Like Greg said, though... they are extremely overdiagnosed.

enigma

Raavin :)

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or have you beed diagnosed with a "disorder" affecting the brain of any kind?

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multiple sclerosis

(EDIT: spelling)

First of all to cheeseseth, I come to this website to have a nice intelligent discussion with people who will treat me like a mature individual, and respect my ideas. Sometimes I may have dumb theories, and concepts that are WAY off the beaten path, and the majority of the people on this site can accept that I am CURRENTLY in grade 11 physics (i'm 16), and that I do not have a university degree. Earlier this month I had an idea to see whom else has ADD (I do) because ADD DOES (i’m not trying to be arrogant here) make me smarter than everybody else!!! People look at someone like me and look down on me because I am DIFFERENT than them. You are a prime example! If you need to dump on somebody because they are different, or if you need to challenge somebody’s beliefs (or who they are) because you place yourself above them, then join Al-Queda or the KKK because I see no difference between them and you.

Next, the way I see it a short attention span is a GOOD thing. Instead of concentrating on
a problem for 5 f***ing hours, I will try many different plausible solutions until I find the correct way to approach the problem. If you just look at a list of people with ADD you will start to see what I mean.

Einstein
Leonardo DaVinci
Socrates
Mozart
Beethoven
Thomas Edison
Alexander Graham Bell
Orville and Wilbur Wright
Steven Spielberg
Henry David Thoreau
Woodrow Wilson
Bill Cosby
Edgar Allen Poe
Nolan Ryan
John F. Kennedy
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Whoopi Goldberg
Ernest Hemingway
Dustin Hoffman
Abraham Lincoln
Galileo
William Randolph Hearst
George Bernard Shaw Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat
Ann Bancroft
Magic Johnson
John Lennon
Nostradamus
John D. Rockafeller
Michael Jordan
Pete Rose
Bruce Jenner
Napoleon
General George Patton
Pablo Picasso
Babe Ruth
Harry Belafonte
George Burns
Andrew Carnegie
Salvador Dali
Dwight D. Eisenhower
William Butler Yeats
Prince Charles
Louis Carroll
Eleanor Roosevelt
Louis Pasteur

In this world where everybody is about the same on a mental level, people who are different are considered “wrong.” It was only 50 years ago when the church was beating people who used their left hands, (my grandpa has the scars to prove it), because it was different than the norm. (I’m just rambling now) Why is it that people with add stop paying attention to somebody who is talking? Because you people bore the sh** out of me! My brain works fast, therefore I talk fast, and therefore I listen fast, and if you talk slow (or normal) I can’t hear you as well. My brain is pure logic and can do many things at once (try singing 5 different things to yourself at once). Well I’ll add to this later but for now I just want to say, “I’m normal, you’re the one whose brain doesn’t work fast enough!”

Felt good to get THAT off my chest.

It's also important to realize that no..ADD, ADHD and LD is not bull****..they are generic terms that cover numerous reasons that people may learn, interact or respond to situations differantly.

Someday we may come to realize (collectively) that we all learn differantly, with strengths and weaknesses in differant areas....and stop trying to stuff square pegs into round holes eh?

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"Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more."

--Comic Book Guy

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Originally posted by wavelength:
Your wrong, the stimulant ritlan is a central nervous system stimulant which allows the nervous system to operate at the same speed as the brain.

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"Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more."

--Comic Book Guy

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No, I do not think this is actually how ritalin works. I beleive that the cause of ADD/ADHD is the following: for some reason that person's body doesn't produce enough stimulants naturally to satiate the nerve receptors for them in the brain. This causes a sort of chemical inbalance in the brain which causes the person to loose concentration and display the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. Ritalin, a stimulant, works by satiating the nerve receptors need for stimulants in the brain which will help to end the behaviors brought on by the lack of the stimulant. This is why a stimulant is given, it seems counter intuitive to give a stimulant to someone with ADHD but when you analyze the reason it makes more sense

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Originally posted by climbhi:
On another note this business of listing these great minds who have these mental problems has always struck me as farce. If even half of these lists were true all of human kinds greatest minds would have been first rate nut cases. Everyone has personality quirks, and sometimes these quirks become somewhat fabled (RPF's like of bongo drums for instance) but that does not mean that these people have a mile long list of mental disorders like they're cracked up to. Surely some of our greatest minds have had a few mental quirks, but nothing anywhere comprabable to what is accredited to them.

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." --Mark Twain

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This is a thread on Add and Adhd..and your referencing terms such as "nut cases"?
Having a son who is ADHD, yet also termed "brilliant" after a huge assault of various test..I can assure you he is not a nutcase, nor does he have "mental problems" in fact I would strongly suggest the problem here is the expectation that all children should be pigeonholed into certain learning methods that are less then effective for a large portion of the populace. My son was removed from the public system, he's been homeschooled since 1997. I access tutors and a multitude of organizations for both social and educational benefits. While in Public school he was taking nearly 100 mil's of ritalin in order to control "compulsive" behavior. He was and is a kind, generous and respectful person. However, since being homeschooled, he no longer takes ritalin, does his bookwork late at night, has control of himself in public situations, is well liked,sociable and succesful on a multitude of educational levels, including running several succesful local business enterprises. He's also a few steps from becoming eagle scout, assists in running two other scout troops and is often invited to assist guiding wilderness treks for several certified wilderness guides.
If you study the majority of the list of famous people with possible learning differences (disabilites?) and possible ADHD/ADD you will see that indeed there is a pattern...MOST did not fit into the mold that the education system insisted they should fit..SOOO learning "disabilites" and ADD/ADHD is not so often about a childs "quirks" or being "misfits" it's often about the education system being unflexible or unable to incorporate the neccesary methods needed to benefit ALL children.

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"Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more."

--Comic Book Guy

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Originally posted by Kat:
This is a thread on Add and Adhd..and your referencing terms such as "nut cases"?
Having a son who is ADHD, yet also termed "brilliant" after a huge assault of various test..I can assure you he is not a nutcase, nor does he have "mental problems" in fact I would strongly suggest the problem here is the expectation that all children should be pigeonholed into certain learning methods that are less then effective for a large portion of the populace. My son was removed from the public system, he's been homeschooled since 1997. I access tutors and a multitude of organizations for both social and educational benefits. While in Public school he was taking nearly 100 mil's of ritalin in order to control "compulsive" behavior. He was and is a kind, generous and respectful person. However, since being homeschooled, he no longer takes ritalin, does his bookwork late at night, has control of himself in public situations, is well liked,sociable and succesful on a multitude of educational levels, including running several succesful local business enterprises. He's also a few steps from becoming eagle scout, assists in running two other scout troops and is often invited to assist guiding wilderness treks for several certified wilderness guides.
If you study the majority of the list of famous people with possible learning differences (disabilites?) and possible ADHD/ADD you will see that indeed there is a pattern...MOST did not fit into the mold that the education system insisted they should fit..SOOO learning "disabilites" and ADD/ADHD is not so often about a childs "quirks" or being "misfits" it's often about the education system being unflexible or unable to incorporate the neccesary methods needed to benefit ALL children.

the Bible, in particular the historical books of the old testament, are as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than many Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories.
-Smithsonian Museum

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No no no no no no no no, you're taking me all wrong. Perhaps I should have eased more gently into what I was saying, but I definitely was not saying at all that add people are nut cases or anything of the sort! I was simply trying to comment that I have seen dozens of lists all of which purport that the greatest minds in history have all had the mental problems (or whatever you want to call them, social difficulties, or whatever the politically correct term is, again I meant absolutely no offense by this term) for whatever difficulty some organization is trying to represent.
I have seen so so many of these lists i cannot even tell you! And their mutually exclusive too, one list says that Einstien (or whoever) displayed all the classical symptoms of (fill in blank here) and most certainly had this condition. And then the next list you come by says Einstien displayed all the classical symptoms of (fill in blank again) and most certainly had this condition, but the second condition is the polar opposite of the condition from the first list, by definition you can't have them both!
My post was a comment on the validity of these lists, I feel that they have been so overexploited that any such list should really be taken with a grain of salt, becuase their is doubtlessly hundreds more out there which claim that einstien had another condition, and another and another and another, and if he had all the conditions he's purported to have he would barely be able to mentally function yet alone produce some of the greatest physics ever.
Now I'm certain that many of the greatest minds in history have had some form of mental condition or social problem or whatever, but ... I do not believe all these lists that I see from dozens of organizations each claiming einstien, aristotle, newton, and plato all their own.
Please believe me that I was in no way trying to belittle people with add/adhd, many of my best friends have these same conditions and they are the best people you will find anywhere. I myself struggle with social dificulties and now what it can be like! So please don't misinterpret me.