People think disability as having no leg or being blind. If you ask any random gen-z, they will tell you they have ADHD. That's why ADHD as a disability lost its weight.
> People think disability as having no leg or being blind.
These are the "visible" disabilities. ADHD, amongst other conditions, are more invisible[1]. I have diabetes but "look" normal. I know a guy with epilepsy. They too, unsurprisingly, don't "appear" disabled. (I know this wasn't your main point but I think it's important for people to know.)
> That's why ADHD as a disability lost its weight.
ADHD as a disability was never respected, there was a 2 year time period post 2018 in which people sort of took it seriously but not really.
Pre-acceptance period we had "Is ADD real?" articles on the regular, now post-acceptance we have "Are ADHD sufferers faking it?" articles on the regular. Nothing substantial has changed for people with ADHD, the common man still does not try to understand.
Because plenty of people say they are OCD too, but they don't mean the diagnosed condition. And it's quite different to "being tidy and needing things to be ordered" that the common vernacular makes it out to be.
Same as ADHD. Plenty of people who say they are "a bit ADD" mean something else.
My very strong belief is that a large fraction of those who are "medically diagnosed" do not actually have ADHD.
ADHD was originally a diagnosis of exclusion - lack of executive control not explainable by any other known condition. But you can lack executive control for a wide variety of reasons including depression, sleep deprivation, electrolyte imbalances, and so on. Often doctors don't look - they just shove you out the door with Adderall. The side effects of which include loss of appetite and insomnia - both of which can make symptoms worse in the long run!
If we're going to treat ADHD as the serious disorder that it can be, we should treat diagnosis and treatment as more than an opportunity to prescribe profitable drugs. But instead we have a combination of on the one hand not taking it seriously, and on the other treating it like something serious at the oddest of moments.
Given how common it was (still is?) to abuse Adderall in college, I'm going to go out on a limb and say a lot of people have been "diagnosed" with ADHD, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.
