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Surprising 16-year-long ADHD study proves researchers' hypothesis completely wrong

The findings from first-of-their-kind, long-term ADHD studies keep rolling in and surprising researchers along the way.

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Scientists continue to be surprised by the findings of long-term ADHD studies.

Our understanding of ADHD has come a long way in just a few short years. Though it wasn't even formally recognized as a medical condition until the 1960s, by the time the 90s rolled around, diagnoses and stimulant prescriptions were extremely prevalent. (Raise your hand if you grew up in the era of "Anyone who struggles in school gets Ritalin!") Today, diagnoses and treatment are a lot more thoughtful and individualized, and there are more options for treatment and therapy including but not limited to stimulants like the well-known Ritalin. Even with all these advancements, though, we still have more to learn.

A new long-term study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has proven to be an excellent next step in getting a better understanding of the disorder, showing that a lot of what's commonly believed or assumed about ADHD is incomplete or just flat-out wrong.

Researchers studied 483 participants who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and continued to assess them for a period of 16 years. The study's authors wanted to get a sense of how ADHD symptoms might change over time.

What the researchers found surprised them. In most participants, symptoms of ADHD fluctuated greatly over the years rather than staying consistent. What surprised them even more were the environmental factors that seemed to play a role in those fluctuations.

 adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studies ADHD brains work in mysterious ways, but we're starting to get a clearer picture.  Photo by BUDDHI Kumar SHRESTHA on Unsplash  

Researchers expected that greater life demands—like more responsibility at work, a heavier workload at school, major life changes, etc.—would exacerbate ADHD symptoms. What they found was the opposite.

It makes sense that a person that struggles with inattention or hyperactivity might have more trouble focusing when they have more "going on" and more distractions to pull them in different directions. It was a huge surprise to the researchers that, actually, people's ADHD symptoms seemed to ease up when life got hectic.

“We expected the relationship between environmental demands and ADHD symptoms to be the opposite of what we found,” study author, professor, and clinical psychologist Margaret H. Sibley explained. “We hypothesized that when life demands and responsibilities increased, this might exacerbate people’s ADHD, making it more severe. In fact, it was the opposite. The higher the demands and responsibilities one was experiencing, the milder their ADHD.”

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

I have a 4-year-old with ADHD and the findings totally track for me based on what I've witnessed in our own life.

We find it's actually easier to be in perpetual motion sometimes—out running errands, doing activities, visiting friends and family—versus staying put too long. When we're just relaxing at home, that's when she tends to start bouncing off the walls! Her ADHD tendencies come out strong in these quiet periods, including what we sometimes playfully refer to as her "hoarding" dozens of coloring sheets or surrounding herself in giant piles of toys, blankets, and stuffed animals; thereby making a huge mess in the house.

Doing nothing or doing very little is not often a restful state for people with ADHD. Typically, people with ADHD experience more background noise than neurotypical brains—so a quiet, seemingly restful environment can sometimes amplify racing thoughts, negative self-talk, and impulsive behavior versus dampening it. You know how kids sometimes act out in school not because they're not smart, but because the material is actually too easy for them and they're bored? Something similar is at play in both of these scenarios.

Of course, as always in science, you have to be careful assuming causation from the findings.

 adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studies The results show that staying busy may actually help relieve some ADHD symptoms. Annie Spratt/Unsplash  

It's important to note that the results of the study don't definitively prove that being busy causes a decrease in ADHD symptoms.

“This might mean that people with ADHD perform their best in more demanding environments (perhaps environments that have stronger immediate consequences, like needing to put food on the table for a family or pay rent monthly). It also might mean that people with ADHD take more on their plate when their symptoms are relatively at bay," Sibley says. Either way, the correlation is certainly strong and worthy of more study.

In the meantime, the study's authors think the results could be viewed in a hopeful light for people just learning to manage their ADHD. “If you’re a doctor talking with a patient who is first getting diagnosed with ADHD, it’s a huge help for that person to hear the message that, ‘You’re going to have good years and not-so-good years, but things can go really well for you if you can get the right factors in place,'” Sibley said. As a parent, I can imagine how reassuring that would have been to hear early on in our own process.

 adhd, children, kids, mental health, neurodivergent, brains, psychology, medicine, research, medical studies We still have so much to learn.  Photo by Europeana on Unsplash  

With ADHD diagnoses on the rise, more and more research is being conducted. For example, a recent long-term study out of Sweden was just published linking use of ADHD medication with a reduction in traffic crashes, general injuries, and criminal behavior. That's a strong argument for continuing to hone in on accurate diagnoses and treatment for people who need it, as it clearly benefits society as a whole when done properly!

We're learning more and more about what the factors that affect positive ADHD outcomes are—what might exacerbate symptoms and what types of things can help—and we're starting to get a clearer picture of how people can manage this challenging disorder.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

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Modern Families

Mom’s viral chats with 7-month-old could be the key to language development, science says

Who knew yapping could be so productive?

TikTok: @justalexbennett

This could rewire her brain positively.

When Alex Bennett talks to her baby daughter Tate, she doesn’t use baby talk or silly voices. Instead, in her viral TikTok videos, she delivers high-speed, stream-of-consciousness monologues that would feel right at home in a scene from Gilmore Girls or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (pretty much anything written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, essentially). In a world used to spouting nonsense like “goo-goo” and “ga-ga” to babies, Alex’s approach is a refreshing reprise—and, according to scientists, might be a genius parenting move. Alex and her little one’s candid conversations aren’t just making the Internet swoon (Bennett's TikTok, @justalexbennett, has amassed 1.2 million followers, by the way). These chats could be rewiring baby Tate’s cognitive development for the better.


mother, daughter, parents, kids, women, talkingPerfect mother-daughter yap couple. Giphy

The beauty of babbling

 

Even though most parents instinctively use a high-pitched baby voice to talk to their infants, Bennett treats her sweet baby like a dear old friend. She yammers on about everything, from her thoughts on mommy-daughter matching outfits to the latest nanny drama.

And who could blame her? There’s so much to discuss: their plans for the night (watching hockey, followed by a new card game called Four Nations), the perfect surprise for dad’s birthday (bravely, they’ll be attempting a lava cake for the first time but they have a back-up plan just in case that fails: store-bought chocolate chip cupcakes), and the intricacies of making “parent friends” (as Alex explains, “All of this matters: 'Where do they live?' 'How old’s the baby?' Because if they had a baby that was two or three years old, they’d be able to walk and,” she pauses and looks at Tate, sweetly. “You’re not quite there yet.”). She even introduces her to the concept of “bedrotting” in one video, with the two of them snuggled up in their pajamas with zero plans to leave any time soon. No sing-song voice, no made-up or cutesy words. It’s as if they’re just two adult friends having a conversation, albeit Tate doesn’t speak much. But when she does manage to fit in a burble or two, her mom listens in rapt attention before responding accordingly.


“Her first word will be a paragraph!” commented one viewer. And according to science, she may not be far off.

Why this matters more than you think

While the videos are certainly cute (in one, Alex and Tate co-conspire—well, as much as a seven-month-old can—to convince dad to make them ground turkey bowls for dinner), according to research done by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and author of "Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children," there is an essential link between the amount of language children hear and their eventual language development. And the results don’t take long.

“Simply put, the more language children hear, the more words they produce.”


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

In a 2013 study called “Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary,” study authors Adriana Weisleder and Anne Fernald found that the more parents spoke to their children using “adult-style speech," the larger their vocabulary grew. By the time they reached two years old, these verbose children could already process words much better than their peers.

Yes, some of the comments on Alex’s videos are funny ( one user said, “So you’re telling me all I have to do is pop out a friend to talk to?”), but many others recognize the science at play here.


“This baby is going to be incredibly smart and articulate,” wrote another viewer, with another adding, “Jokes aside, this is actually the best way to stimulate proper language development in babies.”


How to set your kid up for success (by being a total motormouth)

Not all parents are convinced, though, that speaking to babies like mini-adults is such a good idea. "For one, they can’t speak back," a skeptic might sneer. Others roll their eyes and say something like “this feels weird and forced.”

The good news? There is no “right” way to speak to your newborns. But here are a few tips, just in case.

     
  1. Pay attention to their non-verbal reactions. The solution seems so simple, right? Just talk to your kids more. Speak nonstop, introduce more and more new words, and never, ever come up for air. Wrong. Just because they can't communicate through language, research suggests that children naturally pick up words and labels for things they find interesting. So, when it comes to introducing new words to babies, Harvard professor Catherine Snow, a pioneering researcher in the language and literacy field, recommends keeping an eye out for anything that might interest them: extra special gestures, excited noises, or facial expressions, and starting there. “Don’t wait for children to produce clear words before [you] start interpreting the noises that children make,” she warns. A toddler’s babbling isn’t something to scoff at: it’s their first attempt at communicating.
    2.  
  2. Let them talk, too! As fun as it is to have a captive—and mostly silent—audience, there’s a subtle difference between talking at children and engaging with them. “If the adults just talk all the time, that doesn't work very well,” Snow adds. Interaction is key: notice what they’re interested in and comment on it. Label what they’re looking at. If they try to communicate, wait calmly and listen before responding. Alex has this down in spades. In a video, she begins to explain the family's plans for the night (they’re in Aspen at the moment), when suddenly, Tate begins to play with her mommy's face. Instead of correcting her or swatting her hands away, Alex just rolls with it, gleefully letting her daughter rub her tiny paws wherever she chooses, before asking her, laughing, “Do you like my red lips?”
    3.  
  3. It’s all about context. The trick to teaching your toddler new words? Using them in the correct and natural context. For example, Snow paints a picture of a family gathering at the dinner table, where everyone is seated and alert. There are dozens of ways to demonstrate healthy language for the baby: A sibling might ask Mom about her day. If a car honks in the distance, someone could ask where the noise is coming from. 'Why are we eating chicken?' 'What is chicken?' 'Where does it come from?' The constant questions may seem tedious (especially when the people asking them likely know the answer), but Snow insists that these casual conversations are the foundations for babies to access new words and concepts.
    4.  


parenting, language acquisition, learning, babies, mothers and daughters, speakingThis could change everything.Photo credit: Canva


Why this could change everything

Dr. Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of the Thirty Million Words Center for Early Learning + Public Health (and the co-writer of "Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children" with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek) has dedicated her research to encouraging parents to embrace their power as “brain architects.” As caretakers, everything—the words, sentences, ideas, and phrases a parent says (or withholds)—from their child can make a world of difference. Every word a baby hears, whether it’s about their new pajamas, the ribs and coleslaw being prepared for dinner tonight, or who will be at their next play date, all somehow seeps into their brain. They hear you, even though they can't quite understand you yet. These seemingly trivial conversations are literally the building blocks of language acquisition, and they are constructing your little one’s developing brain brick by brick, word by word.

So, remember: talking to your baby like an adult, with full-on sentences and lots of details, doesn't make you crazy: you’re building a stronger, smarter, and more loquacious future adult, one conversation at a time. They might even know what 'loquacious' means before preschool!

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Mental Health

The danger of high-functioning depression as told by a college student

Overachievers can struggle with mental health issues, too.


I first saw a psychiatrist for my anxiety and depression as a junior in high school.

During her evaluation, she asked about my coursework. I told her that I had a 4.0 GPA and had filled my schedule with pre-AP and AP classes. A puzzled look crossed her face. She asked about my involvement in extracurricular activities. As I rattled off the long list of groups and organizations I was a part of, her frown creased further.

Finally, she set down her pen and looked at me, saying something along the lines of "You seem to be pretty high-functioning, but your anxiety and depression seem pretty severe. Actually, it's teens like you who scare me a lot."


Now I was confused. What was scary about my condition? From the outside, I was functioning like a perfectly "normal" teenager. In fact, I was somewhat of an overachiever.

I was working through my mental illnesses and I was succeeding, so what was the problem?

I left that appointment with a prescription for Lexapro and a question that I would continue to think about for years. The answer didn't hit me all at once.

Instead, it came to me every time I heard a suicide story on the news saying, "By all accounts, they were living the perfect life."

It came to me as I crumbled under pressure over and over again, doing the bare minimum I could to still meet my definition of success.

It came to me as I began to share my story and my illness with others, and I was met with reactions of "I had no idea" and "I never would have known." It's easy to put depression into a box of symptoms.

lighted candles on man's hand lying on the floorPhoto by Fernando @cferdophotography on Unsplash

Even though we're often told that mental illness comes in all shapes and sizes, I think we're still stuck with certain "stock images" of mental health in our heads.

When we see depression and anxiety in adolescents, we see teens struggling to get by in their day-to-day lives. We see grades dropping, and we see involvement replaced by isolation. But it doesn't always look like this.

And when we limit our idea of mental illness, at-risk people slip through the cracks.

We don't see the student with the 4.0 GPA or the student who's active in choir and theater or a member of the National Honor Society or the ambitious teen who takes on leadership roles in a religious youth group.

person holding white printer paperPhoto by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

No matter how many times we are reminded that mental illness doesn't discriminate, we revert back to a narrow idea of how it should manifest, and that is dangerous.

Recognizing this danger is what helped me find the answer to my question.

Watching person after person — myself included — slip under the radar of the "depression detector" made me realize where that fear comes from. My psychiatrist knew the list of symptoms, and she knew I didn't necessarily fit them. She understood it was the reason that, though my struggles with mental illness began at age 12, I didn't come to see her until I was 16.

If we keep allowing our perception of what mental illness looks like to dictate how we go about recognizing and treating it, we will continue to overlook people who don't fit the mold.

We cannot keep forgetting that there are people out there who, though they may not be able to check off every symptom on the list, are heavily and negatively affected by their mental illness. If we forget, we allow their struggle to continue unnoticed, and that is pretty scary.


This article was written by Amanda Leventhal and originally appeared on 06.03.16






 







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Inside the heads of people who are always late, as explained by stick figures.

Everyone knows a person like this or is one themselves!

I’m late.


This post was written by Tim Urban and originally published on Wait But Why.

I woke up this morning to a text. It was a link:

"optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late.”

Intriguing. Nothing's better than the headline: "The reason people are [bad quality that describes you] is actually because they're [good quality]."

I got to reading. And as it turns out, according to the article, late people are actually the best people ever. They're optimistic and hopeful:

"People who are continuously late are actually just more optimistic. They believe they can fit more tasks into a limited amount of time more than other people and thrive when they're multitasking. Simply put, they're fundamentally hopeful."

They're big-thinking:

"People who are habitually late don't sweat over the small stuff, they concentrate on the big picture and see the future as full of infinite possibilities."

Late people just get it:

"People with a tendency for tardiness like to stop and smell the roses…life was never meant to be planned down to the last detail. Remaining excessively attached to timetables signifies an inability to enjoy the moment."

By the end of the article, I had never felt prouder to be a chronically late person.

But also, what the hell is going on? Late people are the worst. It's the quality I like least in myself. And I'm not late because I like to smell the roses or because I can see the big picture or because the future is full of infinite possibilities. I'm late because I'm insane.

So I thought about this for a minute, and I think I figured out what's going on. The issue is that there are two kinds of lateness:

1. OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does not negatively impact anyone else — like being late to a group hangout or a party. Things can start on time and proceed as normal with or without the late person being there yet.

2. Not-OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does negatively impact others — like being late to a two-person dinner or meeting or anything else that simply can't start until the late party arrives.

John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.

But if you read the comment section under Haltiwanger's article, people are furious with him for portraying lateness in a positive light. And that's because they're thinking about the far less excusable not-OK lateness.

1. OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does not negatively impact anyone else — like being late to a group hangout or a party. Things can start on time and proceed as normal with or without the late person being there yet.

2. Not-OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does negatively impact others — like being late to a two-person dinner or meeting or anything else that simply can't start until the late party arrives.

John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.

But if you read the comment section under Haltiwanger's article, people are furious with him for portraying lateness in a positive light. And that's because they're thinking about the far less excusable not-OK lateness.

All of this has kind of left me with no choice but to take a quick nine-hour break from working on a gargantuan SpaceX post to discuss not-OK late people.

When it comes to people who are chronically not-OK late, I think there are two subgroups:

Group 1: Those who don't feel bad or wrong about it. These people are assholes.

Group 2: Those who feel terrible and self-loathing about it. These people have problems.

Group 1 is simple. They think they're a little more special than everyone else, like the zero-remorse narcissist at the top of Haltiwanger's article. They're unappealing. Not much else to discuss here.

Punctual people think all not-OK late people are in Group 1 (as the comments on this post will show) — because they're assuming all late people are sane people.

When a sane person thinks a certain kind of behavior is fine, they do it. When they think it's wrong, they don't do it. So to a punctual person — one who shows up on time because they believe showing up late is the wrong thing to do — someone who's chronically late must be an asshole who thinks being late is OK.

But that's misunderstanding the entire second group, who, despite being consistently late, usually detest the concept of making other people wait. Let call them CLIPs (Chronically Late Insane Persons).

While both groups of not-OK late people end up regularly frustrating others, a reliable way to identify a Group 2 CLIP is a bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves — some deep inner drive to inexplicably miss the beginning of movies, endure psychotic stress running to catch the train, crush their own reputation at work, etc., etc. As much as they may hurt others, they usually hurt themselves even more.

I spent around 15% of my youth standing on some sidewalk alone, angrily kicking rocks, because yet again, all the other kids had gotten picked up and I was still waiting for my mom. When she finally arrived, instead of being able to have a pleasant conversation with her, I'd get into the car seething. She always felt terrible. She has problems.

My sister once missed an early morning flight, so they rescheduled her for the following morning. She managed to miss that one too, so they put her on a flight five hours later. Killing time during the long layover, she got distracted on a long phone call and missed that flight too. She has problems.

I've been a CLIP my whole life. I've made a bunch of friends mad at me, I've embarrassed myself again and again in professional situations, and I've run a cumulative marathon through airport terminals.

When I'm late, it's often the same story, something like this:

I'll be meeting someone, maybe a professional contact, at, say, a coffee place at 3:00. When I lay out my schedule for the day, I'll have the perfect plan. I'll leave early, arrive early, and get there around 2:45. That takes all the stress out of the situation, and that's ideal because non-stressful commutes are one of my favorite things. It'll be great — I'll stroll out, put on a podcast, and head to the subway. Once I'm off the subway, with time to spare, I'll take a few minutes to peruse storefronts, grab a lemonade from a street vendor, and enjoy New York. It'll be such a joy to look up at the architecture, listen to the sounds, and feel the swell of people rushing by — oh magnificent city!

All I have to do is be off the subway by 2:45. To do that, I need to be on the subway by 2:25, so I decide to be safe and get to the subway by 2:15. So I have to leave my apartment by 2:07 or earlier, and I'm set. What a plan.

Here's how it'll play out (if you're new to WBW, you're advised to check this out before proceeding):

lateness, behavior, science

Making plans on time.

psychology, procrastination, patient

Maybe some procrastination.

avoidance, mental health, mistakes

Avoiding the issues.

delay, loafing, trifling

Arguing over avoiding the issues.

toying, delaying, loitering

Some dawdling.

dabbling, frittering, dilly-dallying

Some more dawdling.

frizzling, puttering, excuses

And some lingering.

last-minute, slow, delayed

And some more lingering.

belated, tardy, jammed

Is this dragging my feet?

lagging, dilatory, unpunctual

This is dragging my feet.

held up, in a bind, missed the boat

This is becoming a problem.

tired, worn, strained

This is feeling uncomfortable.

thin, peaked, pinched

This IS uncomfortable.

fraught, haggard, worn

This IS a problem.

dependable, accurate, conscientious

But I’m cool.

periodic, timely, ready

So cool.

quick, reliable, heedful, meticulous

Ice cold like a fighter pilot.

minutes, seconds, careful

I’m a chillin’.

lag, postpone, setback

Now worries my way.

stoppage, filibuster, hindrance

Not thinking about it.

bind, lingering, tarrying

Positive thoughts.

stoppage, difficulty, gridlock

Positive action... well now.

obstinate, customs, method

It will all workout.

madness, mental health, regulations

Maybe I’m gonna be late.

anxiety, despair, dismay

I’m gonna be late.

aversion, disquiet, distress

Oopsie.

fearless, logjam, impasse

And that’s the traffic.

furious, frantic, rash, audacious

It’s the traffics fault.

careless, foolhardy, hopp

This map is broken.

denial, circumstances, schedule, madcap, impetu

Perfect timing on being late. Nailed it.

CLIPs are strange people. I'm sure each CLIP is insane in their own special way, and to understand how they work, you'll usually have to get to some dark inner psychology.

For me, it's some mix of these three odd traits:

1. I'm late because I'm in denial about how time works.

The propensity of CLIPs to underestimate how long things take comes out of some habitual delusional optimism. Usually what happens is, of all the times the CLIP has done a certain activity or commute, what they remember is that one time things went the quickest. And that amount of time is what sticks in their head as how long that thing takes. I don't think there's anything that will get me to internalize that packing for a weeklong trip takes 20 minutes. In my head, it's eternally a five-minute task. You just take out the bag, throw some clothes in it, throw your toiletries in, zip it up, and done. Five minutes. The empirical data that shows that there are actually a lot of little things to think about when you pack and that it takes 20 minutes every time is irrelevant. Packing is clearly a five-minute task. As I type this, that's what I believe.

2. I'm late because I have a weird aversion to changing circumstances.

Not sure what the deal is with this, but something in me is strangely appalled by the idea of transitioning from what I'm currently doing to doing something else. When I'm at home working, I hate when there's something on my schedule that I have to stop everything for to go outside and do. It's not that I hate the activity — once I'm there I'm often pleased to be there — it's an irrational resistance to the transition. The positive side of this is it usually means I'm highly present when I finally do haul my ass somewhere, and I'm often among the last to leave.

3. Finally, I'm late because I'm mad at myself.

There's a pretty strong correlation here — the worse I feel about my productivity so far that day, the more likely I am to be late. When I'm pleased with how I've lived the day so far, the Rational Decision-Maker has a much easier time taking control of the wheel. I feel like an adult, so it's easy to act like an adult. But times when the monkey had his way with me all day, when the time rolls around that I need to stop working and head out somewhere, I can't believe that this is all I've gotten done. So my brain throws a little tantrum, refusing to accept the regrettable circumstances, and stages a self-flagellating protest, saying, "NO. This cannot be the situation. Nope. You didn't do what you were supposed to do, and now you'll sit here and get more done, even if it makes you late.”

So yeah, that's why I'm late. Because I have problems.

Don't excuse the CLIPs in your life — it's not OK, and they need to fix it. But remember: It's not about you. They have problems.


This article originally appeared on 04.07.16








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