It seems like everyone is talking about ADHD these days and some people see ADHD
just about everywhere they look so the biggest problem with that is perhaps
that sometimes symptoms that are related to another condition might be mistaken
for signs or for an indication of ADHD and when that happens it could mean that
you receive the wrong diagnosis and that you then receive a treatment that is
either not necessary or not optimal for your condition so I thought I'd take a
few seconds to tell you a little bit about some of the symptoms that might
actually help you distinguish ADHD from other conditions
so maybe I thought I'd start with GAD or generalized anxiety and this is
essentially a condition that involves excessive and intense ongoing anxiety
and worry that definitely interferes with a person's day-to-day life and so
it can sometimes look like ADHD because in both cases well the individual may
feel on edge or they may feel fidgety or anxious and so on and so forth. However
in ADHD it's perhaps less usual to have the intense and truly uncontrollable
worry that you find in ADHD at least not for a period of six months or more which
is what you need for a diagnosis of GAD and it's also less likely to see in ADHD
that anxiety that we will find in GAD about medical conditions you know like
an intense, for example, an intense fear of having cancer or some other medical
and life-threatening condition which is more typical of GAD
Another condition that can be mistaken for ADHD is depression and that's
because it's not all that unusual for people who have ADHD to also have
depression but unlike in depression, people who have ADHD will not have
that general psychomotor retardation or that slowness that is more typical of
depression or they won't have the low levels of energy that are also more
typical of major depression
another condition that can sometimes look like ADHD is bipolar disorder or
even borderline personality disorder so this is a potentially difficult area for
diagnosis. In ADHD unlike in bipolar disorder you will not have as much of
those quick cyclical changes and you also won't have any of the psychotic
like symptoms of course like hallucinations and delusions
you also won't have the significant decrease in sleep that can often be
present in bipolar disorder. Now as I mentioned ADHD can also sometimes look
like borderline personality disorder partly because both can involve a sense of
unpredictability and chaos but in ADHD the abandonment anxiety won't be at the
forefront like it is in borderline personality disorder
You also won't have those very rapid fluctuations in mood that you can have
in BPD, or borderline personality disorder, and you won't have the symptoms that are
psychosis-like again like dissociation and finally you won't have that identity
disturbance that is quite typical of borderline personality disorder
so there are a number of conditions that can look like ADHD and some of these are
psychological and I just mentioned a few but there are others as well and others
are purely medical for example lead poisoning, anaemia, both can lead to ADHD
like symptoms so it's very important to be properly assessed if you think you
have ADHD and if it gets in the way of you living your life. If you completed a
screening test and it suggests that you may potentially have ADHD keep in mind
that these tools are just used and they were designed for one thing and that is
to screen. There's simply not enough, it's not sufficient to make a proper
diagnosis so you should not accept the treatment that is offered to you based
only on such screening so just go get tested properly by a professional.