Using CBT to Support Adults with ADHD with Dr Antonia Dittner

And so it seems like it'd be really important for us at the top of the podcast to get a grip on what ADHD actually is.

And that is an important question.

I'm not sure it's as straightforward as it might sound, as I'm sure you'll talk about.

There's so many different lenses through which we can think about or view adhd however if we're to think about adhd as it's recognized in health settings or you know in your clinic for example what are the key diagnostic features that we might see that would define adhd

Yeah, so the diagnosis of ADHD is characterised by behavioural and cognitive symptoms.

And those are of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.

And there are three presentations or subtypes.

Even within those presentations or subtypes, there's quite a bit of variation in how those symptoms show up.

So one person's ADHD is never going to look quite like someone else's ADHD.

But the subtypes are called inattentive.

hyperactive, impulsive, and combined.

So inattentive is thought to be about 30% of diagnoses.

So that looks like things like difficulty listening, managing time, managing belongings.

The name attention deficit is a bit misleading in that it's not so much a deficit.

There are times when people's attention is very good, where they can hyperfocus, in fact.

We're really talking about an inconsistency or a difficulty in regulating that attention.

And people seem to be able to do it more readily where they're very interested or under pressure.

Another subtype, the hyperactive impulsive subtype, affects around 15% of people.

And that describes restless body or mind.

It looks like interrupting others, perhaps, acting or speaking before thinking.

And then we have a combined subtype where people would meet the clinical threshold for both of those.

They'd meet enough symptoms on both of those other subtypes.

subtypes in order to meet the criteria for a combined version that's about 50 to 60 percent so there are features of all of it and then in order to meet the diagnostic threshold the symptoms must be severe and they must cause consistent and clinically significant impairment across different domains as well so not just in one place

so it's not just that your mind wanders a bit and you can't sit still from time to time it's these are really significant impacts on people's lives

yeah