Dr. Laura Knauss

So as you can see, the emphasis there being on the hyperactivity kind of piece of it.

And then kind of moving into the 70s and 80s, it evolved a little bit to not just kind of focus on the behavior, but also the cognitive processes.

So that's where we get a name change to attention deficit disorder.

So notice we're adding that attention piece there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So a number of name changes.

And then it wasn't really till like the 90s that even in clinical spaces, the idea that ADHD persists into adulthood became a prominent thing.

For a long time, it was like, well, this kid's just going to outgrow this so we don't have to worry about it in adulthood.

But now we know that is not the case.

Do we know what causes ADHD?

Like, is this environmental?

Is this genetic?

Yeah.

What causes this?

So what we find when we're talking about the core ADHD symptoms, right, so the inattentive and or hyperactivity impulsivity, the extent to which this varies between people is about 80% heritable.

So it's about as heritable as differences in human height.

The place where the environment becomes exceedingly important is in the extent to which somebody with these ADHD traits experiences impairment.

We do know that modifying the environment in particular ways, helping clients learn new skills, giving frequent and really helpful feedback, like these are ways that adults with ADHD can, you know, they still have ADHD, but they're going to function better like with their symptoms.

And so that's what I get really jazzed up as a clinician is like helping people figure out how to like hack their lives, right, to succeed more even in the presence of ADHD.

OK, one of the well-established ways to treat ADHD is with certain stimulants like Adderall or Ritalin.