Yet another ADHD paper that I wrote for an English class. There seems to be no end to them. Not everything that appears here is necessarily confirmed scientific fact, as a large amount of it was drawn from my own real life experiences.

Over the last several years, advances in the medical field have allowed students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to go on to pursue higher levels of education. A few years earlier, however, the situation was very different. Students that exhibited symptoms that today would be diagnosed as ADD or ADHD were considered stupid or lazy. However, advances in the medical field have now allowed these students to not only succeed at school, but go on to pursue higher education. ADHD is a difficult condition to understand for someone that hasn’t lived with it. While reading this paper, you may notice things such as a lapse in the flow of the paper, or seemingly random jumps in thought. These aren’t unexpected when someone with as severe a case of ADHD as mine attempts to write such a paper. Unlike other papers, this one wasn’t written start to finish. In fact, this sentence was written after about ninety percent of the paper was already complete. Instead, I have a habit of jumping around, working on one part of the paper, then mid sentence jumping to a completely different section and writing something there.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. In short, it describes a person who has trouble focusing on one individual thing. Surprisingly, people diagnosed with ADHD tend to have a higher overall intelligence than those without it. Even with recent advancements and discoveries in the field, there isn’t very much solid information on the condition. The definition of the condition is very vague, and sometimes it’s suggested that the condition is simply a “blanket term” for a number of other afflictions. It’s also important to consider that is wasn’t until recently that ADHD began to be researched and understood, so it’s also possible that our understanding of it remains very limited.

While is was only in the last 50 years or so that ADHD began being diagnosed and treated in children, the idea of ADHD has been around for a long time, almost dating back to the year 500 BC. The Greek scientist Hippocrates described a condition similar to our modern definition of ADHD. In more modern times, ideas similar to ADHD were discussed and contemplated for almost the entirety of the twentieth century, but it wasn’t until the year 1980 that it was given it’s name, “Attention Deficit Disorder.” This was the first step toward identifying and treating the condition. Common medical treatments for ADHD included the prescription of Ritalin, a stimulant drug that helped attention deficit children to focus.

When these treatments for ADHD began, an interesting thing happened. Not only were children and students with ADHD able to perform on the same level as students without the condition, in many case, they outperformed those students. It had long been thought that ADHD students were intelligent, and this data seemed to back it up. It is often said that ADHD tends to walk “hand in hand” with above average intelligence, which would make sense as ADHD patients tended to have trouble focusing in classes that they probably considered boring. All of a sudden, once the condition was officially recognized and treated, countless opportunities were opened up for students that previously had performed very poorly in school.

ADHD raises a large amount of controversy as well. The first point that people raise, is that because ADHD students tend to have an overall higher level of intelligence, the problem isn’t any particular condition, but that the students are simply bored with their classwork. There is a fair amount of evidence to support this theory, as most ADHD students when given a proper challenge or something they are interested in, can maintain their concentration for hours if needed. The second issue that brings ADHD under fire is the accusation that it is simply being used as a “blanket diagnosis.” That is, doctors would simply diagnose any student that was having trouble in school as attention deficit and be done with it. This is a hard accusation to argue against, because it is true that ADHD students show a wide variety of symptoms, and as the diagnosis and treatment of the condition are fairly new developments, very little solid information about it is available.

I’ve been diagnosed with and treated for ADHD since the fifth grade. Prior to that year, I was often considered lazy when it came to school, and had historically received substandard grades. After going on Ritalin, an ADHD medication, my grades dramatically improved, and I have been on some form of ADHD medication ever since. Like any drug, Ritalin loses its effect after a while due to the body building up a resistance to the medication, so the only options to maintain its effectiveness is to increase the dosage, or switch to a different medication. While the medication certainly helps, it isn’t the end-all cure for the condition. While Ritalin and other drugs can help students such as myself to focus on their work, they don’t truly negate the effects of ADHD. As my doctor put it, Ritalin can help you focus on your schoolwork: but it can just as easily help you to focus on whatever you might be daydreaming about. Even when on my medication and working, I’m usually doing at least two or three other things at the same time. The end result is that it takes me longer to complete an assignment, because only a fraction of the time is put into actually working, rather than staring at a blank page while my mind wandered.

ADHD is fairly common in children, but less so in adults. Whether this is due to children outgrowing the condition as they get older, or adults simply coping better with the effects isn’t known. More and more however, adults aged eighteen and older are being treated for ADHD. Some of them are simply earlier diagnosed students that have grown older, but a fair number of them are diagnosed after they reach adulthood. This condition is sometimes referred to as “Adult ADD.” Until the 1970′s, researchers assumed that the condition disappeared during adolescence, and therefore ADHD didn’t affect adults. In 1978, the condition was officially recognized in adult patients. While ADHD in children is often recognized through hyperactivity and impulsiveness, the same is not true for adults, which is what makes the condition harder to recognize. Symptoms of Adult ADD typically include an overall inability to structure and organize tasks, and of course an inability to focus on uninteresting topics.

Before the diagnosis of ADHD, those students were often out of luck in later life, when it came time to attend college and find a career, but now more and more attention deficit students are showing up in classrooms. Following the recognition of Adult ADD, college students can now officially register as having a learning disability, and receive accommodations to help them succeed in a college environment. Several students that I have spoken to here have ADD, and after learning about some of the symptoms, a few more suspect they may have it, and have scheduled to be tested. The nature of Attention Deficit Disorder makes it hard for someone to recognize the condition in themselves, which is why a large number of college students and adults go without being diagnosed.

The changes over the last half-century, and specifically in the last few years, have helped students not just with ADHD, but with learning disabilities in general, continue on to higher education. By recognizing the condition early and seeking treatment, younger students are able to improve their performance in high school, making it possible for them to get into better colleges. This is important with ADHD, because oftentimes, the more a person with it is challenged, the easier time they have being able to focus and remain attentive. The fact that more attention deficit students are going on to college will have an interesting impact on the future, and that is attention deficit people in the workspace. Because it is often observed that ADHD students have alternate learning styles in the classroom, it goes to reason that an employee with ADHD would think and work in different ways that someone without. Only time will tell what impact this will have on the job market, but I’m wagering on a lot of projects that get put off until the last minute, just like this paper.