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What's the relation between Autism and ADHD? Why are both often related? (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/autism@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Autism and ADHD can be said to belong to the same spectrum, and it's common to have a little bit of both. We have two kids on the spectrum, where one has level 2 autism (and some ADHD) and the other has level 2 (medium-severe) ADHD (with some autism).

Since effects of ADHD can be mitigated with medicines, the important question for you would be if you feel that "ADHD traits/behavior" is making a negative impact in your life. If so, there's some use in bringing this up with your healthcare and see if you can get a diagnose. If not, don't worry about it. Everyone's more or less on the spectrum - it's whether we can cope in our daily lives that is important.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist specializing in diagnosing ADHD and autism - my wife is. Everything that's correct in this post comes from me paying attention to her. Everything that's wrong comes from me not having understood)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (8 children)

    I don't think people consider both conditions to be the same spectrum as it then would define the same condition. There might be overlap within the observable behaviour but the neurology that leads to these behaviours is not the same.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    The neurology is of course not exactly the same, but it's not completely distinct either.

    The frequent co-occurrence of autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms may reflect underlying neural mechanisms that transcend diagnostic boundaries.

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2652828

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah, we haven't figured out good diagnostic boundaries that properly delineate what is what yet. I do suspect some of it comes from ADHD not being focused on social cues versus autism not perceiving them correctly, the result becomes the same behavior/thoughts, but the cause for them is different.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Agree. My wife is currently diagnosing adults and according to her she's getting quite a few patients who were diagnosed with ADHD as children but she's confident in being autistic. Sure, some of each, but predominantly.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    Seems like you cut off the last sentence, can you complete it? :)

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    My bad - I meant to indicate that she's finding traits from both ADHD and autism but that they're predominantly autistic and since they've then gone their whole life thinking they have ADHD they've never gotten the help they might've needed to understand how their autism is affecting them.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'm fairly sure that is my sister, shes got an ADD diagnosis but she seems to have some lacking understanding of some social cues, which to me indicates that shes more likely autistic than ADD (there are more signs too, but it feels wrong to write them to strangers online)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Autistic women are very often misdiagnosed since "good girl" syndrome hides some aspects of their difficulties. I know other cases of girls with autism getting ADD diagnoses as well.

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