Women’s issues When Your Spouse Has ADHD By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
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earing children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can strain marital relationships; however, when one of the spouses has ADHD, the marriage may also suffer. Some studies claim that the divorce rate among couples with one or both partners with ADHD is as high as 60 percent. “Imagine what it’s like with most challenges couples face such as lack of focus and inattentiveness,” said Patti Ronsvalle, licensed clinical social worker and owner of Ronsvalle Counseling Burger & Consulting in Brighton. “With diagnosis of ADHD, imagine what that’s like times 10 with what you usually live with.” Ronsvalle earned a master’s in social work and offers family, couples and individual counseling. She counsels couples affected by ADHD by avoiding blame casting and to understand how the disorder skews their perception of each other. A non-ADHD wife may feel like her ADHD husband neglects her, shirks his chores and behaves like a child for all his irresponsibility. The ADHD husband may feel like his wife nags him each time she reminds him of his obligations. “If a woman constantly harps on her husband to stay focused, she becomes the mother,” Ronsvalle said. “What kind of sexual relationship can you have? How can you have respect? That is the basis of a lot of divorces. It is the basis of why a lot of these marriages fail.”
Ronsvalle encourages them to identify their problems and work together to find solutions. For some couples, tools such as white boards, calendars, and the calendar alarm function of their cell phones can help prevent the ADHD partner from overlooking appointments and chores. “We find out what the lack is, like social skills, and teach them how to communicate,” Ronsvalle said. “If they don’t communicate well, we have them do journaling back and forth and pull it apart and say your communication has to look like this.” She also helps refocus the couple on what attracted them to each other in the first Kolb place. Gail Kolb, MD, owner of Coach for Change Unlimited in Rochester, has worked with many ADHD couples. She also said that counseling and coaching helps couples. “None of the couples I’ve worked with ended up divorcing but worked within the marriage to make things better,” she said. “I think the divorce rate is true for those who don’t reach out and get help. [Instead of divorcing] they can turn things around if they get help early on and don’t give up.” She said that in many cases, six to nine months of coaching offers sufficient help to a couple with ADHD, though some need occasional, ongoing support. Audrey M. Berger, PhD., is a licensed psychologist and life coach at a self-named practice and at Turn-
ing Point Life Coaching in Rochester. She believes that the rate of divorce declines among ADHD couples “once people understand the presence of ADHD and know what it means,” she said. “They’re in a position to do something about it.” Faltering couples may be in denial or simply not know what causes their relationship problems. “If one has ADHD Ronsvalle and one doesn’t, what you have is two people whose brains operate very, very differently.” She described a non-ADHD person as more logical, methodical and goal-oriented. Someone with ADHD tends to think that everything is equally as important, and exhibit remarkable creativity and problem-solving skills. With that comes a lack of focus, time management and ability to cope with a stimulating environment. In the beginning, the non-ADHD partner views the ADHD partner as spontaneous, zany and living in the moment. “That’s fun when you’re dating, but not so much when you’re married,” Berger said. “One of the unusual things
with the ADHD situation is that even though they are not well focused a lot of times, that manifests in distractions. There’s a flip side that when they are very stimulated, they can be hyper-focused. What is courtship but highly stimulating?” After their whirlwind courtship results in marriage, the ADHD partner often shifts focus to something new: work, hobbies or other people. Of course every couple phases from the honeymoon stage to everyday, mundane life, but ADHD exaggerates that shift. The non-ADHD spouse feels ignored. The ADHD spouse may feel overwhelmed because there’s suddenly a lot of responsibilities and their spontaneity may not be as valued. Berger said that medication is “worth considering, even if on a trial basis. Sometimes medication can help mitigate these symptoms. It’s like depression. Medication isn’t enough sometimes, but it’s hard to get treatment jumpstarted sometimes without it.” As the other therapists stated, Berger said that counseling can facilitate the changes necessary to save and strengthen the marriage. “The couple needs to stop seeing each other as the adversary,” she said. “They need to see it as a problem solving issue and work together to come up with strategies. They have to be different than the strategies that work for non-ADHD couples.”
C-section: Sutures or Staples? Settling a long-time debate, researchers show that sewing up a C-section incision with sutures leads to fewer complications than using surgical staples
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n the largest study to date comparing sutures (stitches) vs. surgical staples for closing a C-section, researchers found a 57 percent decrease in wound complications in women who were sutured vs. those who received staples. By carefully addressing the concerns that previous studies had raised, the research shows a clear benefit of sutures for women. Page 16
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“There has been ongoing debate in the field about the use of sutures versus staples,” says senior author, physician Vincenzo Berghella, who serves as director of maternal fetal medicine in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Thomas Jefferson University. He added, “C-sections are a common procedure in the United States, and yet we still haven’t established the best
way to close these incisions.” “This study was designed to examine whether the evidence supports a specific closure method to decrease wound complications,” says first author, physician Dhanya Mackeen. “This study clearly shows that women who undergo C-section have fewer wound complications after suture closure than after staple closure,” she adds.
IN GOOD HEALTH – Rochester / Genesee Valley Healthcare Newspaper • October 2014
Cesarean sections account for about a third of all deliveries in the United States (in China that number is as high as 46 percent). A 2013 study showed that over 50 percent of doctors prefer to use staples over sutures, for ease of use, speed of the procedure, and for closing deeper incisions such as those in overweight women.