Psychiatrist leter. | ADHD Information
My wifes brother in laws sees one of these. This guy says it's not they can't focus. They are taking in what is around them which is causing the problem. Sounds Sensory to me. If this is so ,Sensory therapy should teach coping stagies for all these people. I don't think that description is exactly right. I think the Psychiatrist is guessing. We can focus on things that hold our attention, but if something else comes up needing examination our thought process will jump tracks. What it is is thought impulsivity.Trouble articulating simple thoughts....ah yes I know that well.
There are times when I am focused I can debate and ponder many intricate ideas and philosophies on into the night....
Then there are the times when a simple question such as " Where is the dishwasher soap?" merits a flustered," It's on the thing, the thing by the blue stuff, you know, the place with the whats-its thing!!! grrr! Here I'll find it , here it is by the, you know thing!"
Don't know why I lose those verbs and nouns then, but I do!
Proprioception: Ability to feel compression at one's joints, such as during sitting, and kinesthesia of the joints, which involves knowing where your body parts are in space
Vestibular: Input from the semicircular canals in the inner ear allows individuals to identify head position in space, such as during ascention when a plane takes off.
Most children (and adults) with AD(H)D are extremely hypersentive to different forms of stimuli, such as visual, auditory, & touch. Jean Ayres (the occupational therapist who pioneered the field of Sensory Integration [SI]) did post-doctoral work at UCLA's Brain Research Institute exploring her theory of sensory integration states the problems in sensory processing lies in how the brain prioritizes this information. Sensory input is stored in short term memory, and thus an overriding sensory input can interfere with other items that are coded in STM.
The key, according to Ayres, is to reduce distracting stimuli, and increase vestibular and proprioceptive input, which tend to have a calming effect. Ayres believed children up until the age of 7 retain a certain level of neuroplasticity (ability to change the structure of the brain) which could lead to permanent changes in the neuronal structure of the brain, but also believed that after the age of 7, SI treatment is not very effective.
There are people who dispute the efficacy of SI therapy, but I have seen it work on a short-term basis in a group for adults with schizophrenia. I have no experience in pediatrics, but many therapists swear by it with AD(H)D.
Floof: I understand what you are saying, however it seems to me, at least in my case, that the times when I am the most foggy is when I seem to just wander around trying unsuccessfully to keep sensory stimuli from disrupting what I am trying to retain in my STM banks.
The times when I am hyperfocused, such as now... nothing tends to distract me. I don't have an answer for that. I have no idea what triggers my foggy-mode ADD, because when I just show up to work and have to play the professional role, my fog symptoms get worse and worse throughout the day until sometimes I have trouble articulating simple thoughts.
My wifes thyroid messing up and certain foods also mess her up.Wife says the therapy can help any age she had it as a older child. She believes there are more cases today do to lack of play in kids today. Carol Kronowitz says the same thing. Has been 2 to 2 of her workshops. This is why she feels removing recess or Pe should be elegal.
There is also the issue of impaired "executive function" in the brain. I just bought a terrific book which I've only started skimming called "The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind" by Elkhonon Goldberg. Very impressed so far just from skimming it. However, because I haven't researched this in depth yet, I'm not totally clear of how the executive function of the brain fits it--only that it does, and in a big way.
I suspect that really understanding AD(H)D in both adults and children takes a real committment to research on the subject. Fortunately, it's gaining more attention these days (pun, intended), so I expect there will be more and more research coming out.
My personal theory is that in today's world, there are so many stimuli bombarding the senses and the brain, that more and more people are having trouble sorting them out. Maybe there are even more AD(H)D folks around than reported--they've just learned how to either mask or cope with it better than others.
Maybe those who are diagnosed, especially adutls, are the people saying, "Hey, I want more out of life and figure there's a way to get it and I'm going to give it a shot."
This may be one of the reasons I have so much troulbe w/ the "right to life" folks. It's not that I'm insensitive to their feelings or don't value life, myself--heck, I don't even kill bugs but put them outside--it's the reality of even more people to try and cope with. It's become an exhausing game of keeping up with all these additional people and their output. Any humane way to limit their ever-increasing numbers and the traffic, noise, media, need for housing at the expense of trees and open land, and the other stimuli they produce is A-okay with me!
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