Article 3: What is ADHD?
I
magine yourself driving a car. You are making your way along a narrow, winding, mountain road. You steer the car around curve after curve high above the valley floor that stretches out below you. To your left is the mountainside, to your right a steep dropoff. There is no guardrail. You are driving at 60 mph, and your car has no brakes. Now, imagine the home screen of a laptop computer. There are dozens of windows open and dozens more files saved to the desktop. There are so many tabs and files open, that you struggle to read their labels. Among all of these, you have to find a single window, but your search function is disabled. You try your best to sort through it all, closing out what you know isn’t relevant. Every time you close one window, however, two more randomly open. Now, imagine you have a smart phone. Notifications for every single app on the phone have been turned on, and each has been assigned a unique ringtone. Every news alert, text message, social media like and follow, advertisement, and update sets your phone buzzing. It is a cacophony of ringtones, and the picture on your home screen is buried under a steady stream of notifications resembling a stock ticker. Although no metaphor can truly capture his dayto-day experience, each of these hints at what it is like inside the mind of Louis, a child with attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) defines ADHD as “a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivityimpulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.” Inattention describes a tendency for the mind to wander, to have difficulty focusing, and to be generally disorganized. These tendencies are involuntary. A hyperactive person is always moving around, without regard to (or understanding of) whether it is an appropriate time to do so. Fidgeting, restlessness, and excessive talking are also signs of hyperactivity. This feature of a person with ADHD can be particularly taxing on those around them and in children can lead to conflict with peers. Some children exhibit a mixture of inattention and hyperactivity. Impulsivity causes a person to act without thinking about potential consequences and to seek out instant gratification. The impulsive person often engages in risky behavior and does not pick up on social cues or norms. This was the experience of Louis. Even in preschool, he was a hyperactive child who found it
6
almost impossible to sit still for any extended period of time. While playing with his peers, his attention would dissolve quickly, and he would abandon one group for another unexpectedly, forcing himself into the middle of a game without being invited or waiting his turn. He would often run around the classroom during quiet play times, and frequently blurt out comments in the middle of story time, which were often off-topic. Louis also struggled with inattentiveness. He never seemed to be listening when spoken to, which was frequently interpreted as defiance. The fact that he often didn’t follow through on instructions reinforced the perception that he was willfully ignoring adults and authority figures. In fact, Louis’s mind was like the driver of that car on the mountain pass. At times it was so singularly focused on keeping the car on the road, so to speak, that it tuned out any input it considered a distraction. Louis avoided tasks that required sustained focus, like sitting down quietly in a circle with his classmates for story time, because his brain was already taxed by the amount of information it had to process in any given moment. While this and the other metaphors above attempt to capture the feeling of living with ADHD, the reasons behind it are more scientific. ADHD is a complicated neurological disorder. Studies have shown that people with ADHD have low levels of norepinephrine, which is a neurotransmitter
William Harrison, Ph.D. Social Development Psychologist Gateway’s Middle School
SPECIAL REPORT
