Sunday, March 09, 2003

HSPs and the ADD/ADHD "Diagnosis"

From a purely psychological perspective it strikes me that most intelligent, intuitive, bright, creative, interesting people could be seen as having a form of ADD that is not particularly diagnosable. The question is, do we really need a "diagnosis?" Is anything really "wrong," here?

The HSP trait aside.... In studying intelligence, personality types, Indigos and assorted psychology (not as a profession, mind you), for a long time.... much of my time has been spent on trying to understand the "gifted" mind.

I certainly won't deny that "ADD" is a valid concept, but I have a great deal of trouble with the general tendency of the Psychology field to automatically classify a brain the doesn't work like "Joe Sixpack's" (i.e. "average") as having a "disorder." One of the great "issues" in the Gifted and Indigo communities is "misdiagnosis"-- people with brains that seem to flit around and track 1000 tasks simultaneously and arrive at intuitive alternate solutions with no evidence of a "process" in between.... are "medicated to sleep" simply because they have difficulty "tracking" conventional thought processes (most gifted people will tell you that they "zone out" because they are already 20 steps ahead of "where we are"). Is that fair? Or reasonable?

Every time I read the words "intelligent, intuitive, bright, creative, interesting people" in the same sentence as "ADD" I tend to jump out of my chair. Maybe it's a bit of a "soapbox issue" for me (and I apologize if I come across too forcefully)-- but I always recommend (especially to parents who have kids who "seem really bright," as well as to adults) to people who have a notion that ADD might be the problem, to test for giftedness before testing for ADD.... just so you have a "context" for a possible ADD diagnosis.

A while back, I wrote about this in greater detail, at a different venue. I think I'll try to dig up that article, and post it here.

1 comment:

  1. Exactly!!!
    And as I mentioned in another of your articles [Article: Of Giftedness, ADD, Depression, and being an HSP - March 10,2003] ... the approach of HSP is a positive one (which for me has allways been very important).

    As a HSP-person I'm seeking all the time... and thus I wanted to know the difference between ADD/ADHD and HSP (to be well informed)...
    I'm not "Joe Sixpack's"... and your reasoning is very valid (not only to me that is - or should be).

    Greetings,
    Christophe

    ReplyDelete

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