ADHD
The first question that people think, when they hear Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is an illness. They don’t understand how the brain of a person with ADHD works or how their brain’s structure is different from a person that doesn’t have ADHD. This so-called “disorder” is feared among parents because it is a lasting disorder. Once you have it, there is no cure to “fixing it,” but the outreaches that science has made to making ADHD more livable is better than any cure.
To begin with, people that have ADHD have a smaller prefrontal lobe than those that don’t have ADHD. Inexact percentages, the prefrontal lobe is 10% smaller in the brain of a person that has Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The prefrontal lobe is responsible for planning, problem-solving, and critical thinking. This part of our brain is crucial for our daily lives, with all the clustered information we get in a day we are conformed to being frustrated with all that thinking. And people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, have the disadvantage of having a smaller prefrontal lobe and along with restrictions of this part of the brain having such a big hand in their daily lives, they continue to fight. Stimulants, antidepressants, and psychotherapy can be used to help the brain focus more on the planning part and help mood, but besides these medications, the prefrontal lobe does create a big factor in making a struggle for people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Other parts of the brain that take a tool in making the structure of a person with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder different, are anterior temporal lobes, globus pallidus, and caudate nucleus, these structures of the brain are also smaller in a person that has ADHD. These are all factors that affect attention. The smaller these portions of the brain are, the less you pay attention. This is a core symptom of people that do have ADHD, their attention spans are shorter than the average person. These structures play a big part in our everyday lives and people with ADHD have the disadvantage of not have a normal size of them. However, they fight to keep going, into this race of life. People with ADHD can use stimulants, but even with a disadvantage people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder fight.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder affects over 11 million people in the world. There is probably someone around you facing ADHD, or you might have it without knowing you do. ADHD can go undiagnosed for thousands of people. At its common core ADHD is seen through impulsive decisions, poor planning, and not being able to pay attention. Though the charters are different between a child with ADHD and their normality with paying attention, compared to an adult. But the research and outright talking about Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, we as a society have come a long way in helping people with the disorder live a normal daily life. We need to create a safe place for people with ADHD, help them the best possible way we can, and further support the study for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
No one wants a label to be put on them, and not the label of a disorder. We see that as a rude and awful name. As a child, we hated being called names, and as adults, the name we fear is a failure. But living with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is hard, it is not easy to keep up with. And the pressure that society has put on those individuals, is stone being taken away from the pillar of acceptance. Accepting people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is the pavement to accepting people with even more drastic disorders. The filler of people living with ADHD is that they are stuck with this name for eternity. ADHD doesn’t go away, so putting this label on a child and outcasting them from the beginning will destroy the process of unity. The unity of people with diseases and those that don’t. Accepting and creating a safe place for everyone would be shattered if we continue to put labels on people that don’t deserve to be treated in such away.
So, what can we do to create a safe space for people that have ADHD? For most talk, bring awareness about what Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is and why it matters. We need to tell those 11 million people that they are in a safe place wherever they are. Education is key, and telling everyone what ADHD is, would help bring awareness. Telling your teacher that you or a friend has ADHD, would help you excel in that class and furthermore give you more criteria in helping you study for that class. In all, as humans, we need to understand the physical structure difference that people with ADHD have compared to people that don’t have it. We are all human and need to accept our differences.
