Question:
considers ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) as a mental
disorder. Personally I think that statement is Crap!
Answer:
I believe you said here that ADHD is *not* a mental disorder. Having
had
to deal with ADD (without Hyperactivity) for over 30 years prior to my TBI,
I *know* that it is a disabling mental disorder: with an very high IQ and
excellent opportunities/advantages, I kept screwing up and flunking out of
colleges until I was almost 30 years old. When I was about to graduate
with high honors I wrote my honors thesis on the topic, before it was
identified and labeled as ADD or ADHD, and well before I was diagnosed with
it. ADD is definitely mental and can be disabling -- ADHD is the more
extreme version, it's also mental and it can be quite disabling.
Your attitude about ADD/ADHD sounds like that expressed about us TBI
survivors by those who don't know who we are and what we have to deal with.
There are a lot of parallels between coping with ADD/ADHD and coping with
TBI. Also, many of the symptoms of TBI are also symptoms of ADD/ADHD:
poor memory, distractability, poor mental focus, some of the addictive
tendancies, and more.
I've also been on the ADDult listserver at maelstrom.stjohns.... Check
it
out, everythings the same as this listserver, except the name is ADDult
instead of tbi-sprt.
To start off I want to apologize to you, or anyone else on this list
suffering ADD/ADHD that I may have offended. After reading what I wrote its
true, I was harsh and made an uninformed statement....My intentions were
meant to make a point, but obviously I missed the mark.
Actually the point I was trying to make, was that a HUGE number of the
population has some type of "brain related dysfunction." When it comes to
insurance companies and people who suffer a TBI, they always use the
"pre-existing condition" rational to pass the blame. I know this for a
fact, because it's happening to me. In my humble opinion there seems to be
a very large gray area in medicine when it comes to defining what a brain
disorder is, and separating ones pre-existing symptoms Vs post-TBI
symptoms.
TBI symptoms can mimic, depression, manic depression, bipolar disorder's,
anxiety/panic disorder's
phobia's, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), schizophrenia (temporal
lobe seizures), dementia, and ADD/ADHD, OCD (obsessive compulsive
disorder), to name a few. Now is this a mess or what...
To add to this mess, what IS the criteria for a particular brain disorder?
How does the medical community differentiate between neurological
disorder's, psychiatric disorder's, mental illness, personality disorder's,
ect.? In fact the more questions I ask, the more confused I get... :-)
Finally Dennis, you should know that I too am a TBI survivor, and have been
on the TBI list since July of 1996. We "are" in the same boat.. Once again
I apologize if I offended you or anyone else. I'll do my best to choose my
words wisely, but cant promise I'll always be 100% successful.. :-)
