Columbia University professor Alexandra Carter finds kayaking to be a good metaphor for navigating your career.
When Columbia University law professor Alexandra Carter teaches people to negotiate, she shows them a picture of a kayak navigating a series of sea caves. It seems an unlikely metaphor, but the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of negotiate is “to successfully travel along or over.”
She loves the metaphor because to get anywhere in a kayak, you need the right information and must steer, which comes by paddling with a steady rhythm. Outside forces can also carry you away. “Everything you see, hear and feel helps you to steer with accuracy toward your goal,” she writes in her recent book Ask for More.
Translate the kayak to your career, and she says the first lesson is that you don’t wait for a contract to come due with a client or the end of the year to negotiate salary with your boss. Instead, you are continuously piloting those relationships in every conversation you have. Also, you need the right information to steer you toward your goal, which comes by asking questions.
The core of her approach are 10 questions, the first five to ask of yourself and the next five of the other party. Those first five, which she calls “the mirror,” are:
What’s the problem I want to solve? Negotiations, after all, are about steering. Most people figure the fun part of negotiations is figuring out the answer, but the juicy part is defining your problem.
What do I need? People often prepare for negotiations by thinking about their worst case, bottom line for a deal. But she says research shows those who instead focus on identifying their goals get more from negotiations, especially if their aspirations are optimistic, specific and justifiable.
What do I feel? Feelings are facts. They are real and must be dealt with in any negotiation.
How have I handled this successfully in the past? Considering a past success boosts confidence and helps you to return to the successful mindset from that previous time, allowing you to access your inner wisdom and generate helpful ideas.
What’s the first step? There may be many issues on the table in the negotiation. Which one should you start with? Make sure you are likely to have success with it, so you can build momentum.
Now shift your eyes from the mirror to “the window” and ask these five questions to work with the other party:
Tell me … ? Cast a wide net by asking that person to share their view of the goal or problem that brought you together, any important details relating to it, their feelings and concerns, and anything else they feel like adding. “No question unlocks trust, creativity, understanding and mind-blowing solutions like ‘Tell me,’” she says. Sometimes the issue is not what you thought.
What do you need? This can be a game-changer, helping to dig underneath the other person’s demands and figure out what is driving them.
What are your concerns? This not only gives you information that you can use in the discussions but also makes the other person feel heard. If concerns are left unsaid, the negotiation will likely end unresolved.
How have you handled this successfully in the past? Again you travel back in time, but this time encouraging the other person to remember ways in which they have handled similar challenges successfully. “It triggers our memory bank of experiences to allow us to expand our pie of potential options for our current situation,” she says.
What’s the first step? You don’t have to accept what they say, but by asking you increase the chance some option they offer fits with your needs.
So get in your figurative kayak, armed with questions rather than paddles, and move ahead.
Quick hits
If you unexpectedly find 15 minutes in your day, what do you do with it? It’s unlikely your reaction was the same as renowned fashion designer Phillip Lim: “I just sit still and do nothing. … This is the ultimate luxury.”
With the future so uncertain, London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra recommends in Harvard Business Review conjuring up a diverse portfolio of options rather than sticking single-mindedly to one: “Today, more than ever, the path to your next career will be circuitous.”
The hardest thing of getting things done is doing one thing at a time, says career coach Dan Rockwell. The second hardest part of getting things done is choosing the right task.
Consultant John Linkner says you can sell better if you fill in the blanks on these three statements: After working with me, customers will have no more _____. After working with me, customers will have a good deal more _____. After working with me customers will have less _____.
To quickly open the Explorer window in Windows 10 hit Win+E on the keyboard.
Have ADHD? Know someone with ADHD? Want to learn more? You’re in the right place! We post videos with tips, tricks and insights into the ADHD brain. This channel is my ADHD toolbox — a place to keep all the strategies I’ve learned about having and living with ADHD. It’s also grown into an amazing community of brains (and hearts!) who support and help each other. Anyone looking to learn more about ADHD is welcome here!
Here at HowToADHD we aim to provide a safe, respectful, and welcoming community that help each other out. Whether you are a Brain, a Heart, or simply someone curious about ADHD, don’t worry! Everyone is welcome!
Don’t know where to start? Try here!
Some things about ADHD:
ADHD is a common neuro-developmental disorder that is incurable, but highly treatable. ADHD is also one of the most researched mental disorders, and has many available treatments, such as stimulant and non-stimulant medications, cognitive behavioral therapy, ADHD coaching and strategies such as mindfulness meditation and exercise.
It’s also important to remember that ADHD isn’t the same for everyone! There are 3 different presentations (primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive-impulsive, and a combination of both). ADHD is also on a spectrum — it ranges from mild to severe — and it is often accompanied by other conditions like anxiety or depression and learning disabilities like dyslexia. Therefore, what works for one ADHDer may not be right for others, but most ADHD brains benefit from a combination of treatment strategies. Medication is not a cure all answer!
Most importantly: Jessica is not a medical professional, nor does she claim to be one.
ADHD can only be diagnosed by a medical professional!
Skillfully used, an informational interview is one of the most valuable sources of occupational information. While it may cover some of the same ground as printed material or information on a company website, it presents opportunities for an intimate and flexible inside view of a job field unmatched by other sources. The informational interview communicates the first hand experiences and impressions of someone in the occupation, and is directed by your questions.
Stressless Interviewing
An informational interview is less stressful for both you and the employer than a typical job interview. You are the one in control. Questions can be asked that may not be strategic during a first interview (i.e., questions regarding salary, benefits, vacation). You can discuss what is done on a day-to-day basis and relate it to your own interests and feelings. Beyond the advantages of gaining valuable career information, the informational interview provides the opportunity to build self-confidence and to improve your ability to handle a job interview.
How to Conduct an Informational Interview
You should regard each interview as a business appointment and conduct yourself in a professional manner. If you have made clear, in advance, the explicit purpose of your interview you will, in all probability, find your contact an interested and helpful person. Remember the appointment time and appear promptly for your interview. You should neither be too casually dressed nor overdressed. Regular business attire is appropriate. Be sure you know the name of the person you are meeting, the correct pronunciation of his/her name, and the title of his/her position.
Informational Interview Questions to Ask
Because there are so many questions you can ask in the informational interview, individuals sometimes take notes during the meeting. A limited amount of note-taking is justified provided that your contact is agreeable and that you don’t interrupt communication between the two of you.
Sketch out a brief outline of the topics covered and the information gained as soon as possible after the interview. This will require only a few minutes, and will insure that you remember the important points discussed. Later, working from your outline, you can construct a more detailed report of the interview.
Follow Up With a Thank You Note
Write a thank you note to the people you have interviewed. Report back to them if you have followed up on any suggestions. By building strong rapport with career contacts you enhance the likelihood that they will offer assistance with your job search when you are ready for the next step in the job search process.
Everyone has personal challenges of one sort or another that may interfere with job performance.
There are no ADHD-friendly jobs.
Sorry to be so blunt, but people send email all the time asking “What is a good job for an ADHD person?,” as if all people with ADHD have the same interests and abilities. Sorry. Now that we have cleared that up, let’s move on.
There are no jobs that ADHD would prevent someone from doing. Just as there is no one “perfect” job that fits all ADHD people, there is also no limit to the things that an ADHD person can accomplish. For example, the idea that someone with ADHD should avoid detail work such as accounting simply is not true. There are accountants who have ADHD. There may be other reasons why you can’t bean accountant, or a salesman, or a respiratory therapist, but being ADHD is not one of them.
“Everyone has personal challenges of one sort or another that may interfere with job performance,” says Wilma Fellman, a career counselor and author of the book Finding a Career That Works for You. “Instead of tossing aside an otherwise great idea for a career because of the threat of challenges, work with someone who can help develop strategies, modifications, and accommodations that might make it a good match for you.”
In other words, don’t give up.
Find Out What You Want To Do
Much has been written about job accommodations for people who have ADHD. In fact, ADHD is included in the American’s with Disabilities Act, which means that employers are required to provide “reasonable accommodations” for those who have been diagnosed. Of course, getting accommodations from your employer means that you have to tell them about your ADHD, which may create more problems than it solves. Some people who disclose their ADHD find that their employers perception of them changes almost immediately, and not always for the better.
Rather than depending on someone else to provide accommodations for you, Fellman recommends being more proactive and choosing a career that works for you. “Understanding your career interests and finding a job that matches these interests will improve your chances of being happy and successful in the career you select,” she says.
A lot of the problems that ADHD people have as students comes about because we are forced to sit in classes that either don’t hold our interest or don’t match up well with our abilities. Why force yourself into a career that is just more of the same? Adults have more freedom than children. You don’t have to feel like a square peg being hammered into a round hole.
How many careers can you name? A dozen? Maybe 100, if you really try? The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, published by the U.S.Department of Labor, lists over 27,000 occupations, covering nearly all job descriptions available in the United States. Many of these are jobs you probably never heard of and certainly haven’t considered as a possible career. But they exist, and you would probably be interested in several of them, if you knew you had those options.
Turning Things Around
If you have AD/HD, then you know that it affects your behavior and your abilities to do certain things. On the job, ADHD can show up as clowning around, not appearing to take things seriously, missed deadlines or in other ways that could cause potential problems between you and your employer.
Lynn Weiss, Ph.D., author of A.D.D. On The Job, believes that many of these behaviors can be used to work in your favor in the workplace. “Remember,” she says, “although your ADD-related behaviors can cause problems in a work environment, they can also be used in a constructive way to your advantage.”
As an example, Dr. Weiss talks about being extra sensitive to criticism, a trait that is very common among people who have ADHD. “Being hypersensitive is difficult and sometimes painful. But it does have a flip side that can serve as a tremendous asset for you in the workplace: a keen sense of intuition.” She continues: “Most of the business world’s top salespeople have good intuition, often called a gut-level feeling. For example, successful salespeople seem to just know with whom to spend their time, when to close a deal, and what the other person needs in order to be satisfied. Believing in and depending on this sense of intuition pays rich dividends.”
Again, successful ADHD people are those who have learned to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. These people don’t force themselves into a positions that don’t fit. Instead, they find or create situations that allow them to make the most of their abilities.
Jeffrey Mayer, author of Success is a Journey, Time Management for Dummies, and other books about succeeding in business, writes that all successful people share five characteristics:
They have a dream.
They have a plan.
They have specific knowledge or training.
They’re willing to work hard.
They don’t take no for an answer.
You can find a career that works for you. Now, just go do it!
Last June, Home Cents looked at the various free online tools available to manage your household budget and keep track of your saving, spending and investing habits. In the past year, many new websites for managing your personal finances have emerged, two well-known services have consolidated, and this week RBC became the first Canadian bank to launch a budgeting tool, so it’s time to take another look at the best of the applications out there.
The high-profile budget tool news of the year was the acquisition of award-winning startup Mint.com by industry leader Intuit, maker of the popularQuicken tool. Intuit’s basic software for home use – Quicken Cash Manager 2010 – is still available from Intuit for $44.99. Although it is a desktop application, you can use the Web Connect feature to download your bank and credit card transactions directly into Quicken. However, the free Quicken Online application that many Canadians enjoyed has now been replaced by the Mint.com product. The Intuit team promised that the best of both applications would be combined in Mint.com. Sadly, the ability to access Canadian banks and some Canadian credit cards did not make the migration from Quicken to the new tool.
For Canadians looking for free personal finance tools online, it is a challenge to find one that can integrate with our banks and credit cards.
One that does and does it well is Wesabe. The free service offers functionality similar to that found in Mint.com, but you can sync your banking data from most large Canadian banks. If you find your financial institution is not included, you can request that Wesabe add it and it will if the financial institution provides an “export” or “download your accounts” option in a friendly format. I was able to automatically upload my banking and credit card transactions and quickly start tracking my spending habits. The program defaulted to U.S. currency, but I was able to change it to Canadian in my personal settings.
moneyStrands is another contender for Canadians. The site launched at the start of 2009, but became more accessible to Canadians over the past few months. When you sign up for an account, you can plug in your contact information, including postal code, and move on to choosing your financial institution. The major Canadian banks are available and you can get details from your online bank and card accounts to give you an instant overview of your spending. Earlier this month, moneyStrands won a Webby award in the banking/bill paying category, giving it some street cred.
Although both Wesabe and moneyStrands are secure, you may not be comfortable linking your bank account directly to the site. If you want to use a free online tool but would prefer to manually input your information, you can try BudgetPulse. It lets you organize your cash flow, expenses and bank accounts in one place, and has easy-to-understand charts and graphs that let you see how you’re spending your money month to month. You can personalize your budget by selecting your preferred currency type and timezone.
The three decades since mindfulness meditation was first found to help with anxiety, chronic pain and depression have seen the reversal of a trend that goes back over a century. When Freud founded psychotherapy as “a middle way between philosophy and medicine,” he took pains to keep it on the scientific side of the modern gulf between science and religion. He did this in part by basing his insights on evolutionary neurobiology, and in part by distancing his psychology from its sources in the spiritual philosophy of Romanticism.
Sadly, in cutting his “new science” away from its spiritual roots, he felt a need to jettison not just myth and ritual but contemplative states and practices too. Though spiritually minded analysts like Carl Jung warned this was throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Freud’s rejection of all things spiritual came to earmark mainstream psychotherapy. Jung’s dream was that psychotherapy would not only work as a clinical art to heal mental suffering but also as a spiritual science to help build the best in our nature. The recent film, “A Dangerous Method,” dramatizes with telling accuracy Freud’s break with Jung and the rift this caused in modern psychology.
Fast forward to the present. The more mindfulness has been proven to enhance attention, empathic attunement and neuroplasticity, the more it has found its way into traditional psychotherapy and new cognitive therapies. As this simple technique has made waves in psychotherapy, it has raised a groundswell of interest among researchers and clinicians in contemplative methods in general and Buddhist psychology in particular.
Of course, mindfulness did not turn the anti-contemplative tide of mainstream therapy all by itself. It helped catalyze a complex reaction fueled by new findings in evolutionary biology, the neuroscience of plasticity and emotion, developmental psychology and positive psychology, all of which have converged in a new view of human nature as far more malleable and sociable than we thought. Buttressed by a growing body of research on meditation and yoga, this new consensus has begun to bridge the gulf between science and spirituality. Where the split faces of modern culture are starting to reunite is in two emerging fields for the scientific study and clinical application of humanity’s ancient contemplative traditions: contemplative neuroscience and contemplative psychotherapy.
As clients and therapists have grown more curious about the traditional practice behind mindfulness, they’ve learned that it comes embedded in a complex psychology all its own, including integrated disciplines of cognitive self-analysis, emotional self-healing and behavioral life-change. This second wave of influence has brought mounting awareness of the scientific tradition of classical Buddhist psychology and its core disciplines. With this, the tide has shifted away from simply grafting mindfulness into conventional therapies, toward a fuller confluence of Buddhist and Western psychology.
A vibrant new field blending meditative insights and tools with current neuroscience, contemplative psychotherapy represents a turning of the modern tide away from contemplative methods. And as Buddhist contemplative science has been a catalyst in this turn thus far, it seems likely to play a more influential role in years to come. This is no accident, but reflects Buddhism’s unique bent as a religion which seeks to awaken the human spirit less by myth and ritual than by therapeutic philosophy and contemplative psychology.
Fortunately, the rise of contemplative psychotherapy also comes at a watershed moment in the history of the West’s encounter with Asian Buddhism. As neuroscientists and psychotherapists turn toward contemplative science and practice, Western and Asian scholars of Buddhism for the first time are giving us access to the long isolated Buddhism of Tibet. This most recent confluence seems likely to give rise to a third wave in the convergence of Buddhist and Western psychology, for several reasons.
First, Tibetan civilization preserves in its final form the ancient Buddhist tradition that was most concerned with bringing contemplative tools to lay people in everyday life. This was the socially engaged tradition linked with the rise of the world’s first university at Nalanda, a world-class institution which became India’s beacon of liberative education and a think-tank for contemplative civilization throughout Asia. The second reason is that the Nalanda tradition was and is both scientifically rigorous and psychologically minded. Its core curriculum assumes that success in secular and religious life both require mastery of scientific knowledge and empirical methods, especially the insights and methods of psychology. The third reason is that this tradition is not just universal but comprehensive, enhancing mindfulness and loving kindness with a whole range of industrial-strength tools for building compassion, altruism and inspired leadership in a stress-driven world.
Unfortunately, there’s a rub. Because it forged the religious practice of Indian yoga into a human science of spirituality, the Nalanda legacy is not only the most modern and scientific of Buddhist traditions, but ironically also the one that seems most religious! The challenge contemplative therapists face in integrating its rich archetypal imagery and transformational arts is reminiscent of those faced by analysts like Jung.
Can powerful, mind-altering contemplative states and methods be harnessed to the therapeutic work of building confident, caring and inspired new selves, while staying grounded in objective science and reproducible methods?
Fortunately for us all, this challenge is far simpler in our day than it was only decades ago. Brain science has progressed so dramatically that we now understand how empathy and altruism, archetypal imagery and transmuting affects like joy and bliss work. And direct access to the living masters of the Nalanda tradition offers the time-tested perspective and methodology we need to make the work of reinventing ourselves for interdependence eminently safe, reliable and reproducible. Given the fast-shifting tides of science and civilization, contemplative psychotherapy seems ideally poised now to realize Jung’s dream, with a rigor that would have satisfied even Freud.
At University of Vermont, above, staff role play with students with mental health issues to prepare them to negotiate with professors.
Earlier this semester, college senior Leah Nelson emailed one of her instructors to ask for extra time to complete a paper. “I have been going through a rough patch lately and am making the decision to take care of myself this week,” Ms. Nelson wrote. Her mental health, she continued, would “take priority over everything else.”
Ms. Nelson, a 21-year-old student at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, struggles with depression. Her symptoms often flare when exams and papers pile up. She says the timing of a suicide attempt in March of 2010, when she took an overdose of Tylenol, was influenced by the pressure of the three exams and paper due she had that week.
As mental health problems become less stigmatizing, more college students are comfortable asking their professors for test extensions and excused absences due to bouts of depression and panic attacks. Andrea Petersen has details on Lunch Break.
Ms. Nelson is one of a growing number of college students asking for wiggle room with their academic workloads due to mental health issues.
In some cases, students make direct pleas to professors. In others, students work through their university’s disability office to receive official academic “accommodations.” These can include extra time for exams, the opportunity to take tests in a quiet room, or flexibility with class attendance and assignment deadlines.
Schools are required to extend “reasonable accommodations” for students with documented disabilities—including psychological ones—to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
A student group devoted to reducing stigma around mental illness is on 325 campuses. A backpack, pictured, reads ‘1,100 students die by suicide each year.’
The Other College Application Process
To qualify for academic accommodations, most schools require students with mental health issues to go through a fairly extensive application process. It generally includes:
•A recent evaluation from a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker.
•A disorder included in the DSM-IV, the primary handbook for diagnosing mental illnesses.
•A professional assessment of how the disorder affects the student academically and why specific accommodations are needed.
•There is often a deadline for applying: Some schools require applications at the beginning of the semester. Some require students to apply a certain number of days before the accommodations are necessary, say, two weeks before an exam where they’ll need more time.
But there’s hand-wringing among university administrators and faculty about how to support college students with mental health issues while making sure young adults progress academically. One of the goals of college, after all, is to prepare students for the working world. And not every boss may be OK with a blown deadline for a critical client report, no matter the reason. Professors also want to make sure they’re being fair to all students.
“There’s the danger that we take too much care and when they hit the real world that same kind of support isn’t there,” says David Cozzens, dean of students and associate vice president of student affairs at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Some formal accommodations, like additional test time, are fairly standard across universities and apply to students with physical and learning disabilities, too. But, schools diverge widely on formal accommodations for flexibility with assignment deadlines, class attendance and participation. Some schools leave it up to individual instructors. Others intervene more directly on students’ behalf.
Schools say they are seeing a rise in the number of students registering with their disability offices due to psychological problems. At Pace University in New York, the number of requests for accommodations from students with disabilities related to psychological disorders tripled in the last three years.
Leah Nelson, right, a University of Connecticut student, walks on campus with friend Kylie Angell. Ms. Nelson struggles with depression and works with professors to manage her workload.
At the University of Texas at Austin, 33% of the 1,687 students that registered with the disability services office during the spring 2011 semester listed psychological problems as their “primary” concern. In the spring of 2008, only 23% out of 1,175 did. (The increase was due, in part, to a procedural change that routed more students to the disability office.)
Colleges say they’re seeing more students on campus with psychiatric illnesses. About 11.6% of college students were diagnosed or treated for anxiety in the last year, and 10.7% were diagnosed or treated for depression, according to a survey of more than 100,000 students at 129 schools conducted by the American College Health Association. Many mental illnesses, particularly depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, emerge during late adolescence.
Psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety can have serious academic consequences because they affect concentration, sleep and cognitive processing, say mental health professionals.
The health center at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., recently stopped issuing notes students gave to professors to be excused from class.
It’s unclear why the incidence of psychiatric disorders appears to be rising among college students. Better medications and treatments are likely making it possible for more young adults with even serious mental illnesses to attend college. Many schools have launched programs to identify students with psychological problems and get them into counseling. Student-advocacy groups like Active Minds Inc., an organization with chapters on 325 campuses, are trying to reduce the stigma around having a mental illness.
Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has developed an extensive suicide-prevention program and a comprehensive disability services office. But it is pulling back on how involved it gets in student-faculty negotiations not covered by the office.
Over the last several years, the counseling center has stopped issuing dated “verification of visit” notes. Too many students were making appointments just to get the notes to provide proof of why they missed class or failed to turn in an assignment, says Greg Eells, director of counseling and psychological services. (The school’s health center stopped giving notes for medical appointments, too.)
“It was just not a good use of the university’s resources,” says Mr. Eells. But professors pushed back. “The faculty wants us to be a detective to see if the student is telling the truth. That’s not our job,” he says.
If students complain of psychological problems, some faculty members will send them to the disability services office to avoid having to determine what’s a serious issue versus what’s a gloomy day. Then, “the instructor isn’t having to make decisions on something they’re not equipped to assess,” says Steven Barrett, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wyoming.
In the fall of 2010, Amy Goodnough, now a senior at the University of Vermont, started experiencing severe insomnia and excess energy. Some mornings, she couldn’t get out of bed. Eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Ms. Goodnough withdrew from one class, took an incomplete in another and appealed directly to other professors to turn in some assignments late. “It was difficult to know day to day what my energy would be like,” Ms. Goodnough, 21, says. “I kind of crawled through the end of the semester.”
Before the spring term, she registered with the university’s disability services office and received letters to take to her professors stating that she be allowed “limited” flexibility with attendance and deadlines. Without those accommodations, “I don’t think I could have stayed in school,” that semester, she says. Now getting effective treatment, Ms. Goodnough has not needed the flexibility this term and has a 3.9 grade-point average.
Schools say they can’t require faculty to adjust deadlines or attendance policies. And in some courses, like science labs and speech classes, participation is critical, but schools can push instructors to compromise with students.
Students with mental illnesses “don’t know when the symptoms will happen, when they might be incapacitated,” says Laurel Cameron, the director of ACCESS, the University of Vermont’s disability services office. Even with a letter giving a student flexibility with deadlines and attendance, students are required to negotiate with each instructor at the beginning of the semester. They need to devise a plan, for example, of when to notify faculty of an absence and a timetable for making up work.
To help students prepare for those discussions, Ms. Cameron says she and her staff will role-play with students, taking on the tone of a skeptical professor.
Kim Larrabee, a faculty member at UConn and the instructor Ms. Nelson emailed for an extension, says she has a “sense of intuition of sincerity,” when students approach her for flexibility with academic work. And she considers how committed the student has been so far to the course. She gave Ms. Nelson an extra 10 days to finish her paper.
“I think your decision to take care of your needs shows maturity and commitment,” Ms. Larrabee wrote in an email replying to Ms. Nelson’s request. Ms. Nelson got an A on the paper.
From Monday’s Globe and Mail Published Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011 7:30PM EDT
In the last decade, there has been an explosion of cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among Canadian children. Everyone knows a Grade 2 student who cannot stop fidgeting in class or focus on the lesson of the day. With Ritalin, and other forms of therapy, these children can learn to live and thrive with ADHD.
However, ADHD in adults has not received the same level of recognition. Many in the medical community still associate the disorder only with children – even though almost two-thirds of patients never outgrow their symptoms. The disorder is also highly genetic, making it probable that if a child has it, so does one of her parents.
A failure to properly recognize, and treat, the disorder among adults costs everyone. The disorder’s key symptoms – inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness – can become a source of shame and embarrassment at work, and prevent creative people from reaching their potential. A Harvard study reported that untreated ADHD costs the workplace an estimated $70-billion a year.
Adults with untreated ADHD are also at significant risk of developing problems such as low self-esteem, addictions and obesity.
Although the prevalence rate for the disorder in adults is about 5 per cent, there is a shortage of adult psychiatrists in Canada who specialize in attention disorders, notes Umesh Jain, an ADHD researcher at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Many patients end up being misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression. A 2006 U.S. study found that only about 10 per cent of adults with ADHD receive appropriate treatment. “Many attempts have been made to educate psychiatrists about adult ADHD, but many doctors still don’t believe in it,” says Dr. Jain.
That leaves many people earning below their potential, or masking the disorder by choosing highly intense professions or extreme sports to give them the stimulation they crave. Once these roles end, they can have tremendous difficulty coping.
Adult psychiatrists and family doctors should become more aware of ADHD in adults. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should clarify how it presents and evolves over time. With effective treatment – including medication and psychotherapy – a person’s life trajectory can be dramatically altered, and the underlying explanation for years of irritability, suffering and other problems can be correctly identified.
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Sally McCay
