9/8/2005 Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Do Well on Deadline and Love a Challenge?

Posted by Peter on September 8th, 2005 | Comments off

From the Kansas City Star by DIANE STAFFORD:

ADHD SUFFERERS FIND THEIR NICHE: Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Do Well on Deadline and Love a Challenge?

Can you say clueless? Stafford interviews Dr. William Dodson, MD who spoke to about 50 Hallmark Cards employees. His recommendation? If you want an employee who performs best on deadline, hire someone who has trouble staying on task. Dodson apparently specializes in treating with AD/HD. He said that adults with the neuropsychiatric condition generally respond well to urgency and fast pace. This seems true, meeting deadlines? That’s one of the greatest problems for adult AD/HD people.

“Workers with ADD need to be challenged or feel competitive,’’ Dodson generalized. “They like the new, the novel, the fleeting. They need ADD-friendly jobs – not accounting.’’

Sure they do. They are great in marketing. But don’t rely on them to get a job done on time. I’ve worked with many AD/HD adults. They’ll accept 20 jobs and finish none of them. Dodson truly seems clueless here.

Stafford also cites Blythe Gross, who has a doctoral degree in organizational psychology, also specializes in ADD treatment. After working with or interviewing hundreds of adult ADD patients, Gross wrote Making ADD Work: On-the-Job Strategies for Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder. Gross has been in the trenches with hundreds of AD/HD adults. She’s much more realistic in her perspective. She indicates that adult AD/HD “symptoms can range from an inability to get started on a task, to an inability to follow through on a task, to perfectionism that makes a project drag on forever because it’s never good enough.” This statement is the antithesis of Dodson’s.

I’d go with Gross and recommend her book, Making ADD Work: On-the-Job Strategies for Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder. With so many ‘experts’ on this subject, someone has to cry ‘baloney’ when nonsense like Dodson’s is put to press.