The article I chose for this week was about how kids with ADHD are having an increased amount of troubles with the lockdown. Clinical psychiatrist Maggie Sibley expressed her concern on the matter and since the pandemic and the “new normal” is causing kids with ADHD to have so much trouble she thinks there will be an increase in drop outs. A study of 134 adolescents and young adults was conducted and found the problems with social isolation,difficulties engaging in online learning , and motivation. These results are not shocking! As someone with ADHD and not taking any medicine for it all of these things are true. Not having the discipline of going to school everyday where if you get bored you can’t just go for a run. You ask questions when you have them. I know for me when I am with other people I stay ontrack more. Another issue they noticed with remote learning is since online school is not as engaging as in person school kids with ADHD tend to struggle more and get more side tracked. It has been proven that kids with attention deficit disorder learn better when they are engaged in the class. A problem doctors are running into however is diagnosing kids and adults. The problem with diagnosing people at this time is ADHD is a lifelong illness it’s not something that just comes up in certain situations. With all of these bad things going on with people with ADHD the good thing about the pandemic is they have time to learn new coping skills!!
Some things that interested me about this article is finding out that ADHD is a lot more common than I thought. I’m happy to find out not just my symptoms have been acting up during the pandemic. I think it is interesting that doctors are confused on whether to diagnose people with or not at this time. It makes sense though because they do not want something to go on someones records forever and it not be true.
A thing I noticed about the writer’s style: her essay went in the exact order of her thesis. “they reported problems with social isolation, difficulties engaging in online learning, motivation issues and boredom that increased during the pandemic.” She states what the findings from the experiment are and then for everything they found she has information about. She also adds a positive in there too which I like.
Overall I would give this a rating of a thumbs up because I can relate to it and shows the struggles that people with ADHD go through.
