Health

ADD and Your Relationships and Career

: Image via Wikipedia

It is of vital importance to both understand and admit to how much ADHD might be impacting both your career and your personal relationships. While you might believe that you can simply “will” your way through it and not have what some people consider to be a disability discovered by anyone, the only person you would end up fooling would be yourself. After all, while adults can often manage their ADD on their own, why would you refuse to let other people (who may even actually care about you) help you out? Some people have said that no man is an island. Well, neither is any woman, for all of the trying that some people do in that regard. So let people help you, before the situation gets bad.

Your career can be seriously impacted by having ADHD. After all, nearly every career path in the world requires extended periods of powerful focus, in spite of all of the concentration related challenges which every career person faces on a daily basis. If you can not focus on your own, you either need to get some help from your employer (such as with providing a work environment which is less filled with distractions in the first place), or work to minimize your ability to be reached by distractions (such as constant texts and email blasts) on your own.

As far as your personal relationships go, ADD can occasionally limit your ability to do the most fun and fulfilling things in life if you allow it to. There are going to be times when your concentration simply wanders off- make sure your partner knows that it is not intended as any sort of disrespect toward them in any way. This is something which existed before you met them, and it is a lifelong thing. If they really do love you, then they will make the effort to understand and work with this little quirk that you have.

Filed Under: Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, Facts & FAQ Tagged With: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Health, Interpersonal relationship

Understanding Ritalin Addiction and Getting Help from LaPalomaTreatment.com

Many children and even adults are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and are put on medications to help control the symptoms. The most common drug used to help those symptoms is Ritalin. This is a drug that is supposed to help the individual focus on the tasks at hand and be able to concentrate. Unfortunately, many teens and young adults have realized that there are other uses for Ritalin. When it is crushed and either snorted or injected, it can have effects that are similar to cocaine. There are many people who have this medication due to their ADD, but there are many people who are getting it to get high. There are a few things to look for when dealing with someone who’s addicted to this drug.

Many people become addicted to this drug when they do not use it as it’s prescribed. Those who are not victims of ADD may become addicted to the drug faster than those who have to use it for ADD. This drug can mimic the effects of amphetamines too. In fact, many college students get hooked because they are using this drug to help them stay awake and study. Another problem stems from people with legitimate prescriptions selling the medication to those who want to achieve a high.

Being addicted to any drug can have a devastating impact on the addict’s family. If you know someone who is dealing with a Ritalin or other addiction, then LaPalomaTreatment.com can help. This is a great rehabilitation center that specializes in cases of addiction. The staff can help get the patient comfortable and deal with the withdrawal symptoms that may occur. Addiction is a serious problem that requires intensive treatment. Helping your loved ones find the help they need is important to getting them on a path to recovery.

Filed Under: Adult ADD Treatment Tagged With: Adderall, Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Health, Mental health, Methylphenidate, Pharmaceutical drug, Ritalin, Symptom

Mental Health Days

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

A lot of people have taken to the concept of taking a “mental health day” when they just do not feel like working. There are two schools of thought, when it comes to taking a day off when nothing is physically wrong and there are no overriding tasks to be done. Some people believe that this entire process is indicative of being lazy. And in contrast to this, some people really do think that taking a day off every so often can be good for your mental health. It is very possible that both of these opinions can be correct. The main difference would seem to be the individual’s mental relationship to the work which they do. For some, work is more sanity inducing than it is for others.

For some people, work is nothing but drudgery. Often these people are the proletariat, and the work they do is boring and dehumanizing for them. To a person who is in that kind of a situation, taking a day off (assuming that you can afford to do so) is a good idea, as they will most likely be doing a similar kind of job for the rest of their natural life. If you hate the work that you do, then a mental health day makes perfect sense for you to take. To remain sane, you might need to do something enjoyable for a change.

However, if you really do love the work that you do, it would make absolutely no sense for you to take a mental health day. For many people who enjoy their work, they will even go in when they are not feeling physically well. And while doing things like that can end up being counterproductive, a mental health day for someone who loves to do their work just makes no sense at all. Perhaps the best sort of mental health day that you can take is one in which you accomplish something.

Filed Under: ADD Help & Guidance Tagged With: Health, Mental disorder, Mental health, Oceania

MPD: it Isn’t Just Acting

: Image via Wikipedia

Most people who suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder are still “in the closet” about their mental illness, because they are deathly afraid that the world at large would consider them to be nothing more than mental patients waiting to snap. Or perhaps even worse, some people out there might even consider them to be nothing more than actors, just playing a role and vying for people’s sympathy and pity. Of course, neither one of these scenarios is anywhere near the truth. In a lot of cases, the MPD person may have actually gone several years (perhaps even many years) without even personally realizing that they had more than one person living inside of their mind. It can come as quite a shock to them, as well.

Just imagine what it would be like, if you found yourself exhausted a lot of the time. And then, at some point, you get a call “from work” at a place where you do not even know that you work. Then you find out that you actually have two full time jobs, because you have two personalities in your head which both work. That would definitely explain where the exhaustion comes from, but then it also opens up a whole lot of its own set of problems, now doesn’t it? It is not acting when you do not even realize it yourself.

Far too often, what the MPD person needs is not criticism, nor even sympathy. They need understanding, and they need the same kinds of love and care that we would show to any person who has a problem of any kind. Nobody says that the autistic person is “acting,” nor do they say that the schizophrenic is, either. So why do we hold MPD people to a higher or a more stringent standard than we do any other people who have small mental or emotional handicaps? The point is, we need to stop this harmful practice now.

Filed Under: Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Tagged With: Dissociative identity disorder, Health, Mental disorder, Mental health

Doesn’t ADD Up

: Image via Wikipedia

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD for short, is a widespread problem among youth and adults. As the name suggests, the condition has to do with a serious problem maintaining attention on any one thing for any extended period, with true concentration being all but impossible. ADHD is a chronic condition, often beginning in youth and going through adult life unless treated or managed.

Formerly known simply as Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD, the “hyperactivity” designator was added in 1994. There are varieties of ADHD and not all of them include the symptom of hyperactivity (such is the defining characteristic of ADHD-PI (predominantly inattentive)), but there is an obvious link between hyperactivity – which leads to impulsive and wild behavior – and a lack of attention.

A significant percentage of Americans live with some variety of ADHD and this shouldn’t come as any surprise, for today’s culture is one that caters to a lack of attention. Indeed, the need for an attention span of any kind is vanishing rapidly. Advertising is the most obvious – though hardly the only – example, having infiltrated every aspect of people’s lives to the point where they aren’t even surprised by its presence enough to note it. Television programs are seeing the time allocated to content cut down more and more so there can be more ads; advertising distracts players and viewers in videogames and movies; even music and other arts may have product placement to pull people’s minds away from the art and towards consumption.

Even when there is no ad, entertainment asks seemingly less and less of the brain with each summer release. Movies are not considered safe bets if they don’t offer a certain quota of explosions; books must be short and flashy if they are to be read. Spectacle, not thought, drives culture today. No wonder people’s attention spans are decreasing, and it’s likely only to exacerbate the problem of ADHD.

Filed Under: Adult ADD Symptoms, Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, Facts & FAQ Tagged With: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Health, Hyperactivity, Mental health

Mind, Body and Soul: Mental Health

: Image via Wikipedia

The concept of mental health as a thing distinct from physical health is a relatively new one. While disorders of the mind have long been observed, they were often decried as the curse of a god or the product of bad food or some such physical cause, rooted entirely in the body and its mechanics. This went hand in hand with the idea of the mind and body as one entity, rather than each having its own existence. Rather philosophers at that time were preoccupied with the soul, wondering where it was located physically, if it was, and whether all intelligent function lay in the soul. Mind was a concept, but not in the same way it is now.

The difficulty is of course that the brain is a physical thing, and it is part of the body, so that does agree. The mind is situated in the brain and in some sense it is the brain, but in some other it is more like the soul, having an existence that is hard to name as physical – even as evidence shows that changes in the brain mean changes in the mind and personality. Still, while many mental health problems can be rooted in a physical condition, it is the case that it’s not always so easy to treat the mind’s health as it is the body’s. Making sure the body is healthy does not necessary mean the mind is.

There are pills for mental health, of course. Anti-depressants, tranquilizers, all sorts. All these, when properly prescribed, provide chemical stimulus to the brain and body to produce (or stop producing) in a way that helps the brain function better. This helps preserve mental health. However, there are many other factors. Emotional environment can have as big an impact as anything else on mental health, and it is not controlled by the body’s operation. As such, proper treatment of mental health requires multiple approaches.

Filed Under: Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Tagged With: Health, Mental disorder, Mental health, Mind