Attention Deficit

As I reported earlier (Do ADHD Adults Really Lose 3 Weeks of Work Each Year?), a study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found that ADHD adults worked 22.1 days less than other workers each year. Furthermore, the study found that they were unable to carry out normal work activities an average of 8.4 days per year, 21.7 days of reduced work quantity and 13.6 days of reduced work quality.

However the study actually begs the question of what is adult ADHD. If you’ve found that it’s difficult to concentrate because you may be hyperactive, have trouble remembering appointments or finishing a project once the challenge is gone, are easily distracted, or avoid tasks that require concentration the World Health Organization (“WHO”) says that you may have adult ADHD! The WHO also thinks that many adults do not know they have the condition.

Who (no pun) hasn’t felt easily distracted or avoids boring tasks? I wonder if the shaky diagnosis of adult ADHD – which by the way, is totally subjective – is being exaggerated so that more people can be ‘treated’ i.e. prescribed medication.

The researchers (World Health Organization (“WHO”) research consortium at Harvard Medical School in Boston Medicine) formed their conclusions by evaluating data from 7,075 adult workers in several countries. The workers ranged in ages from 18 to 44 and were screened for ADHD as part of the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative. The researchers surveyed the workers about their performance at work in the last month.

Both the media and the pharmaceutical industries have helped spur the diagnosis of ADHD by clinicians. However it will remain a controversial diagnosis shrouded by concerns about context; we are now required to sit and perform focused and organizational tasks more now than ever before in history. This has changed greatly from work at standard manual labor and assembly lines of the past. Is it natural for us to become distracted at tedious or boring jobs? Do we need medication to improve our work? For whose benefit? Furthermore, an ADHD diagnosis can be symptomatic of personal learning problems or family dysfunction among many other scenarios that comprise the human situation.

Adult ADHD is caught in the midst of a tug-of-war between pharmaceutical marketing, changes in the workplace, and a very loose, subjective diagnosis. Buyer beware.