[JauntyHatAngle]

Have they been diagnosed medically?

Because plenty of people say they are OCD too, but they don't mean the diagnosed condition. And it's quite different to "being tidy and needing things to be ordered" that the common vernacular makes it out to be.

Same as ADHD. Plenty of people who say they are "a bit ADD" mean something else.

[btilly]

My very strong belief is that a large fraction of those who are "medically diagnosed" do not actually have ADHD.

ADHD was originally a diagnosis of exclusion - lack of executive control not explainable by any other known condition. But you can lack executive control for a wide variety of reasons including depression, sleep deprivation, electrolyte imbalances, and so on. Often doctors don't look - they just shove you out the door with Adderall. The side effects of which include loss of appetite and insomnia - both of which can make symptoms worse in the long run!

If we're going to treat ADHD as the serious disorder that it can be, we should treat diagnosis and treatment as more than an opportunity to prescribe profitable drugs. But instead we have a combination of on the one hand not taking it seriously, and on the other treating it like something serious at the oddest of moments.

[cornstalks]

Given how common it was (still is?) to abuse Adderall in college, I'm going to go out on a limb and say a lot of people have been "diagnosed" with ADHD, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.