages everyone who isn't neurotypical.

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