Understand the Real Problem - Is it ADHD or ADD - Eric Jensen, Ph.D.

Understand the Real Problem

Here's a student for you. A boy who is eight years old seems kind of scattered and impulsive. He forgets a lot of what he hears. When teachers ask the student to get organized, he fools around. In class he's unable to predict the next sequence of tasks. He doesn't reflect on his behaviors. His older brother has many of the same symptoms and they both came from poverty. The teacher is pretty sure that he has what? What's your diagnosis?

Many teachers would have written down ADHD or ADD. What you should know is that for a lot of students who have these kinds of symptoms, it's easy to label someone but unless you actually are a medical doctor or a psychiatrist, you might get surprised by it.

Here you're looking at a healthy version of the brain. Actually this is my own brain using SPECT technology. You're seeing four different views of it. The bottom is on the upper left hand corner and then the right hemisphere is on the top right. Left hemisphere lower left and then the top of the brain on the right. Here is what you should know. This brain looks like it's pretty healthy because smooth surface shows even activation in the brain is standing alone. Now check out the same brain when I am stressing out like crazy.

What you now see is my brain doesn't look so good. This is actually very similar to what you'd see in a student who has serious ADHD. All of this happened from stress. Let's go back to the student we introduced.

Possibilities for this student include:

• If he grew up poor, it means greater likelihood of increased chronic stress disorders.
• Stress disorders mimic the exact same symptoms of ADHD.
• Impulsivity, poor memory and achronica (which is a Greek word to mean out of sync with time).

As long as he keeps being labeled as ADHD, he will never get the intervention that he needs.