A couple of day ago someone at work mentioned that they know some people that. according to her, used to have ADHD and grew out of it in their twenties. I started telling her that yeah, that's a common misconception, but actually... Actually what? I have no idea. I am completely sure that I have read/heard that you can not actually stop having ADHD like that, but that the symptoms sometimes disappear in adults because of reasons. But I don't remember the reasons. Am I just making this up? Does anyone have a clue what I'm talking about? What is the thing? And why would you even say that someone still has ADHD if they have no symptoms?
I know what you're talking about! This is a common misconception. afaik it comes from a couple things: one, adults tend to have learned and ingrained a lot of coping skills that kids are still learning, and in some people that's enough to work around it, and two, going into adulthood, AMAB people tend to experience a lessening of symptoms, which I gather is hormonal. Conversely, AFAB people tend to see their symptoms worsen going into late adolescence and adulthood because of the increase of estrogen they experience, and estrogen affects ADHD adversely. I think it's also possible a person could be misdiagnosed as a child and whatever the actual issue was resolves itself as they move into adulthood. Chronic stress, maybe, that's lessened after leaving a bad home situation? But yeah, it is strange to say a person still has it if they don't have any symptoms without any treatment, unless their coping mechanisms are really good and the symptoms only come out during prolonged stress. I'd have to dig up sources, but I wanted to let you know that you're not just pulling this out of the air!
afaik it's also, but i would have to dig up the source and i have no idea where i read it exactly, but there was a theory that adhd-like symptoms can manifest in a child without adhd due to too much stress and pressure and lack of sleep because school starts too early for a child's biorhythm.
Thanks for the answers! I sort of knew that things like stress and trauma can cause symptoms that are indistinguishable from ADHD in children, but I had no idea that actual ADHD was affected by hormones. I'm trying to imagine it but it's really obvious to me right now that I have no idea how brains work. Like, what in the brain even makes a person manifest ADHD symptoms? And how is that changed by hormones? Why? My social sciences background is not equipped to handle this.
Hormones mess with all sorts of brain chemistry. I don't know the mechanism of how they interact with ADHD specifically, but I'm not surprised they do, considering how much adding hormones to the mix can affect other mental aspects, the most obvious one being mood. (Fun fact: I was catapulted into my first mixed state after I had a dose of Depo-Provera. Turns out that much progesterone is a pretty bad idea for people with mood disorders!)
