Dr. Yath Ramesh

But then there's another problem that happens.

Children with ADHD who are exposed to the same traumas that someone without ADHD doesn't have.

So let's say parent or divorce, for example.

They not only experienced the worries that they might have caused it because of all the things that they were told about themselves, but for their RSD, suddenly you go from having a perceived threat to confirmation that there is an actual threat here.

This event actually happened in your life, and maybe you might have had some contribution to it.

And I...

find this one of the most painful experiences to hear about when people carry that.

So yeah, childhood trauma has a very, very strong role to play in how ADHD develops in children.

A child tries to make sense of this by building a narrative about themselves.

So that narrative might be that

there's just something that's fundamentally wrong or flawed or different about me and that narrative then can cause a reaction so for some it might make them withdraw it might make them want to spend more time with themselves and not with other people because they worry that

about what other people are going to say or how other things might play out in future relationships.

That withdrawal for some people could look like an anxiety.

So you may see a child diagnosed with social anxiety as a result.

Some children withdraw so much that they stop doing things and they stop gaining pleasure in things.

And that again could cause issues with their mood.

And again, that could play out as a depression.

Other children, especially when going through adolescence and learning about how to regulate emotions, can have difficulties with identifying with what's safe and what's not safe.

And that can very strongly contribute to emotional dysregulation.

All of that, I guess, could lead to a child presenting with different mental health issues.