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Comment by sheepybloke | Hacker News Reader

My wife was diagnosed with ADHD when she was very young, and this rise of people believing they have ADHD is something we talk about a lot. We think most of this comes from social media and ADHD memes. Many of the memes touch on things that are connected with being ADHD, but are more so just things that are human or are about living in the modern age with distractions and entertainment. People connect with these memes, and then have something that they can blame for when they forget to do the laundry or get distracted doing the dishes.

Like dexwiz says, we are not machines! And I think with the rise of social media and these relatable memes, it provides the perfect scapegoat for the distraction that is modern life.

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Not everybody was spotted and diagnosed at a young age. We can safely assume that a genetic condition like ADHD is evenly distributed through the population, hence we must assume that about 5% of adults of every single age-cohort are ADHD. I'd love to see data on the age-distribution of actual diagnosed adults, I'm sure we'd see a lot less than 5% for the older adults.

You can go a long way with undiagnosed ADHD but it will always hold you back. There's 60+ pensioner in the local self-help-group, he doesn't use the internet and uses and old Nokia. He was give a leaflet and after that a pill by a friend (don't do this!) and for the first time his mind cleared. He finished uni when he was young but never achieved much, never started a family; now is a few weeks away from a diagnosis and medication that will change his life. He wasn't the only one diagnosed as an adult in the group and it took me 42 years to figure that it's my mind working against me.

I wonder if it is like people saying "I have OCD" when they want things "just so" or do minor things like closing their car window after parking.

That's the example my wife always uses.

I have the conspiracy theory that big pharma is pushing those memes, and also psychedelics studies, to gain momentum.

Astroturfing is a real marketing technique

My apologies but I'd like to carve out the ADHD medication here saying that most people are misinformed. The same lawyer who did the "big tobacco" and "asbestos" lawsuits pushed the big Ritalin thing. They filed several class actions and all of them were shut down hard in court, which might have been a surprise to them given their previous success. The sleazy lawyers never undid the damage.

My conspiracy theory is ADHD meds conflict with the law industry's whole "ambulance chasing" business. They don't want people to drive safe on their meds so they don't fix it. It's probably just laziness because the law industry being overpaid and scummy pretend legal system failed to self-regulate their professionals.

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