Tabla de contenidos para Time ADHD en Time ADHD

EVERYONE FEELS A LITTLE RESTLESS, IMPATIENT, or unfocused from time to time. Usually, it’s a fleeting feeling and not much cause for concern. But for the 6% to 11% of Americans who have a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, these symptoms are much more frequent, are longer-lasting, and can be truly disruptive to home, school, work, and family life. Although there are many overlapping symptoms, everyone’s experience with ADHD is unique. For some, it looks like racing thoughts that make it diffcult to concentrate or finish a thought or project. For others, it’s impulsive spending or risky driving. For others still, ADHD manifests as frequently making mistakes due to rushing through tasks, frustration and impatience with waiting, and often interrupting conversation partners. When untreated, these behaviors can lead to…

"I FEEL LIKE I AM ON THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOYS,” MY daughter Brooke told me as we cuddled, watching the 1964 stopmotion version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The gatekeeper, a Charlie-in-the-Box, had just popped out of his cube and was explaining to the young reindeer and his new friends that they had landed on the Island of Misfit Toys. A menagerie of darling but slightly different toys danced around. Several toys made us smile: a spotted elephant, a train with square wheels on its caboose, a bird that swims instead of flies, a cowboy who rides an ostrich, and a winged bear. My daughter was in second grade, and it was becoming apparent that school would be diffcult for her. She wasn’t a broken toy, one that was…

Emilie leyes works with actors in New York to build mental resilience and manage work stress. When she started scrolling through TikTok videos about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, it was because she wanted to learn more about people with ADHD so that she could better help clients who had the condition. Leyes quickly discovered, though, that she identified strongly with the people in these videos. “I truly had no idea I had ADHD until I joined TikTok,” she says. Leyes is one of many women to conclude that they have ADHD after spending time on the platform. The ADHD hashtag on TikTok has more than 15 billion views, #adhdawareness has more than 500 million, and the videos themselves can have hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of hits. Some clips list symptoms; others offer…

Seemingly everyone is concerned about concentration these days. Margaret Sibley, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, specializes in working with adolescents and adults who have ADHD. But recently, Sibley says, she and her colleagues have been “inundated” with clients who don’t actually have ADHD—they’re just worried that they do. It’s hard to blame them for worrying. ADHD diagnostic rates are on the rise in the United States, and posts on TikTok and other social media platforms have convinced even more people that they have attention issues. Even among people who haven’t sought medical care, there seems to be a sense—probably enhanced by regular studies about shrinking attention spans—that focusing is getting harder. A recent United Kingdom survey found that about half…

Healthy eating takes planning, attention, and commitment. You need to devise a balanced meal, acquire the ingredients, and prepare them. It can be time-consuming and complicated for anyone—let alone for someone who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. And yet it turns out a diet rich in nutrient-dense foods may be especially beneficial for those with ADHD. Simply put: Studies show that when people with the condition eat better, they are more likely to feel better as well. “While diet does not cause ADHD, and ADHD cannot be cured by diet, a balanced diet and consistent eating habits can help manage some symptoms,” says Rebecca Harris, a Toronto-based dietician. “For example, fluctuations in blood sugar can make ADHD symptoms feel worse, especially when it comes to focus. Eating consistent meals throughout the day…

The eyes have long been considered the windows to the soul, and it turns out that may be especially true for people with ADHD. A team of South Korean scientists studied the retinas of 646 children and adolescents and found that, with 96% accuracy, those with ADHD had distinct shapes and patterns in their blood vessels. Why? Perhaps because the eyes, which are connected directly to the brain through the optic nerve, can reflect its activity. “Alterations in the retinal structure of ADHD may be associated with dysregulated dopaminergic signaling,” the scientists wrote in their March 2025 study. (Dopamine levels are linked to ADHD.) The team, from the Yonsei University College of Medicine and the Eunpyeong St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul, wrote that the process “demonstrated potential as a noninvasive…

After years of suffering from mental health problems, it only took four months for my life to completely change. I’d been depressed, anxious and addicted to anything that made me feel less. For eight years, my life became more and more rancid. I lived through many cycles of trying so hard to be better, to be the me I wanted to be, followed by bouts of extreme lows and almost death. A switch went off when I was 24 and I started pursuing a diagnosis (ADHD and borderline personality disorder) with medical professionals. I came to realize the diagnosis was not the end of the world—not even close. My diagnosis became a saving grace. Before I knew my brain is wired in a different way, I would beat myself up…

JEREMY DIDIER, A SUBURBAN MOM, HAS ADHD. SO DO FOUR of her five children. She lives about an hour’s drive from Kansas City, Missouri, where most of the qualified specialists who help her navigate her family’s mental health needs are located. Without telehealth, she estimates that she might have to take off four or five days a month from her job as a clinical social worker to keep up with therapy and medication-management appointments. Her children would have to miss school, and her family’s financial well-being would be jeopardized. “With telehealth, I don’t have to drive an hour each way to see the specialist, and the visit can be just as impactful,” Didier explains. Her situation is increasingly common as telehealth has grown in popularity—with the COVID-lockdown era being a…

In addition to behavioral therapies, medications for ADHD can be very helpful in reducing impulsiveness and hyperactivity, as well as increasing focus and attention. If you choose to go the medication route, there are many options, including some over-the-counter treatments. Beginning with prescriptions, here’s a primer of the types of medications people with ADHD can use to feel better and improve their symptoms. Prescription Medications STIMULANTS Stimulants are the most commonly prescribed medications for ADHD and have been found to be very effective in alleviating ADHD symptoms. These drugs increase the level of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This improves inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity in people with ADHD. Though stimulants are the classic medication of choice for ADHD and are approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)…

Often derided and the topic of many a teacher’s report card comment, daydreaming is generally seen as an undesirable activity, especially among school-age children. “Monica likes to daydream,” notes home to my mom would read. “I do wonder what she is thinking about.” And yet, on average, we daydream nearly 47% of our waking hours. If our brain spends nearly half of our awake time doing it, there is probably a good reason why. The term “daydreaming” was coined by Julien Varendonck in 1921 in his book The Psychology of Day-Dreams (with a foreword by Sigmund Freud, so sort-of a big deal). While Varendonck and Freud saw benefits to daydreaming, the past 20 years have yielded research that portrays daydreaming as “a cognitive control failure,” with some researchers out of…

In 2017, Jenn Jarmula, an elementary and middle school teacher in Chicago, hung a sign outside her classroom. “This Is A Fidget Spinner Free Zone,” it read. At the time, fidget spinners—which are nothing more than gadgets with three weighted prongs that spin, spin, spin on the fingers of sixth-graders like tiny ceiling fans—were the hot new thing. In the first six months of that year, an estimated 50 million fidget spinners were sold, making up 20% of all retail toy sales during that period. But not everyone bought into the hype. Jarmula said the spinners became disruptive in the classroom, and she once even confiscated four spinners from a single student in one class period. She was just one of many teachers who banned spinners from classrooms, even as…

The first story in this special issue (“ADHD 101”) lists the symptoms of ADHD. They include impulsiveness, restlessness, trouble staying on task, and a tendency to interrupt. The rest of this issue recognizes the ways in which these traits can make life challenging. But it’s easy to see why a screenwriter might look at those traits and say, “Hey, I could make a fun character out of those.” While the world of movies and television will always have a use for protagonists who show no traces of ADHD—think of Ethan Hunt, for example, the Mission: Impossible superagent whose missions would truly be impossible if he struggled to stay on task—characters like Hunt are compelling because they show us as we wish we could be: ultra-disciplined and reaching the peak of…

LIKE SO MANY AMERICANS, I’VE BEEN trying to avoid social media in recent times. But just after a supper earlier this year, as my kid heads off to his bath and the dishwasher waits to be loaded, my thumb finds the Instagram icon on my phone and I’m sucked away from the table and into a post that stops me cold: “Section 504 is Under Attack.” When I reference Section 504 out in the world, most people scrunch up their faces like they’re trying to recall the name of that one guy from that one movie. “Is that related to my kid’s 504 plan?” they might ask. Even when they vaguely recognize the words, few have any idea what this tiny piece of legislation means, let alone its history. A…

Medications are often a first-line treatment for children with ADHD. Stimulants are the most popular form: More than 60% of children with ADHD take medications such as Adderall and Ritalin. Studies have shown that they are effective in reducing symptoms of ADHD for 70% to 80% of children. They are fast-acting, usually kicking in within 30 to 60 minutes, though that can vary depending on whether it is an immediate-release or extendedrelease version. Nonstimulant medications such as Strattera, which can take up to eight weeks to reach full effectiveness, boost the levels of norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain. This improves attention and memory in about 50% of those who take it. Despite the positive outcomes of these drugs, many parents still worry about putting their kids on psychiatric medications.…

Once I finally tuck my kids into bed, clean the kitchen, and shoot off my last work email of the night, it’s “me” time. It’s also, cruelly, bedtime. I know I should sleep, but instead I stay up binge-watching Love Is Blind or mindlessly scrolling on Reddit. I need rest but I push it off. This is my only uninterrupted time, and I want to maximize it. This phenomenon is so universal that there’s a scientific name for it: bedtime procrastination. According to the researchers who coined it in a 2014 study, bedtime procrastination is “failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so.” People with stressful days and little control over their time are the ones most likely to…

Getting motivated, staying focused, and completing tasks are core challenges for people living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. But there is a technique called body-doubling—it’s not nearly as sci-fi as it sounds—that many are finding helpful in overcoming those obstacles. This increasingly popular method may help people with ADHD get the job done, whether the task is homework, paying the bills on time, or staying on top of household chores. There’s not much research on body-doubling yet, but many people with ADHD say that having someone nearby while working can help them focus enough to finish a task. To use the body-double technique, you only need to work in the presence of another person. That person could be concentrating on a similar task or doing something else entirely, such as working on…

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