People With ADHD Have Shorter Life Expectancy, Study Finds (cnn.com) 49
People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder face significantly shorter life expectancy and higher mental health risks, a British study of over 30,000 patients found. The research, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, showed men with ADHD lived 4.5 to 9 years less, while women's lives were shortened by 6.5 to 11 years.
The study compared primary care data from 30,029 adults with ADHD against 300,400 people without the condition. "Although many people with ADHD live long and healthy lives, our finding that on average they are living shorter lives than they should indicates unmet support needs," said Dr. Liz O'Nions, honorary research fellow at University College London. The study linked ADHD to increased risks of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide, along with higher rates of smoking and alcohol use.
The study compared primary care data from 30,029 adults with ADHD against 300,400 people without the condition. "Although many people with ADHD live long and healthy lives, our finding that on average they are living shorter lives than they should indicates unmet support needs," said Dr. Liz O'Nions, honorary research fellow at University College London. The study linked ADHD to increased risks of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide, along with higher rates of smoking and alcohol use.
Um.. (Score:3)
Me: [clicks on the article on Slashdot, see it open, but before reading it remembers a different process running in a shell that needs attention, alt-tabs away for a few seconds, then remembers Slashdot and writes a comment, without addressing the process]
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Cause? (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably both! (Score:1, Troll)
It's being ADHD and partying wild, making crazy sexual decisions, setbacks affecting lifetime earnings, the ability to ignore pain and discomfort, lack of coordination combined with general recklessness resulting in accidents.
The meds are also not good for you and can even exacerbate some of the aforementioned life shortening side effects.
Re:Probably both! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's being ADHD and partying wild, making crazy sexual decisions, setbacks affecting lifetime earnings, the ability to ignore pain and discomfort, lack of coordination combined with general recklessness resulting in accidents.
The meds are also not good for you and can even exacerbate some of the aforementioned life shortening side effects.
I have ADHD. I have a somewhat heightened ability to ignore pain and discomfort sometimes. ADHD has also affected my financial situation negatively, but mostly not from an earnings standpoint. Where did you get the other attributes you mentioned?
Also, you didn't note the depression mentioned in TFS. Even absent the self-destructive behaviours which can accompany it, depression on its own has negative biological and biochemical effects which can shorten lifespan.
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I didn't read the article. ... low bandwidth on a uhm brain network uhm route in front of the basal ganglia. I forget and it'd hard to exp
People with adhd:
are more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs
have more sexual partners and general recklessness can extend to this activity
setbacks involving school, work performance, or even just filling out forms for shit can hold people with adhd back.
i'll agree that the pain and discomfort thing is pretty conditional
the lack of coordination has to do with... uhhhh. uhm
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Is that just wild speculation ADHD causes shorter life expectancy, it a list of possibilities without any proof. I could just as equally say its the medication they are on, it would be pure speculation.
from the article:
observational data that inevitably leaves many important questions unanswered since a cause-and-effect relationship can’t be entirely established
My question is why do we do we need to make with ADHD live on average the same as everybody else? I think I get it, its unfair its not their fault that they where born with the condition. But life is unfair, if you are born in a third world country you probably have a way lower life expectanc
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There was a study some time ago that found that autistics have a similar shortened lifespan of roughly 5-7 years off, although the good news is that's lower than it was 10 years ago, where it was something like 19 years shorter. There were some interesting biological pieces, including that autistics tend to develop more neurological conditions as they age, so that contributed to mortality.
How
Re: Probably both! (Score:2)
Sounds like you got the cool ADHD! I just have the one where parties are overwhelming and uncomfortable.
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Also this was a matched cohort study, so they'd have zero clue of all sorts of pertinent information.
And these are ADHD people seeking treatment and given the ratio of patients to clinicians, likely some sort of specialists like a psychiatrist. So not only are they people with ADHD, but those who seek treatment and possible specialist treatment at that. I think that has to be a confounding factor.
I just learned to deal with it and never bothered with stimulants or other forms of treatm
Anecdote time (Score:2)
The exception proving the rule, maybe? I'm mild enough in my ADHD that I don't need meds.
In terms of aging, it's happening of course, I'm not young anymore, but all those things that are supposed to happen around certain ages are hitting me either towards the end of the expected window or even after.
I have no reason at present not to expect to be alive in my 90s even if medical science ceases all progress today.
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Are you exceptionally active?
I think channeling hyperactivity might be the big thing that adhd people kind of have going for them.
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Oh god no. If something takes me early, the underlying cause will probably be identified as 'sedentary lifestyle'.
I prevent boredom with computers and I get my illumination from a monitor, like any decent computer geek.
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Why do you want to live to 90 if it means that you don't enjoy the life you are living? What will 10 extra years give you anyway? Its a balance but some goal that living a bit extra must be a positive. I had a great aunt that lived to 97 she was miserable, she constantly said she wanted to die, it probably would have been better for her if she had died 10 years earlier.
Maybe a life with "bad" choices like partying and living a little less is better than one than living like a monk for some people.
This can't be true (Score:2)
I'm thinking to myself, this can't be true. As I open Slashdot on my phone while juggling work texts and walking into traffic.
There is no...
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I was a big admirer of Profet's multi-tasking skills, a thing to behold. I'll miss Profet. Hack In Peace.
Old news btw (Score:2)
This was pretty much established fact for awhile when discussing ADHD.
I think the revelation is that for all the fuss and changes to special ed and whatever else people with adhd still have unmet needs.
squirrels (Score:2)
I'm not surprised. Suddenly running off to chase squirrels is not without its risks. I'm at least looking for cars now. Many don't make it past this. Got to skew the numbers.
Re: squirrels (Score:2)
Squirrels? Is that some Pokemon Go character on a smart phone? Because that appears to be the way that many people will leave this world. Jaywalking into traffic without looking up from their toy.
Re: squirrels (Score:2)
It's referencing this: https://youtu.be/SSUXXzN26zg?f... [youtu.be]
That's because every experienc is shorte... (Score:2)
ADHD (Score:2)
I've been provisionally diagnosed with ADHD. It's provisional because although I have severe symptoms and they massively impact work and private life, the experts don't consider it severe enough and repeatedly reject referrals.
It's unclear if a diagnosis would help, there's a world shortage of ADHD medication and there's far too little research on what is clearly (to anyone who bothers to look) a range of unrelated conditions that share the ADHD label and a bunch of the outward symptoms.
Psychiatric medicati
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ADHD is understood way more than most prescribers or patients seem to know.
The reasons that stimulants work is pretty well understood but uhhh i guess the people involved don't spend a lot of time considering implications during treatment, they just go from one med to the next and try higher doses mostly based on a scale of how dangerous the treatment is.
The public understanding of ADHD and the condition implied by the name don't really capture the full spectrum of things going on with ADHD. The discussio
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We could simply cease all psychological and psychiatric treatments until science advances to the point of making them more effe
Future discoveries maybe (Score:2)
We don't effectively use what we know now.
With ADHD there's a lot of discovery about the patient that usually needs to happen for effective treatment and nobody involved, including the patient themselves has the time or motivation to go through that process.
The most egregious thing is that the resources involved could at least make this fact more apparent to the patient so they fully understand they need to try things and what things they can try.
But it's usually like, have you tried meditation? are you ac
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There's plenty of alternatives to Adderall et al and doctors aren't really suffering. The people who need the heaviest of stimulation take Dexedrine which is not in short supply (this is generally one of the most controlled drugs handed out in pill bottles.)
If you have bipolar disorder, you probably don't have ADHD and the treatments for the former will treat the latter albeit with more profound side effects. Lithium isn't used to treat ADHD normally because it has pr
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The heaviest prescribed stim is dysoxyn which is like a last hope thing because its literal meth and the side effects are pretty bad. I don't think most doctors wanna tell the dea they handed out one of the few scripts in the country because the guys pharmacy was out of adderall.
Dexadrine is very very close to adderall and both are in short supply as is ritalin and all it's pals.
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If you do not have ADHD (Score:3)
But (Score:1)
...they don't notice the difference.
On a serious note, most the major mental health "ailments"* result in a shorter life-span, including but not limited to autism, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.
The most common theory is that being a "misfit" generates life-long stress, which wears out the body prematurely by putting it in "fight or flight" mode too often, which taxes our biological systems in the long term, being kind of like turbo mode for a car or plane engine: it heavily stresses parts to gain a
Observational science... (Score:2)
"I really should hurry across the street. That truck isn't going to stop".
"Oh, look...a rainbow!
Makes sense (Score:1)
It really makes sense due to the constant stress. I think about everything all at once all day long. It makes it hard to remember any one thing and that stresses me out. I constantly worry that I forgot something while being angry at myself for forgetting something. I am constantly on the go and don't rest enough. I do stupid things for a dopamine hit instead of doing things that are healthy. That has to take it's toll. Such is the life of a spicy brain.
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
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The modern workplace is adhd hell I used to have like whole browsers opened up and paged desktops and screen sessions with notes and shit and then I'd just plow through all my work in order. It'd all be planned out carefully so I couldn't get distracted or slow down.
Lmao not now all those sessions would time out and then you gotta 2fa and who knows what the fuck else. Oh and HR sent an email about some urgent shit you gotta "self service" up in their low-bid SaaS HR portal.
Working has gotten a lot more ad
This is due to the ADHD dilemma (Score:3)
Disclaimer: I'm an ADHD candidate.
The fundamental problem with ADHD is that it requires conscious navigation and perpetual active lifestyle design to cope with it or even experience some ADHD "benefits". A "regular" lifestyle is not really possible with ADHD. By very definition, if you've got the levels of lower-than-average frontal-lobe bandwidth that is enough for a diagnosis you're already suffering and are bound to this dilemma.
The problem is that there are by and large 3 ways for an individual to somewhat manage their ADHD predisposition in the long term:
1.) Sedating yourself and the ADHD-typical heightened baseline anxiety with drugs, escapism, low risk / low reward and/or low-effort living. This is sort of my personal mode right now, although I avoid drugs, except my medication and sugar. I do sedate myself though with copious amounts of escapism. ... Yay to our nerdy/geeky Cyberpunk world I guess. I do plan to snap out of it though.
2.) Embracing minimalism and going out on adventures, tapping into the prehistoric hunter/gatherer/nomad brain and connecting with nature and our more low-level tribal/natural instincts. My daughter who inherited ADHD from me is full on in this mode right now. She basically lives outside in the jungle in an eco-camp in central america, doing chores, growing permaculture, doing yoga, 5-rythm dancing and all sorts of other stuff along the "self-discovery" line. She's more or less living a prehistory quasi-tribal lifestyle, which _is_ more in tune with ADHD disposition.
3.) Consciously living a minimalist quasi-artist / quasi-religious spiritual lifestyle and making an emphatic spiritual point of living a stoic lifestyle and disproportionately taking care of your physical and mental health. (this is the all-out full-on quasi new-ager type, basically mixing the best of 1.) and 2.))
The problem is that 1.) and 2.) come with somewhat significant and elevated (health) risks. Sedetary lifestyle and/or drug consumption for obvious reasons. The adventurous and/or prehistoric lifestyle comes with higher risks of injury or death due to accidents, that ADHD types are way more prone to than regulars with they don't make a point in being _very_ careful on their adventures.
The upside of 2.) is that chasing those new experiences does heighten your senses and force you to pay attention, a thing that ADHD people love about outdoor sports. I the last 5-6 years I've done kitesurfing, freediving, paragliding and longboard scateboarding, the latter shattering my lower right leg in a silly but disasterous accident that had me lying in bed for 6 months with 6 operations, two plates and 21 screws in my leg. A typical ADHD story. Dito my daughter, who broke her shoulder while climbing in the jungle. It took 10 days for the yoga millenials to notice that it's not just a popped joint but a fracture. It was a huge drama fixing it, elevated by the fact that she didn't want to leave her favorite place in the jungle. Yet another typical ADHD injury story.
And yet I'm yearning to get my motorcycle licence which I will start in the next few weeks, but I have no illusions about the heightened risk and how careful I have to be getting on a motorbike at age 55 no matter how well I can handle myself. I also know that if I don't move on from my cave and do more long-distance travels with a cheap vehicle like a light enduro, I'll go bonkers. This _is_ a tradeoff and highlights the default dilemma everyone in the ADHD-camp faces.
If you want to minimize ADHD suffering and still reap at least _some_ of the benefits of a modern low-risk high-tech society, you will have to build, manage and fully embrace a lifestyle that is anything but ordinary.
Us types need the stimulation while at the same time being somewhat ill-equipped to handle the risk involved. I, like some researches, believe this to be somewhat evolutionary and adaptive, as it's ADHD traits that have people do unusual things out of the ordinary and search and fin
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You forgot:
4) Medication. It doesn't work for everyone but it does work for most, though it requires a bit of trial and error to find the drug and dose that works well. It also doesn't get you to a full neurotypical state, but close enough.
Personally, my ADHD is mild enough that I can manage it pretty effectively with nothing more than caffeine, consumed on a careful schedule. Having a regular activity that forces deep focus also helps moderate symptoms for the rest of my life also helps, I find. For m
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I usually have several personal projects going on at once. It can be tiring....
Same! I have an enormous backlog of them, including some I haven't touched for years. Attention deficit, you know... but working on them does help.
Re: This is due to the ADHD dilemma (Score:2)
We eventually took the various projects around the apartment and put them into labelled clear plastic bags. Makes the clutter less demanding of being worked on.
On purpose? (Score:2)
Maybe we don't live as long just because we don't want to.
To quantify the trauma of neurodivergence (Score:1)
Re: To quantify the trauma of neurodivergence (Score:2)
"Neurology is like hardware, you can't look at a motherboard and see Facebook."
That is an excellent analogy.
Left-handedness and ADHD (Score:2)
While the study may have linked the cause to drugs, smoking, etc and it may certainly contribute to shorter life expectancy I strongly suspect the issue is similar to left-handedness.
Left-handed people have a life expectancy of 2+ years less than right handed individuals. In short, the world is built for right handed people and left handed men were more likely to die prematurely in accidents or in warfare. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
ADHD more assuredly results in similar premature deaths as a result
Comorbidities (Score:2)
My awesome therapist points out that there's a lot of comorbidities as well. I haven't checked the references on that, but ADHD certainly also makes it harder to deal appropriately with other illnesses. Especially those that require following a specific diet or system or some - SQUIRREL!
So many things... (Score:2)