Dr. Laura Knauss

But if it's not accurate, it could point people in the wrong direction when looking for ways to better live their lives.

So I think as a clinician and researcher, I treat the term ADHD with a lot of gravity and a lot more than I see it being used in daily life.

I think this is true for other terms like OCD or how we use the term autistic.

So why not say I'm having trouble resisting distraction instead of I'm so ADHD right now?

The way we think about ADHD has changed a lot over the years.

How did it become the disorder we know today?

That's next.

I'm JQ, back with more Explain It To Me.

ADHD is definitely having a moment right now.

But Dr. Laura Now says it goes back, way back.

The traits we associate with ADHD probably have existed in humans as long as they've been humans.

But in terms of like the medical literature, we can rewind the clock all the way back to 1775.

A German physician named Melchior Adam Weikert is now the first documented kind of like clinical case description.

the case description kind of pops up in different languages.

And so it was sort of independently discovered in different spots, kind of all the way through the 1800s.

And then kind of in the early 1900s is where we start to see mental disorders in general, they're becoming kind of diagnostic criteria

for things, and ADHD didn't become part of the diagnostic system that's used in the United States until 1968.

Oh, wow.

It was referred there to hyperkinetic reaction of childhood.

This disorder is characterized by overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span, especially in young children.