One of them is the increased number of people caring for mental status, but the other one is, we are living in an era that requires long hours of computer usage which is against the living way of an ADHD person. We need to walk, go out, spend energy, but nowadays we have to stay in an office, look at a screen, which is so boring.
- larger percent of people going for diagnosis
- better & more reliable diagnostics
- understanding that men arent the only ones susceptible to adhd
- understanding that adhd doesnt present identically across all populations
- better awareness in general of neurological differences
I’m reluctant to blame anything besides increased awareness for any increase in diagnosis.
I didn’t discover that I had it until I was almost 40, and I’m sure many others my age STILL don’t realize that they have it.
People caught on that girls and women can have it too and that they can be better at masking than anticipated. Nobody bothered to check me when I had all the symptoms for all my childhood and adolescence. It took me connecting the dots after age 30 to get the diagnosis.
AFAIK, ADHD is something you’re born with. The things you list make it more difficult to live with ADHD, but they don’t create it.
They don’t create, but when you live a life against your brain, you start to think something is wrong
I think a bit part of it is that it’s simply become harder to live with ADHD and for it to stay under the radar in your life. Rare is the person who can survive in the modern world purely on their wits. It demands that you persevere at jobs, careers and relationships over long timespans, and against an onslaught of things which have been relentlessly developed and refined over generations with the express purpose of hijacking your dopamine system and interfering with your free will.
Better detection methods.
I blame that the world, especially work, is more unforgiving of ADHD traits. Scatterbrained-ness isn’t as much of a deal in agriculture (where you usually can course-correct in time, I’d imagine) or monotonous factory repetition (of course it probably really sucks for ADHD-Hs for… well… monotonous repetition), but definitely is in an office environment. Also so many things now prey on your attention in constantly developing ways (all the ads trying to sell you things, just about every online service, streaming services, social media) that it scrambles even NT peoples’ brains, so of course it only makes it harder for ADHDers.
It’s only relatively recently been understood, defined, and studied. As in the last 50ish years, but with a much-heavier emphasis on more recently, now on the order of ~2,500ish peer-reviewed papers per year.
I discovered I had it at around 35, just a few years ago. It’s an awareness thing. My hope is that the percentage increases so much that it no longer is seen as a rare issue, that a significant portion of the population has it and has had it, and that overall mindset and policy changes are made to accommodate. We don’t work well in the society that has been built up by the normies. We are an asset, not a hindrance to a functioning society, but we really haven’t been given our place in the rigid system that often counters where we can be the most productive. We can do things that are often described as super powers, capable of learning new things incredibly fast, but it’s situational and often not long term, and companies for example just don’t have systems in place to utilize that. We need our own dedicated style of management that all employers are aware of and how to get the most from us, which contrasts heavily to the mind-breaking, life-draining style of management that typical people thrive in.
Okay, I rambled a bit and went off topic, lol
