non hyper 20 year old with adhd | ADHD Information

This is my first post to this board or any board for that matter. My son is 20 and was diagnosed with adhd in his junior year of high school. My concern is that he is not the typical adhd hyperactive child. He is very low key. We had him on adderall during this time and he was a B/C student through high school. He attended college for the 2 years and things went ok until he started to drop classes during exam week saying he got behind. I understand that function of adhd which is normal.

He is very disorganized and doesn't follow our advice to use a daytimer to help and all of the things we've been told to help him. Now he is going to a junior college to make up courses so he can go back to school in Jan. Last night he said that was a bad idea and wants to go to the carribean and go to school there and work at the sametime. He cannot get up to go to work in the morning and can't sleep at night. He seems like he is all over the place and its getting worse.

I know he's embarassed about school and I'm sure a bit of depression has set in. My wife and I have him seeing a specialist who says he must hit bottom before he can get better. I am looking for positive steps we/him can take together to get him back on track. Any advice?

Hello and welcome to the board. Sorry your son is getting depressed about falling behind. As you probably already know, ADHD is a defecit in executive functions in the brain. Paraphrasing Russ Barkley (Taking Charge of ADHD), a person with ADHD executive functions that of a person about 30% younger. So in your son's case, that is about 13 years of age. Imagine someone 13 years old going to college! So he probably would need supports in this area of executive functions which include organizational skills, planning, and sense of time passing. Maybe some counseling would be in order to help him understand how to manage his ADHD. I'm sure he certainly isn't the only one at his age with these very same issues. Good luck. I hope you find a good plan to deal with this.

[QUOTE=nothyper]He is very disorganized and doesn't follow our advice to use a daytimer to help and all of the things we've been told to help him. Now he is going to a junior college to make up courses so he can go back to school in Jan. Last night he said that was a bad idea and wants to go to the carribean and go to school there and work at the sametime. He cannot get up to go to work in the morning and can't sleep at night. He seems like he is all over the place and its getting worse.

[/QUOTE]

i disagree with the hitting bottom. your son is not an alcoholic or addict. he is ADD. I doubt that he is ADHD. You should seek a second opinion. Hitting bottom is an odd statement for a doctor to make for adhd or add. What kind of dr is he going to? have to gotten a second or 3rd opinion? I feel your pain, you are in the right place. Welcome to the board. I'm glad to meet you, this is a great place to get you and your son on the tract to "normality" (like there is a normal person out there lol)

Is he depressed about falling behind or does he tend to get moody and depressed, in general? I'm wondering if he has something besides ADHD. I also don't think "hitting bottom" is not a good idea for a child with that sort of problem. His own body is betraying him. He's not a drug addict. He needs help BEFORE he hits bottom. Did he see a Psychiatrist for his diagnosis (the one with the MD?) Did he just see a Psycologist? I can tell you from long, bad experience (one after another) t hat non-MD Psycologists are poor diagnosticians and also give some off-the-wall advice. I have bipolar and my son is on the autism spectrum. Not one psycologist came close to getting either of our dx. right, and the advice we got sometimes made me think they the wrong person was on the couch

MomWI38925.2226041667I agree MomWI! that M.D. is the real deal. If you go to an md they will either tell you straight up (after testing of course) or say, man i really am not sure, but i will get with my colleges and find out. Maybe bipolar? does he go through the days of manic and the have days of extreme depression? I really don't know much about bipolar.

It's hard at this age also cause they are not a kid anymore. Have him try vitamins also if you can. There are four kinds of bipolar. Most people don't get classic mania/depression. Some mostly get depressed. Of course, there is aslso unipolar depression. Hypo-mania is hard for a non-Psychiatrist to see. The person is in a good mood, better than average, but not off-the-wall. Stimulants or Straterra made mood-disordered people even worse, so it's important to know what's going on. The wrong meds can be a disaster. (I have bipolar II). MomWI38926.1781481481