Dr. Laura Knauss

Molly's mom saw her struggling and tried to give her tips, taught her how to do stuff like make lists so she could keep track of things.

And it worked.

Molly graduated from high school, college, and eventually she went to grad school to become a therapist.

But that too much feeling, it wasn't going away.

One day she was sitting in her diagnostic assessment class.

It's not just Molly.

Of the 15.5 million adults in America diagnosed with ADHD, about half got that diagnosis in adulthood.

I'm Jonquan Hill, and this week on Explain It to Me from Vox, we're talking about the fact and fiction surrounding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD.

I am Dr. Laura Knauss, and I am a professor of psychology at the University of Richmond, and I'm also a licensed clinical psychologist.

Okay, I'm going to start with what feels like a basic question.

What is ADHD?

I think this is maybe the most important question we'll talk about today, because I think a lot of the challenges when it comes to understanding ADHD kind of arise from the idea that sometimes when that term's being used, we're talking about different things.

ADHD can be a really challenging condition to diagnose if you're a clinician, because if we think about the core features of ADHD, so it's characterized by age inappropriate and impairing, either inattention, which is distractibility, difficulty organizing tasks and activities,

And it can occur, inattention can occur by itself or with hyperactivity impulsivity.

What we know about these kinds of symptoms that people have is that they can be because of ADHD, but they could be the result of so many other either mental health conditions or other kinds of lifestyle factors.

The way I like to teach people about it, though, is to talk about ADHD symptoms as really problems in self-regulation, especially when there's like a lot of distractions.

And so that's sort of one important way to think about ADHD.

We heard from a lot of listeners who have ADHD, and there was a real range of the way it impacts their lives.

Yeah, is that typical of what you see in your patients with ADHD?

Yeah, certainly.