How To Spot The ADHD Misdiagnosis Trap Fast | Dr. Sasha Hamdani

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0:27there's so many things that fragment focus there's so many things that trauma can fragment focus ptsd a huge cause of that anxiety can fragment focus thyroid conditions can fragment focus there's so many hormones so there's so many things that impact focus impact behavior but that's not truly ADHD. So you could have focus fragmentation that's coming from all those things, but ADHD is a distinct longitudinal pattern that's usually genetic. Well, interesting. So I might've had symptoms or similarities of ADHD, but not ADHD. Yes. How does a practitioner distinguish the difference? Do they look at your blood work and say like, okay, your DNA says this versus the behavioral traits that you're using or are experiencing in life?

1:16Yeah. Because if the symptoms look the same, how do you know the diagnosis? Okay. Yes. So if you're seeing these symptoms of fragmented attention kind of throughout and the doctor does a full assessment, they've looked at medical stuff, they've looked at psychiatric stuff, They've looked at the just psychological kind of environment that they're in and the state of affairs in terms of their life and what's happening. And they get to a spot where they're trying to figure out, like, is this ADHD or is this not? Then you start looking back at patterns. Is this a consistent pattern? From birth, this was going on with ups and downs and this had been a consistent pattern.

2:03is this really localized around traumatic things and this is like a trauma response is this something that happens when metabolically something is different so you're looking at context and you're looking at kind of when these things peak and valley you're looking at from from early early ages what has this pattern been throughout and i think it's really difficult because I also touched on this briefly, but I think with ADHD, diagnostically, we're at a very problematic spot because that initial data was done on hyperactive young males. So right now, we have this diagnostic criteria that's not encapsulating so many other presentations.

2:48But also, aren't many young males hyperactive? I mean, it's like, are just hormones make young men more hyperactive than not? I have a six-year-old young male. He is. Jumping off the walls and running around. Of energy and vigor. I think it can sometimes be difficult to tell, for sure. But the criteria was built on observable data. There's a lot of this, especially when you're making the argument to include emotional regulation, which, by the way, Europe did in 2019. they amended their criteria to include emotional regulation, and the U.S. still hasn't. But when you're looking at all this, you can't observe emotional regulation.

3:32You can't observe these kind of lived experiences and these difficulties and subtleties that are happening internally. And so now we have this presentation where anyone who's having this emotional turbulence that happens with ADHD and emotional dysregulation, because of that failure in criteria, doctors are like, okay, well, it's anxiety, it's depression. And they're treated with antidepressant after antidepressant after antidepressant. And antidepressants, by the way, I'm not against antidepressants. I think they're great. I think they're life-changing tools if that's your diagnosis. So if you don't have anxiety and depression, you're started on an antidepressant.

4:15This cycle just perpetuates. And what happens is that I've had patients come into my office. They sit in the chair. Maybe they're on their 10th antidepressant. And they're like, I went to my doctor and I asked him after seeing stuff online or talking to my family, I think I have ADHD. And the doctor will say, well, we can't even look at that until we get your anxiety and depression. Shut up. Yeah. Wow. So you're just in this perpetuating cycle of misdiagnosis.

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