This channel is dedicated to disseminating the science about ADHD. It is based on Dr. Barkley's 45 years of clinical practice, research, and teaching and his many books and scientific papers. In 2023, he was named by Research.com as the 37th most influential researcher in the US and 65th in the world in terms of the impact of his research on psychological science as attested to by how often his research is cited by others. He has recently retired. In anticipation of his retirement, he has created videos of more than 30 hours of his lectures that have been posted here for laypeople and professionals alike. Although the initial videos posted here are in their original length as given at conferences, most videos have now been broken down into shorter segments, numbered sequentially, and organized into playlists for ease of viewing.
PLEASE NOTE: DR. BARKLEY CANNOT GIVE ADVICE TO PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR ETHICAL REASONS.
Feels like a curse as soon as I’m obligated to do something. Feels like a gift when I have no pressure to deliver anything or live up to something. My mind goes to places normal people don’t reach, it’s enjoyable in a creative environment
ADHD is a poison chalice, not a gift. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to be cured. I’d be willing to trade a limb, kidney, eye, or shorten my life by 20 years for a brain that works.
I think the "high IQ/gifted" ADHD group strongly needs their own criteria and treatment approaches. Because it this particular group, struggles are different. Because when you are smart or gifted, it makes it harder for teachers and parents to believe you have ADHD. Because you're just so smart hence you would thrive *if you really* wanted to, so they see ADHD struggles as character deficits. It makes it even harder to be diagnosed until you're life is complete mess. So, other comorbids piles up in this group and when you have that many additional disorders, it is harder for professionals to see the core reason, ADHD.
I like your content on ADHD, but respectfully disagree with you on PDA. I am 48, and wasn't diagnosed with ASD and ADHD until a few years ago. I struggled with this from the age of three. I still struggle with this. I didn't have parents who gave me a pass, and I never used this condition as an excuse. In fact they were harder on me than my siblings. It wasn't until they left me alone in high school when I began to improve. You also don't discuss the main differences in how ASD and PDA people socialize. PDA individuals appear to be able to socialize better than others with ASD, but it's only on the surface. Once social interactions become more nuanced, do social interactions break down. Believe me, I myself have wondered what was wrong with me.
This is so interesting. As a kid I spent about two months (well it could have been only two days .. who knows.. adhd/time) playing a very repetitive ball game with myself. It was a hyperfocus thing of counting and handball moves against a wall, trying to reach the highest number that I could.
This male pseudo intellectuals need to be stopped. They target mostly underaged boys and young men to share harmful misinformation that will negatively impact their life, health and relationships. They don’t have any commitment with truth or general well being of men, their only commitment is to their ego, no matter the cost it has on the very public they claim to “care about”.
Thank you, Dr. Barkley. I found this video while looking a science based video on ADHD. Coincidentally, I've been baffled to the point of distraction about the Gabor Mate Phenomenon. He is (or was) licensed to practice Family Medicine in Canada, yet has become wildly popular for speaking only on subjects upon which he has no expertise., such as recommending ayahuasca as a "cure" for addiction, and speaking extensively on Trauma. I know that his license to practice medicine in Canada had been threatened. I don't if was actually revoked, but clearly it should have been.
With all due respect to Russell Barkley, I believe when someone takes a firm view that their view is the only correct one, it immediately doesn't sit well with me. Science is constantly changing, so we can only talk about the current view of science. Many things we cannot scientifically explain, so they exist or we even use them in practice. I don't see how Gabor Mate's view is harmful? He used ADHD medication himself. The atmosphere in which we grow up certainly has an impact on our development, including ADHD. Improving the atmosphere in the family can only improve the situation around ADHD, no matter what the main cause of ADHD is. Gabor Mate nowhere promotes that parents should be blamed. I believe that Russell Barkley has not read the book "Scattered Minds", which further calls into question such a strong criticism.
Peterson: Homer nodded. I listened to some of his comments, because Peterson has been immensely helpful to me, as, I must add, you have been immensely helpful to me. But I stopped midway through. No one wants to see his mentors embarrass himself! When Peterson took recourse to his pioneering work in personality theory, he suggested that ADHD traits could be explained by the subject landing on the distribution of personality traits. That may be true and even helpful (as in my own case), but I also saw it did not explain my executive function deficits or other earmarks of ADHD traits and effective treatment, e.g., CBT. I saw John Ratey when I first started working through EF/ADHD, and he had me read Panksaap, btw. In Peterson’s defense, please note that he has popularized helpful information from decades of clinical practice-as you and Hallowell/Ratey have done with ADHD. And did it without playing dead when oppressive powers that be showed up in 2020-24. That he is a Celebrity Psychologist only shows that, as Aristotle argues, some people can both cure patients and make money. He’s famous because of the fame-making process, but he’s helped people qua therapist and researcher in his field.
Is it better that parents believe that this is caused by their genes/heritability, or the environment? Is it possible that we are more stressed than 100 years ago!!?? Should we consider that the society we continue to create is more stressful to parents than before!?
as someone diagnosed 3 years ago i became obsessed with learning about my illness your teachings throughout has literally saved and changed my life I've pointed everyone into your direction
Civilization is just... one big environment adjustment to our needs and disabilities! If ADHD is gift or curse depends... ONLY from EXTERNAL environment (people around them, places, relations, obligations): 1) For some people it randomly fits and they thrive benefiting of e.g. hyperfocus in areas of their research interests, rich emotionality in arts, even short 'short-term-memory' boost efficiency and decision speed in fast-paced high-stimulus environment etc. 2) Some people can function only after conscious and careful environment accommodation. They would say sometimes it's blessing, but sometimes it's curse, depends of situation and durability of accommodations. 3) Some people have no means, knowledge or external help to adjust their external environment or adjust themself to existing external environment - for them ADHD is worst curse possible. Often it's too costly and difficult in maintenance to really thrive. If today's totally average man with 100 IQ would be surrounded only by 200 IQ people and their way of doing things, the today's normal man would be considered as cursed with severe disorder exactly the same way we treat 10 IQ people. If today's normal man "blessed" with 2 legs would be surrounded only by 1 leg people and whole world would be adjust only for 1 leg people, he would be considered as cursed with disorder, because he can't fit in clothes, cars, chairs and becomes suicidal after everyone laughs at him daily... External environment doesn't fit 90% of the times just because 90% of society is born with brains wired different way and they builded world for themself. This is ONLY reason why today ADHD is curse almost as default... until they have enough resources to counteract it (skills, meds, money, IQ, knowledge, external help, random luck etc). If you don't have those resources you can't thrive until you're born neurotypical. If everybody would be born as "unorganized emotional mess" the world would be adjusted perfectly for ADHD as default and it would be considered new normal (not blessing nor curse, just neutral average). The same actually apply to all physical and psychiatric disorders! Why? The term "disorder" generally implies that a condition leads to functional impairment or difficulties "in the environment in which a person lives". If the environment were fully adapted to meet the needs of individuals with ADHD, their cognitive and behavioral patterns would no longer be viewed as any impairments. Right now society simply changes disordered people with meds because it's magnitude quicker and cheaper than grandly changing environment and behaviour of whole society around every person for individual needs of their disorder. It would be impractical but theoretically it's possible! Just look at cultural war around pronounces for transgender people, it's a total mess to adjust egoistic society around anything what doesn't impact majority. And concluding on the basis of pandemic response, even changes around issues impacting majority are painfully difficult. But Hey, ADHDers CAN blessingly thrive in neurotypical world by obtaining certain society roles like researcher, CEO, artist, programmer, journalist, priest, event manager, hunter etc... and all neurotypical obligations can be done with help of medication, psychoeducation and some additional resources. Either you change yourself to surrounding or you change surrounding to yourself! The best solution is actively and selectively doing both!
It is not clear to me that what he describes is adhd. Trevor Noah is higly intelligent and highly intelligent people brains are very quick. For the people, information never comes in as quickly as they want and of course a teacher in front of them is too slow in delivering information and of course they get bored to death and require additional stimulation, the bird. Is it really "abnormal" not to be interested in something you already know? Highly intelligent people are often misdiagnosed as adhd. One thing that should be tried on a distracted kid: increase the level of difficulty. If the kids grades are improved when the level of difficulty increases he may be gifted, not adhd, if the grades are worsenthen adhd may be the problem, but not necessarily either... You can also try to decrease the level of difficulty. Because kids who are lost when the teacher talks are in the same situation as the gifted kids, it gets boring tonlisten to someone you don't understand . Same thing for a discussion: highly intelligent people tend to know in advance what the other person wants to say and may get bored at waiting for the person to say what they know they gonna say. Some may try to finish the sentence for the other German ne, other knows it is not super polite so they go in a more interesting place in their head. Small talk is also often boring for them. Switch the topic tonastronomy instead of today's meteo and then you will see someone very different in front of you.
65 yo make. ADHD and delayed sleep phase. Started Ritalin (Concerta) 8 years ago (though diagnosed in the 1960’s) and have found it definitely aids in sleep onset. Also, holding to a strict bedtime routine has helped. Surprisingly, trying to go to sleep early than usual can end up keeping me awake for hours after my usual onset.
I've always been diagnosed ADHD. But recently, at 46, I found out that I have a very rare brain tumor. I feel like my time blindness has gotten severely worse in the last 5-10 yrs.
Thank you for conceding to wide individual variation, domains of high success, and abilities of strengths, talents, and high competence. Not everyone fills the “mold.” Thanks for saying it.
It would be very nice if you could make a detailed video that would help us on how to respond as late as possible in a discussion when we started the response in the beginning. I mean, someone tells us something and we don't respond immediately. Answering with a delay makes me feel like I'm going to look cringing. I haven't found anywhere on the internet anything about what to do, that is, to not look like cringing because we take so long to answer so I can think. I'm not referring to speaking slowly in general, that is, among all the things you want to say slowly while giving the answer because that's easy. I refer when you start the answer. So how do you pause without looking at the other person like a fool? I have read your book, but there is little written. Also the phrases mentioned are good but can you tell us more? (Chapter 16). For example, how Tommy Shelby pauses at the beginning of his speech but it's a movie and you can't look at the other person even for 1-2 seconds without cringing. you'll look weird.
My ADHD forced me to develop coping mechanisms that eventually became valuable skills in my career. I work quickly and efficiently, and often get calls for last-minute jobs. I stay cool in a crisis and can improvise in new situations. HOWEVER: I don’t consider these blessings, because I could have learned these skills without my impairments as well. Instead, I just consider my ADHD analogous to poor eyesight, and my medication is like wearing glasses.
Please don’t spread misinformation. Dr Barkley had a twin brother and nephew with ADHD, both who died because of their disorder, in addition to seeing countless families and patients during his time as a clinician. So he in fact does have first hand experience with ADHD.
@@iliyanovslounge No, he has second hand experience. First hand experience can only be had by a person who experiences ADHD within themselves. Regardless of what you call it, he is obviously one step removed from the diagnosis because he does not experience it himself.
I work as a virtual design and construction manager (construction industry). I find it difficult to sustain constant interaction; meetings and directing my employees. By the end of the day, my social bandwidth is zero. I prefer days when I don’t have to talk or direct people. I guess I’m just different from what Dr. Barkley is explaining.
Thank you for your continued advocacy. I had the honor of seeing you and Dr. Hallowell present this debate at one of the CHADD conferences years ago. I have always respected both of your perspectives and I am grateful to you both for your work. I remember you saying that in all your years in professional practice that no one had ever walked into your office asking for help with their gift of ADHD.
I noticed that when you talk about successful people with ADHD, it's always people in creative/athletic industries. I am a physician-scientist so I never see people like myself represented. I just googled famous scientists with ADHD and it was all just unverifiable scientists from the past e.g. Da Vinci, Einstein etc. Maybe it's just that modern day scientists are less "famous" in the mainstream. Anyway, apart from the creative industries, some people in Business who have publicly claimed they have ADHD that you could add to your list for variety of industries are Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin and David Neeleman, founder of Jet Blue. If anyone knows any famous academics/people in other industries that have verified ADHD, please let me know.
Indeed, engineers and scientists are simply not celebrities like folks in the performing arts and athletics. Regular people with jobs are not likely to disclose their diagnosis, especially if it might impact their prospective employers' or clients' perception of their abilities, or result in outright disability discrimination. Many ADHD researchers and authors, including dr. Ned Hallowell and dr. Sari Solden have ADHD themselves, but self-disclosure serves them as subject matter authorities. That's not the case in most fields.
According to this website apparently Bill Gates and Richard Branson have never publicly claimed that they have ADHD. I’ll update my previous comment. But you’re absolutely right about IKEA’s founder.
I think much like you both work in different ways, the way you both work appeals to people in different ways. For me Ned's stuff is more useful to the delicate folks amongst us. He provides the same information in many ways but he sugar coats it. I find when I link your content to some, primarily women, they find it cold and hard to digest. Not because your information isn't accurate but because they grew up on social media where everything gets sugar coated. The realities are too much for some and they need to be handled softly. For many out there now they are more comfortable telling themselves a story than accepting the realities of the disorder. I understand this, life is hard. While Ned might be a better communicator in the social media world, I prefer your delivery. It may be because I also have autism and find that the facts give me hope. It helps me accept my condition and move forward while understanding my limitations. Each approach has its value. I began my journey with driven to distraction and in many ways I'm glad I did. It broke me in gently but it was your content that transformed my understanding and truly helped me to learn. You guys are both amazing people and clinicians, who have devoted your lives to helping people with adhd and you both will be remembered forever by future generations of neurodivergent folks. Thank you both.
Not all traumatised people exhibit ADHD traits...however a LOT of people do have undiagnosed ADHD...so GM concludes a very strong causal link to traumatised folk who he encounters daily in his studies and practice. I have ADHD and my upbringing was utterly devoid of any traumatised or abuse....Has he interviewed the likes of me who never have cause to visit a therapist or psych of any flavour for such issues?
Adhd is not a gift , and i find this incredibly disingenuous when these people minimize our suffering by sprouting bullshit like adhd is a gift , which has no basis on the experience of the living reality by those who have to actually live with having ADHD 😢😢😢, i am kind of disappointed by professor barkeley too for entertainter these stupid harmful ideas
I agree ADHD like cancer and many other sicknesses is a direct result of not being perfect. The consequences of the original sin are real. You didn't ask to be born, but you are and ADHD is something you have to live with until things are made new again. There are still people in society who care and will be an ally to you, encouraging you to be your best self and be non judgemental.
Dr. Hallowell has ADHD himself. I would never characterize his opinions as having no basis in lived experience. I feel like you've missed the whole point of this video.
Life isn't so black and white. How you see the world is not how everyone else does. Some people cannot confront the realities of the disorder in the way you do and if they did would likely suffer. It's ok that someone finds hope in one person's version of this as long as it isn't harmful. Some folks find power comfort and hope in Ned's content and who are you to tell them they are wrong? Some people need to tell themselves stories to keep on going in this world, let them. Don't be so angry about this. Share Dr barkley's content but give people the space to find what works for them. Do not presume that you know what is right or the best choice for everyone. Have a little compassion and understanding.
