Danielle attends an ADHD camp in Michigan and hears stories from several women about being diagnosed with ADHD later in life. Many of them have one thing in common. More on this story: I’m sure my mom has ADHD. Should I tell her?What is the ADHD tax?“Who are we missing?” One doctor’s lifelong fight for women with ADHDFor a transcript and more resources, visit the the show page on Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give
What is the connection between modern life and ADHD symptoms?
Here's a not-at-all fun fact. The average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in the last 25 years or so. We are all increasingly struggling to focus. The writer Johan Hari attempts to reckon with this phenomenon in his 2022 book, Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. I read it in 2023 after a guy I was seeing recommended it.
He was in the middle of wrestling with his own ADHD symptoms. Anyway, the author of the book moved to a seaside town as an experiment. He cooked for himself. He walked everywhere. He read a daily newspaper and read books. He left his smartphone at home and called his family from a landline. Essentially, he lived in his immediate surroundings. Within weeks, he felt like his old self.
He could think clearly and write for sustained periods of time. He enjoyed conversations with strangers. Outside of the pace of modern life, his symptoms ebbed. After three months, he left this little paradise and set out to find reasons why it's so hard to achieve this feeling in regular life. He found that many forces beyond our control are sort of short-circuiting our brains.
Things like pollution in the air, chemicals in our food, tech companies creating addictive products. In essence, the conditions of modern life are not good for our brains, neurotypical and neurodivergent brains alike. And many of the habits of modern life aren't good either. To be clear, Stolen Focus is not about ADHD.
But the book hones in on what Ned calls our ADDogenic culture and why more people might be developing what he called environmentally induced ADHD. That is to say, the way we live these days is manifesting ADHD-like symptoms, even for people who do not have ADHD. Does accepting this fact open the door for greater numbers of misdiagnosis? Yes.
But for those who truly have ADHD, it reveals how severely modern life might be intensifying ADHD symptoms. About two weeks after I shared dinner with the Hallowells and talked myself into an unexpected invitation, I showed up at their camp. The ADHD family camp was being held at a boarding school in northern Michigan.
As I pulled onto the school grounds, I realized the decision to go there was pretty impulsive. And now that I was there, I didn't have much of a plan. I had hoped, at the very least, to spend the week connecting with women with ADHD. Maybe a few who were recently diagnosed. But beyond that, I didn't really know what to expect.
I got there towards the end of check-in and walked up at the same time as a family. Hello.
How are you guys?
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