I was diagnosed with Attention Deficeit Disorder a few months ago due to my lack of concentration while I study/do homework. I am 16 which my doctor felt was quite late for symptoms to show. I have also dawned upon the thought of whether this will ever go away or not? Also that my doctor thinks i have minor depression because depression has some of the same traits of ADD

ADHD is a lifelong condition, a difference in the brain that many people are born with (things like traumatic brain injuries may also cause ADHD-like symptoms). ADHD does not spontaneously occur at a later age, although it is not uncommon for it to be diagnosed at many different stages of life for different people.

16 is not necessarily late, and for some of us, that would have been quite early. Many people here did not get diagnosed until they were adults.

Depression can mimic ADHD symptoms in some people. Its also very common to have ADHD and depression at the same time.

What type of doctor are you seeing? I would think a specialist would be able to determine whether a person had ADHD or depression, or both, in a rather short period of time, say several months.

Did you have any ADHD symtpoms when you were little? Did they occur alot more then the average kid your age?

I was diagnosed at 15 because my symptoms were worse then they had ever been, this might be because I was in senior school and my symptoms were more noticable so my ADHD just showed everywhere.

You have to have had symptoms as a child, I think before the age of 7?

You could have just not noticed your symtpoms as a child because people tend to think that it's just kid behvaiour and they will "grow out of it" which isn't true because as CF said it is a life long condition.

I didnt have ADD when i was a child. Symptoms started to show mainly the end of last year till now such as lack of concentration, easily angered, tapping alot, etc. I have adderol now but it doesnt seem to be helping alot

Again, you'd probably need to see a specialist to sort your symptoms. But if the symptoms only started to show up within the last year, not throughout your life, yeah I'd wonder if things like a lack of concentration isn't something else.

No.

Things get more complicated in High school. One must impose structure (homework; writing essays) and self-regulate and self-monitor more.

ADHD people (scientist; my Pdoc) say this is very very common in brite kids... they don't fall apart until HS.

If you didn't have ADHD when you were a child, then you "don't have ADHD" (according to the DSM's diagnostic criteria).

(I don't agree with that iron-fisted DSM criteria; B/C a lot of us 'hit the wall' in HS, as you describe. Grade 9 or 10 seems to be a time when marks go downhill for us.)

I didnt have ADD when i was a child. Symptoms started to show mainly the end of last year till now such as lack of concentration, easily angered, tapping alot, etc. I have adderol now but it doesnt seem to be helping alot


ADD = inability to consciously control your attention span. In other wards you can not make your self pay attention to things you find less than interesting not matter how important.

This is normally experienced as having filtering valve problems. We were either bombarded by our surroundings because we could not filter out the un-important to more fully concentrate on the important {filter valve stuck open - hyper / combined} or we would filter out every thing including the important. . . .many times experienced as being so distracted by our own thoughts we would loose track of what was going on around us {Filter valve snaps shut - inattentive / combined}

If you have always been able to control your direction of focus or you are able to filter our back ground noise / unimportant stimuli without tuning out completely then more than likely you do not have genetic ADD. {IMHO}

Although many here did not show out ward symptoms until they were older just about every one knew they had a hard time with their ability to pay attention to the stuff they needed, the internal experience was some thing that had always been a problem. ADD is not a sudden onset condition it is a neurodiversity we are born with.

im 17 going on 18 and am only now in the process of becoming officially diagnosed. having to go to all these specialists is dumb becuase any health professional would tell you my problem. compare it to taking a bling man to an optometrist because he has trouble seeing. however ive had these symptoms my whole life and only recently have i realized it adhd.