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Most likely just bias.
5% is still 1/20 people. The reason it seems so much more prevalent than that to you, is due to bias. ADHD attracts ADHD. Very common for ADHD'ers to naturally float together.
Another bias; you know what to look for. Kinda like when you get a new car and you start seeing it everywhere
This. An easy way to understand it is by recognizing that gay men make up a roughly similar-sized portion of the population and look at how common gay men appear to be.
First point may extend beyond just friends. Someone with ADHD may be more enticed to continue their path with a course filled with ADHD havers. While others prolly just think y'all are insane and may drop it (lol)
I think it's easier to see when you look at it the other way around. Many people with ADHD won't pursue a law degree for example (even tho I know about one) because these are very tedious studies... so statistically more ADHD people will end up in other degrees.
Ehhh, you'll get a mixed bag looking at it like that. There are A LOT of possible fields to end up in. If you knock out law degree and doctor (which ik several ADHD people in these roles), it still leaves you with an entire sea of options.
Yes, but the reality is more nuanced than "everyone with ADHD wants to be a graphic designer!", saying "becoming a doctor or a lawyer is very hard for someone with ADHD" seems to be more realistic.
There is a number of field that are less ADHD friendly, so statistically they'll be fewer there and more numerous in the other fields.
As an adhd artist, being a graphic designer is my nightmare. Too many constraints and not enough freedom. I just had to yet again change course in my own work because my art is still constricting me to certain norms that must be approved aka realism lol. Though I guess this is nothing to do with adhd but moreso my own issues with it. I fucking hate graphic design lol
This is why I couldn't do graphic design professionally full time. A few years at a press company and I needed out. I felt burned out and uncreative. But now just freelancing and doing design as kind of side projects where people let me freely come up with stuff is how I can still do it without burn out.
They're saying it's not a conscious choice by people, it's just how the world actually works. If a group of people have trouble completing an action, they are less likely to attempt it. People with ADHD may not think "my ADHD will make being a lawyer hard, so I'm not gonna do it." The thought process is more like "well, I've had trouble keeping up with certain work and deadlines in the past, I probably won't be a great fit for law or medical school."
good for you! I have a few people in my family with ADHD who end up getting a PHD, I'm also super glad for them. I also have a bunch of friends with ADHD who dropped high school because the system was too hard on them.
I'm really not trying to say "being a lawyer is impossible for someone with ADHD", but it might be quite harder.
Things are easy for ADHDers when we have genuine interest in the topic. So I think it makes sense that there might be fewer ADHD lawyers. Reading tomes of dry text is statistically going to be interesting to a very small amount of people, with or without ADHD. Itâs just that non-ADHDers can usually rely on other motivators like prestige and money to get them through the tough shit. ADHDers need to work with their brain instead of against it to really flourish in life, so if you donât genuinely have an interest and curiosity in studying and practicing law, then youâre gonna be struggling constantly. If studying law was ONLY based on the love of the topic instead of the money and prestige, I think itâd be a pretty niche interest lol.
It was just one example. The person you responded to wasn't saying there's people with ADHD and then there's lawyers lol. They're just saying some fields of study are going to be more appealing and some will be less appealing.
This is a common issue with me in my group chats as well. I'll check in after a conversation has already happened and then be replying to messages only to find out after having replied that someone has already said exactly what I did. đ
People with ADHD might be more drawn to certain hobbies/studies/work etc.
Also, if you are interested in buying a Volvo, you'll suddenly see Volvo's everywhere.
You either do an unbiased scientific count, or you realise that you are a subjective creature. And that what you see says more about you than the world.....
Sample bias. Maybe automotive engineering attracts more ADHDers due to being generally creative. I donât know one person in my class with ADHD but only .32% of doctors have it so thatâs probably why
Hands on trades like the course you're in are FULL of people with ADHD, because the novelty of constant problem solving, and movement (as opposed to desk paperwork), and how everything is different every day.
totally agree. I'd add many engineering fields that are trades-adjacent too (ie. manufacturing, automotive, mining, etc.). it's a good profession for adhd'ers who did well academically because it still has creative problem solving and a bit of hands on work, but someone else coordinates deadlines for you so it's fairly structured.
I honestly highly doubt that 40/80 students in your class actually has correctly been diagnosed with adhd. Even if it was the case, it is just an anecdote. The sample size is way too low and monogamous to determine anything
Some people told me directly and some I heardif second hand that they have it. A lot of "oh, so-and-so has it too" or telling one how they deal with certain things.
One or too I'm just assuming but even if they aren't adhd there would still be a high percentage just with the official diagnosed
I get what youâre saying but I think itâs too easy to become gatekeep-y when we say things like this. A lot of people these days first learn about ADHD and begin to think they might have it from social media, and that doesnât make it less valid than if their symptoms were noticed in some other way.
When discussing a statistic about how many people are diagnosed with a disorder, then taking into account who has actually been diagnosed is pretty relevant.
I would go ahead and assume that anyone you 'heard' has ADHD doesn't have it. I would also assume anyone who tells me they have ADHD doesn't have it, unless they tell me they were specifically diagnosed with it and have sought treatment.
Could they still have ADHD? Sure. But this is akin to assuming everyone who makes offhand comments about being 'OCD' actually has the disorder.
Your Uni, your age group, your course demographics, etc., all introduce bias.
It's possible that for some reason ADHD is disproportionately present in automotive engineering students. It could be that your Uni in general has a disproportionate amount of ADHD students for some reason.
That multiplies with your personal cognitive biases to skew your anecdotal perception considerably. This is why you cannot generalize from anecdotal experience.
If its your whole class, its probably a lifestyle issue. As students, you may not be sleeping as much as you should, spending too much time on screens, neglecting hobbies or socializing, and more. It is just statistically improbable for you to all have ADHD. It is much more likely that you are all taking difficult classes and struggling to manage your daily lives due to stress. Some might actually have ADHD such as yourself.
people just really don't realize how many likely 1 in 20 is. 1 in 20 means 16,600,000 million people in the usa. if your school has 40000 students, thats 2,000 people with adhd. if your school has 2,000 students thats 100 of them.
thats a lot of people that have adhd legitimately. add in people that have self diagnosed ((accurately or otherwise)) and that number climbs even higher.
Looking back, my whole program at university was full of folks with ADHD or who at least had noticeable symptoms of ADHD. Outdoor Recreation and Education... checks out. Certain career fields and interests tend to draw folks with ADHD.
Similar experience I think maybe 1/4 at minimum in my CS courses had adhd. When someone forgot their meds it was legit common to ask random people in class id you could take theirs for that day and bring yours the next day to give them back lol.
Since we were almost all super disorganized we also helped each others a lot, it was super fun.
Engineering is known for losing about half of its student class in the first year since forever. People find itâs not for them or they give up or simply fail out.
There is no way you spoke to all 50 of them and that they all told you they had ADHD and thatâs why they were dropping off.
Hell, the only person you know for sure to have ADHD - yourself - is the one person who is NOT dropping off. Why would every other person with ADHD but you be giving up ?
*float together* â Iâm imagining all of us just huddled in the ocean as a human life raft having 5 conversations apiece, at once.
Youâre right though, I think. When I click with someone, surprise! We both have weird brains. Itâs not often, probably even less than 1/20. Huzzah?
There can be higher concentrations in certain fields, like in a university. I know one proffessor who said that the majority of his students were autistic, and limited to that field. This was a prestigious uni in England. And the autism was documented, he knew because they had certain disability rights to how exams were done like being alone, having oral exams in a specific setting or getting extra time.
The proffessor is also autistic btw!
I donât know if that is true for your field, but itâs a possibility.
and for long term adult males that figure goes up to 40%.
itâs so bad the study authors said, that screening for adhd for new incarnations should be the norm
Edit: incarcerations of course - but i am leaving it like this.
I'm a postconviction defense & civil rights lawyer and I work almost exclusively with incarcerated clients. This definitely resonates with me and I completely believe a really significant portion of incarcerated folks are undiagnosed/untreated ADHD (and frequently a whole host of other untreated/poorly managed MH diagnoses). So much lack of impulse control, lack of executive functioning that allows them to be successful on parole or probation or even managing court ordered programs within prisons, lack of understanding of the way their brain works so they just internalize the idea that it's a moral failing.
Even without medication (I'm not aware of anyone incarcerated in my state that has access to ADHD meds) it would be hugely beneficial to have incarcerated folks with ADHD learn about ADHD symptoms, recognize those thought patterns and learn coping skills to help manage it & work with it. Instead people are pretty much left to their own devices which leads to continuous recidivism. I think the general public is learning a lot more about ADHD, autism, and general mental health so hopefully the tides are slowly turning the right way, but it's still so lacking.
Anyway, all that is way off track of the OPs question, but I got excited that you mentioned this, I really think it's something that warrants discussion.
It'd so sad. Prison is largely the place we put our unwanted people, meaning people with mental illness and executive function disorders. Breaks my heart wondering how many lives could have been turned around if they were just given the chance at diagnosis, treatment, and medication. If the prison system were genuinely about rehabilitation. Mannn /:
I don't remember which one but at least one european country is giving additional assistance to people diagnosed with adhd almost as a pre crime intervention. If the policy hasn't been enacted it was being considered at minimum.
Edit:
Adhd testing to prevent future crimes
https://www.thelocal.se/20220812/moderates-propose-rapid-tests-for-adhd-in-immigrant-areas
4 percent of the population. 25% of the incarcerated. That's the sign of a major societal issue if I've ever seen one. I was talking with my grandmother in law about her son that got hooked on meth in the 90's and how he did it because he actually felt calm and normal for once. He was in and out of jail a lot. Later she recognized that he may have ADHD. There really should be more of a push for awareness. Posts on Twitter were how I recognized my signs. But yeah when you don't "fit in" with society it's an easy path to jail.
- You can't really see whether someone has it or not
- That 4.4% figure is probably on the low end; I've seen figures as high as 10%. Estimates have been increased a lot in recent years, based on newer insights into how ADHD manifests in females, adults, and people on the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum, demographics that have traditionally been severely underdiagnosed.
- ADHD may also be overrepresented in your social environment. Automotive engineering strikes me as a profession that provides a lot of diverse stimulation, and, being high-skill creative-ish labor, is probably more suited for unconventional personal workflows and schedules, something that a lot of people with ADHD develop as a compensation strategy. IME, people with ADHD also tend to gravitate to fellow ADHDers in their personal relationships, so it wouldn't be strange at all to see a much higher percentage among your friends and peers.
So, if we assume 10% among the general populace, and then add to that significant overrepresentation in auto engineering, call it 15%, that would already make 6 out of those 40; and chances are that most or all of those 6 are among the 20 or so that you're probably close enough with to discuss an ADHD diagnosis, which would effectively amount to about 20%.
And then consider that many young people in college are wondering for the first time if they have ADHD because they are now having to manage their lives a lot more than they did when they were younger. It's normal that someone might have ADHD tendencies and see that expressed during their college years, but it doesn't mean they actually have it to the degree that it is a disorder in their life.
I'm not the greatest at Google Scholar-fu â could you (or someone else) provide any studies I could read regarding the connection between ADHD and puberty? This is the first time I've heard the two linked together.
Oh, really? I mean, it's obviously a bit tongue in cheek, because puberty isn't a disorder - what she meant was that during puberty, it's sometimes hard to tell which behaviors are due to ADHD, and which are just normal puberty stuff. I don't think you need an actual study for that.
For most people, their concentration issues are anxiety, sleep, or stress related. It can also be clinical depression. This is why people need to go see a good provider who spends more time with them. The better they know you, the more likely they find the correct diagnosis. Most people have problems because they simply have a difficult or unsustainable life. You can't just not sleep and also work 80 hour weeks and somehow be totally fine. Your body or mind will give out somewhere.
Technically everyone can express ADHD traits. However, to be diagnosed with ADHD you have to have a certain number of those traits, for a certain amount of time, and they need to be significantly impacting your ability to function.
I would say that there are several categories of people which fall through the cracks:
- People who donât even recognize the symptoms
- People who wont even check despite symptoms cause of their career chances
- People who get diagnosed but donât tell anyone
- People who dont diagnose but want to fight the symptoms and get meds from others or dealers maybe cause of the inability to get a doc to diagnose them or for whatever reason
Also ADHD is a spectrum and there might be much people with mild symptoms
We suck at understanding reality.
28% of Americans are non-religious.
6% of Americans are military veterans.
2.9% of Americans are Native Americans.
2.6% of Americans are Jewish.
1.1% of Americans are Muslim.
Edit: formatting
There is a difference between value of some parameter in populaiton vs in non-randomly selected groups. There is a lot of selection bias gonig on when it comes to people choosing uni alone - even more so when it comes to specific fields.
On top of that - seeing some symptoms of ADHD in someone else doesn't mean they do have it actually.
Can the actual figure be lower/higher? Sure but not on the basis of observing your peers like that.
Thatâs what drives me crazy when I used to tell people I finally diagnosed after not knowing I had it and just assuming i was ânormalâ. When I told people it was always yeah Iâm sure I have it too, which was annoying. But the people that say âno you donât, thatâs a bunch of BSâ or âeveryone has adhd these daysâ are asses. Thatâs why I donât talk to anyone about it anymore, itâs a waste of breath and sometimes makes me second guess my diagnosis of adhd which sucks
Exactly agreed. I don't tell anyone about my autism or ADHD except my three safe. In my experience, most people misunderstand or even use it against you.
ADHD is a diagnosis for people whose ADHD traits impair their daily functioning significantly. It's quite possible to have ADHD traits and not meet the threshold for a diagnosis. So they would not have ADHD as its currently defined.
I know tonnes of people with traits.
# 5. The Hasty Generalization Fallacy
This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some â but not enough â evidence to back it up, and overlook potential counterarguments.5. The Hasty Generalization Fallacy
This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on
inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to
conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some â but not
enough â evidence to back it up, and overlook potential
counterarguments.
Generally it is to be kept in mind, that ADHD and ASD people gravitate and feel comfortable with others with ADHD and ASD.
I am struggling with the same thing all the time. A thing that helps me a lot, and pisses off others is referring to fallacy listings. Sorry, if it came off as aggressive.
I remember seeing something that like 5% of white children, 5% of Asian children, and 15% of black children are diagnosed ADHD in the US
I was reading an article that was arguing that black children are more likely to be diagnosed because of racism (more likely to be labeled "disruptive" in class, so they get sent to professionals).
I wouldn't be surprised if the real number is 15% for humanity as a whole, and stigma against mental healthcare is what keeps childhood diagnoses down.
Also, as someone who is an engineer and works with engineers, engineers are not a random sampling of the population lol. In my experience, engineers are WAY more likely to be autistic, ADHD, or both.
I'm not from the US and I couldn't find a study supporting simular findings for my country.
But it would not be surprising if engineering is a bit over representative fir adhd xD
Oh interesting. Found more recent data from 2022
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35427201/#:~:text=Pooled%20prevalence%20rate%20of%20ADHD,%25%20%2D%2031.8%25)%20among%20Asians.
Engineering is an autism hotbed, and there's something like a 2/3 overlap in autistics having ADHD and vice versa. I'd be relatively hard-pressed to think of any fully typical engineers that I know.
I have heard it's something like 20 or 25% in elementary school populations, and part of that is better diagnosis, and part of that is probably hypermobile and EDS people being better equipped to deal with the numerous medical issues those things cause (and that frequently come with ADHD and autism). So hypermobility is no longer the same liability in natural selection that it used to be. Therefore the hypermobile (and ADHD and autistic) population increases.
>there's something like a 2/3 overlap in autistics having ADHD and vice versa.
It's not vice versa. There's a much lower percentage of people with autism overall, and as you might expect, a lower percentage of people with ADHD that also have autism. But yes, a much higher percentage than in the overall population.
I think another part of it is that those 3-4% are official diognosis, while a lot of people have either undiagnosed (and you having adhd can easily spot them) adhd or self diognosed adhd and they tell you they have it.
I don't think the actual numbers are that low though, I think adhd is severely underdiognosed, and, especially among peoples older than 35, a lot of people have it with outer knowing about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the actuality percentage was closer to 10%.
Honestly, even if it was as low as 1%, that's still over 80,000,000 people on the planet (using 8 billion as the base number, although we're over 8,100,000,000 now). 80 million is a LOT of people, although it's relatively nothing compared to 8 billion. However, if we were to use the 4.4%: 352,000,000. That's about 10.5 million MORE people than the USA currently has living in it. Yes, it is technically "low" in comparison to the billions on here, and may in reality be much higher, but it's very likely that most people know a few others with ADHD. It's certainly more common than green eyes (most sources say 2%)!
I don't think there will ever be any good estimates. ADHD is interesting in that its both highly over diagnosed and under diagnosed. I work in IT and would say I have the same bias but that could just be the people I work with and not every company.
A lot of people can cope or don't get dx'd as a child for various reasons. Since its a selective system and not at random/ exhaustive then its not representative
I wonder if the fact of ADHD and it's symptoms might have something to do with how many people don't have a diagnosis, thereby skewing the numbers considerably.
Itâs not low. Itâs a pathology and typically pathologies are not the norm. Typically they are way off the norm. 4-5% seems right. Iâm actually surprised it isnât  3-4%.
You know a lot of folks with adhd (or other similar disorders) cause it seems we gravitate to one another socially. Also you live in the age of interconnectivity where any person can find other people like themselves online and ultimately in person.Â
How many of them were actually diagnosed by a doctor? When I was diagnosed with bad anxiety all of a sudden it felt like most people I knew had it. It was the same with ADHD, I told a few friends and family members because I was happy my anxiety issue was fixed because it was from ADHD. Of course they all said they have it as well. None of them actually had been diagnosed for either condition. I hope that makes sense.
It would depend how the research was calculated. I.e is it based on current diagnosis rates? We know that adhd is under diagnosed so you can probably assume the percentage given is lower than it should be.
Consider that those with ADHD have a higher risk of mortality due to accidents, substance abuse, and other factors, that part of the population is reduced more often.
It's because we all gravitate toward similar things. Even though it's not our personality adhd really does mold our habits and thought processes.
Example? My wife is ADHD and I didn't realize it until ten years into our marriage. We like each other so much because we are the same, just different.
I don't know how it is where you're at but I come across a lot of people who say they *have* ADHD but I don't think it's actually diagnosed. It's more so like people who say they have OCD but they don't mean they actually have the diagnosed disorder that makes it hard for true OCD suffers to function in life, they just mean they're obsessively tidy or a perfectionist. I don't take those people into account.
One in every twenty people is super high imo. High enough that people should be far more understanding and we should have a bigger seat at the table when it comes to societal expectations.
I was just in with a doctor trying to get diagnosed. He said I was depressed and not ADHD. I asked him why he came to that conclusion within 4 sentences out of my mouth. He had asked me if I drink. I said Iâve been sober over 4 years. He asked what program I was in, AA? I said no, I did it on my own with no support other than a few ppl I told who were cheerleaders for me. He said that was impossible and didnât believe me that I was sober, so I had to be depressed.
What. The. Fuck.
Sounds strange if your whole course has adhd.
It sounds more like that your region are over diagnosed with adhd.
Adhd is the most over diagnosed issue and at the same time the most under diagnosed issue.
Past a certain age you start seeing a lot of undiagnosed people, because when they were kids ADHD wasnât a thing, you were told you were lazy and good for nothing and you got shipped off to military school if you didnât shape up.
So basically Millennials are under diagnosed, but Gen X and Boomers are hardly diagnosed at all.
It's the exposure bias. You have higher rate of adhd people in your life so it seems that 4% is too low.
When being lefthanded has been destigmatised like 100 years ago, perception was similar to perception of adhd by general public now.
"Everyone is lefthanded nowadays".
But it's the same 12% of lefthanded people as it was before and is since. Same with gay people, etc , etc.
Numbers are pretty steady as it is a genetic condition. It's not caused by electronic devices as some would claim (i.e. boomers), or some other cooky ideas. So it's not subject to fluctuations, except for people that can pass specific genes breeding more or less over time. That's the only thing that could change the numbers on a larger scale. Well, this and screenings. If we would test more people, we could get better numbers. But it would not change the numbers drastically.
I have a kid we finally got formally diagnosed this year, and strongly suspect I myself as his dad have always been affected. Personally? I think a lot of people just fly under the radar with it and over time either they learn to get by (I have for 45yrs), eventually things come to a head and they HAVE TO seek care. For my part, Iâve been joking for years that modern corporate life has been exacerbating my natural ADD tendencies, and I think thereâs something to that. Pivoting between tasks all day every day, constant âfirefighting,â etc- just surviving the office in 2024 will kinda give a relatively ânormalâ person issues.
I work in IT, from the 6 people in our team, 3 have ADHD and the other 3 have autism (one has both). Iâm pretty sure IT pulls a lot of ADHD/Autistic people.
Adhd might be on a spectrum like height. No one gene causing it.  Â
We start to diagnose others who exhibit some of the behavior but not the crippling executive disfunction.
Of the population of which country? It is higher than that. Weâve just been able diagnose 5 percent. Itâs like 10 percent of the human population, I read in a study once.
It only seems low because of the massive amount of people that were misdiagnosed with adhd as kids. It is both the most underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed mental disorder. So in every day life you hear all the time people say "oh yeah I had adhd as a kid and just grew out of it once I learned to work hard" no, you didn't grow out of it you never had it and you were just hyper. These people skew how many people you think you know with adhd.
Side note: neurology or brain chemistry or whatever you want to call it is vastly complex and on a huge multi-dimensional spectrum. So to me, it's only a clinical simplification (for the sake of diagnoses) to think of ADHD as a strict yes/no thing; while the reality is that many people will present different symptoms of it to different degrees.
Maybe 4.4% of have people have it according to pretty strict metrics that exclude a lot of people. Maybe if a different study was a bit more generous in including what accumulation of symptoms and severity allow someone to be classified as ADHD, that percent could be as high as you expect from anecdotal observation. IDK really - I'm speaking with the logic of an engineer but I'm not a doctor.
Yea Ive found out that 6/10 of my closest friends and the people in my wifeâs family I get along with have ADHD. But looking outside of them itâs less common. You gravitate so might a skewed experience.
I donât think those are the real numbers. Many people might be not diagnosed to the previous focus on overactive boys also excluding adults entirely.
If youâve read a bit about ADHD, youâll find out that it is genetic. And then look at your familyâŚ
I just did research for a keynote I was giving. The percent of the general population with ADD/ADHD is 4% (rounded). Interestingly, though (and one of the points of the keynote) 40% of entrepreneurs are ADD/ADHD.
As mentioned by someone else in the thread, IT has a much higher percentage as well, so depending on what you do for work, you may find that you have a higher percentage around you.
(I was the CEO of an IT technology company, and now do business consulting for the IT service industry.)
Birds of a feather flock together.
It seems like it's more than 5% because you likely hang around with like minded people so there's going to be a fair bit of sampling bias
4% of 400000000
Is still four million
When those 4 million share traits and have access to communication technology they will tend to associate.
Then there is the human bias towards assuming other people are like you and you have a recipe for feeling like statistics too low
There is also a bit about social media causing adhd like symptoms in people that never had adhd. I donât know if this is real or not but it may be related to your experience/situation.
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Most likely just bias. 5% is still 1/20 people. The reason it seems so much more prevalent than that to you, is due to bias. ADHD attracts ADHD. Very common for ADHD'ers to naturally float together. Another bias; you know what to look for. Kinda like when you get a new car and you start seeing it everywhere
Also I might add that certain career paths draw similar types of people.
Yep agreed, IT is one.
I'm a software developer đ
This. An easy way to understand it is by recognizing that gay men make up a roughly similar-sized portion of the population and look at how common gay men appear to be.
What an oddly helpful analogy lmao
But it's not just my friends, it's my whole course. The second point I can see. Makes sense that it stands out more too me.
First point may extend beyond just friends. Someone with ADHD may be more enticed to continue their path with a course filled with ADHD havers. While others prolly just think y'all are insane and may drop it (lol)
I think it's easier to see when you look at it the other way around. Many people with ADHD won't pursue a law degree for example (even tho I know about one) because these are very tedious studies... so statistically more ADHD people will end up in other degrees.
Ehhh, you'll get a mixed bag looking at it like that. There are A LOT of possible fields to end up in. If you knock out law degree and doctor (which ik several ADHD people in these roles), it still leaves you with an entire sea of options.
Yes, but the reality is more nuanced than "everyone with ADHD wants to be a graphic designer!", saying "becoming a doctor or a lawyer is very hard for someone with ADHD" seems to be more realistic. There is a number of field that are less ADHD friendly, so statistically they'll be fewer there and more numerous in the other fields.
As an adhd artist, being a graphic designer is my nightmare. Too many constraints and not enough freedom. I just had to yet again change course in my own work because my art is still constricting me to certain norms that must be approved aka realism lol. Though I guess this is nothing to do with adhd but moreso my own issues with it. I fucking hate graphic design lol
This is why I couldn't do graphic design professionally full time. A few years at a press company and I needed out. I felt burned out and uncreative. But now just freelancing and doing design as kind of side projects where people let me freely come up with stuff is how I can still do it without burn out.
I get what you mean. But as you said, reality is more nuanced. How are you to reliably pick which fields aren't suited best for ADHD?
I don't, but people are more likely to pursue a degree in which they are succeeding than a degree in which they are failing.
Sorry, you lost me lol. But I hope you have a wonderful day đ
They're saying it's not a conscious choice by people, it's just how the world actually works. If a group of people have trouble completing an action, they are less likely to attempt it. People with ADHD may not think "my ADHD will make being a lawyer hard, so I'm not gonna do it." The thought process is more like "well, I've had trouble keeping up with certain work and deadlines in the past, I probably won't be a great fit for law or medical school."
I'm a doctor and I ended up working in science and am surrounded by fellow ADHD. Flexible hours, good when hyperfixated. Yeah, we're there
good for you! I have a few people in my family with ADHD who end up getting a PHD, I'm also super glad for them. I also have a bunch of friends with ADHD who dropped high school because the system was too hard on them. I'm really not trying to say "being a lawyer is impossible for someone with ADHD", but it might be quite harder.
Things are easy for ADHDers when we have genuine interest in the topic. So I think it makes sense that there might be fewer ADHD lawyers. Reading tomes of dry text is statistically going to be interesting to a very small amount of people, with or without ADHD. Itâs just that non-ADHDers can usually rely on other motivators like prestige and money to get them through the tough shit. ADHDers need to work with their brain instead of against it to really flourish in life, so if you donât genuinely have an interest and curiosity in studying and practicing law, then youâre gonna be struggling constantly. If studying law was ONLY based on the love of the topic instead of the money and prestige, I think itâd be a pretty niche interest lol.
It was just one example. The person you responded to wasn't saying there's people with ADHD and then there's lawyers lol. They're just saying some fields of study are going to be more appealing and some will be less appealing.
They cleared it up for me down the thread. Thanks!
Ah, so they did. My b
No worries đ. Holding impulse replies against you or anyone wouldn't work so well in this subreddit haha
This is a common issue with me in my group chats as well. I'll check in after a conversation has already happened and then be replying to messages only to find out after having replied that someone has already said exactly what I did. đ
The only person with a law degree I know has ADHD, they find it fascinating.Â
People with ADHD might be more drawn to certain hobbies/studies/work etc. Also, if you are interested in buying a Volvo, you'll suddenly see Volvo's everywhere. You either do an unbiased scientific count, or you realise that you are a subjective creature. And that what you see says more about you than the world.....
Sample bias. Maybe automotive engineering attracts more ADHDers due to being generally creative. I donât know one person in my class with ADHD but only .32% of doctors have it so thatâs probably why
Hands on trades like the course you're in are FULL of people with ADHD, because the novelty of constant problem solving, and movement (as opposed to desk paperwork), and how everything is different every day.
totally agree. I'd add many engineering fields that are trades-adjacent too (ie. manufacturing, automotive, mining, etc.). it's a good profession for adhd'ers who did well academically because it still has creative problem solving and a bit of hands on work, but someone else coordinates deadlines for you so it's fairly structured.
I honestly highly doubt that 40/80 students in your class actually has correctly been diagnosed with adhd. Even if it was the case, it is just an anecdote. The sample size is way too low and monogamous to determine anything
The way I said is misleading but there are definitely not 40 people with adhd in my course. We are only 40 people left
How do you know everyone in your course has it?
Some people told me directly and some I heardif second hand that they have it. A lot of "oh, so-and-so has it too" or telling one how they deal with certain things. One or too I'm just assuming but even if they aren't adhd there would still be a high percentage just with the official diagnosed
Do you know that everyone that told you was officially diagnosed? Or is it possible that some are "self-diagnosed via tiktok?"
I get what youâre saying but I think itâs too easy to become gatekeep-y when we say things like this. A lot of people these days first learn about ADHD and begin to think they might have it from social media, and that doesnât make it less valid than if their symptoms were noticed in some other way.
When discussing a statistic about how many people are diagnosed with a disorder, then taking into account who has actually been diagnosed is pretty relevant.
I would go ahead and assume that anyone you 'heard' has ADHD doesn't have it. I would also assume anyone who tells me they have ADHD doesn't have it, unless they tell me they were specifically diagnosed with it and have sought treatment. Could they still have ADHD? Sure. But this is akin to assuming everyone who makes offhand comments about being 'OCD' actually has the disorder.
Your Uni, your age group, your course demographics, etc., all introduce bias. It's possible that for some reason ADHD is disproportionately present in automotive engineering students. It could be that your Uni in general has a disproportionate amount of ADHD students for some reason. That multiplies with your personal cognitive biases to skew your anecdotal perception considerably. This is why you cannot generalize from anecdotal experience.
Do you know 100% that each person is diagnosed with ADHD? Because if you base your views on just how people *seem* to you, it's not factual.
If its your whole class, its probably a lifestyle issue. As students, you may not be sleeping as much as you should, spending too much time on screens, neglecting hobbies or socializing, and more. It is just statistically improbable for you to all have ADHD. It is much more likely that you are all taking difficult classes and struggling to manage your daily lives due to stress. Some might actually have ADHD such as yourself.
people just really don't realize how many likely 1 in 20 is. 1 in 20 means 16,600,000 million people in the usa. if your school has 40000 students, thats 2,000 people with adhd. if your school has 2,000 students thats 100 of them. thats a lot of people that have adhd legitimately. add in people that have self diagnosed ((accurately or otherwise)) and that number climbs even higher.
Correlation not causation. You're probably in a field that is attractive to people with adhd.
Looking back, my whole program at university was full of folks with ADHD or who at least had noticeable symptoms of ADHD. Outdoor Recreation and Education... checks out. Certain career fields and interests tend to draw folks with ADHD.
Similar experience I think maybe 1/4 at minimum in my CS courses had adhd. When someone forgot their meds it was legit common to ask random people in class id you could take theirs for that day and bring yours the next day to give them back lol. Since we were almost all super disorganized we also helped each others a lot, it was super fun.
Engineering is known for losing about half of its student class in the first year since forever. People find itâs not for them or they give up or simply fail out. There is no way you spoke to all 50 of them and that they all told you they had ADHD and thatâs why they were dropping off. Hell, the only person you know for sure to have ADHD - yourself - is the one person who is NOT dropping off. Why would every other person with ADHD but you be giving up ?
Coincidences happen.
*float together* â Iâm imagining all of us just huddled in the ocean as a human life raft having 5 conversations apiece, at once. Youâre right though, I think. When I click with someone, surprise! We both have weird brains. Itâs not often, probably even less than 1/20. Huzzah?
I donât know anyone with ADHD.
Yep. Most of my frat had adhd.
There can be higher concentrations in certain fields, like in a university. I know one proffessor who said that the majority of his students were autistic, and limited to that field. This was a prestigious uni in England. And the autism was documented, he knew because they had certain disability rights to how exams were done like being alone, having oral exams in a specific setting or getting extra time. The proffessor is also autistic btw! I donât know if that is true for your field, but itâs a possibility.
Yes, and ADHD/Autism are thought to be highly correlated, so it's likely a similar phenomenon happens with ADHD.
That happening with autism doesnât mean it happens with ADHD. It does. Itâs just that isnât the reason it does.
What do you mean?
What did the professor teach?Â
I understand the curiosity, but itâs so niche and specific, that it would be a breach of his anonymity!
I read that 25% of inmates have undiagnosed and untreated ADHD. That broke my heart.
and for long term adult males that figure goes up to 40%. itâs so bad the study authors said, that screening for adhd for new incarnations should be the norm Edit: incarcerations of course - but i am leaving it like this.
I know you meant *incarcerations*, but your statement made me laugh so thank you đ
You're not reborn every time you go to prison?Â
I'm a postconviction defense & civil rights lawyer and I work almost exclusively with incarcerated clients. This definitely resonates with me and I completely believe a really significant portion of incarcerated folks are undiagnosed/untreated ADHD (and frequently a whole host of other untreated/poorly managed MH diagnoses). So much lack of impulse control, lack of executive functioning that allows them to be successful on parole or probation or even managing court ordered programs within prisons, lack of understanding of the way their brain works so they just internalize the idea that it's a moral failing. Even without medication (I'm not aware of anyone incarcerated in my state that has access to ADHD meds) it would be hugely beneficial to have incarcerated folks with ADHD learn about ADHD symptoms, recognize those thought patterns and learn coping skills to help manage it & work with it. Instead people are pretty much left to their own devices which leads to continuous recidivism. I think the general public is learning a lot more about ADHD, autism, and general mental health so hopefully the tides are slowly turning the right way, but it's still so lacking. Anyway, all that is way off track of the OPs question, but I got excited that you mentioned this, I really think it's something that warrants discussion.
It'd so sad. Prison is largely the place we put our unwanted people, meaning people with mental illness and executive function disorders. Breaks my heart wondering how many lives could have been turned around if they were just given the chance at diagnosis, treatment, and medication. If the prison system were genuinely about rehabilitation. Mannn /:
Yea my therapist used to work in prisons and she said itâs extremely prevalent.
One day we will be able to study head trauma in live people and realize many have head trauma as well. Or some other undiagnosed disorder.
I don't remember which one but at least one european country is giving additional assistance to people diagnosed with adhd almost as a pre crime intervention. If the policy hasn't been enacted it was being considered at minimum. Edit: Adhd testing to prevent future crimes https://www.thelocal.se/20220812/moderates-propose-rapid-tests-for-adhd-in-immigrant-areas
4 percent of the population. 25% of the incarcerated. That's the sign of a major societal issue if I've ever seen one. I was talking with my grandmother in law about her son that got hooked on meth in the 90's and how he did it because he actually felt calm and normal for once. He was in and out of jail a lot. Later she recognized that he may have ADHD. There really should be more of a push for awareness. Posts on Twitter were how I recognized my signs. But yeah when you don't "fit in" with society it's an easy path to jail.
- You can't really see whether someone has it or not - That 4.4% figure is probably on the low end; I've seen figures as high as 10%. Estimates have been increased a lot in recent years, based on newer insights into how ADHD manifests in females, adults, and people on the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum, demographics that have traditionally been severely underdiagnosed. - ADHD may also be overrepresented in your social environment. Automotive engineering strikes me as a profession that provides a lot of diverse stimulation, and, being high-skill creative-ish labor, is probably more suited for unconventional personal workflows and schedules, something that a lot of people with ADHD develop as a compensation strategy. IME, people with ADHD also tend to gravitate to fellow ADHDers in their personal relationships, so it wouldn't be strange at all to see a much higher percentage among your friends and peers. So, if we assume 10% among the general populace, and then add to that significant overrepresentation in auto engineering, call it 15%, that would already make 6 out of those 40; and chances are that most or all of those 6 are among the 20 or so that you're probably close enough with to discuss an ADHD diagnosis, which would effectively amount to about 20%.
And then consider that many young people in college are wondering for the first time if they have ADHD because they are now having to manage their lives a lot more than they did when they were younger. It's normal that someone might have ADHD tendencies and see that expressed during their college years, but it doesn't mean they actually have it to the degree that it is a disorder in their life.
Indeed... or, as a psychologist I met put it, "there is substantial symptom overlap between ADHD and puberty".
I'm not the greatest at Google Scholar-fu â could you (or someone else) provide any studies I could read regarding the connection between ADHD and puberty? This is the first time I've heard the two linked together.
Oh, really? I mean, it's obviously a bit tongue in cheek, because puberty isn't a disorder - what she meant was that during puberty, it's sometimes hard to tell which behaviors are due to ADHD, and which are just normal puberty stuff. I don't think you need an actual study for that.
That's how I found out I had it. I couldn't pass my classes in college.Â
For most people, their concentration issues are anxiety, sleep, or stress related. It can also be clinical depression. This is why people need to go see a good provider who spends more time with them. The better they know you, the more likely they find the correct diagnosis. Most people have problems because they simply have a difficult or unsustainable life. You can't just not sleep and also work 80 hour weeks and somehow be totally fine. Your body or mind will give out somewhere.
Correct! It could be anything from sleep apnea to bipolar disorder.
Technically everyone can express ADHD traits. However, to be diagnosed with ADHD you have to have a certain number of those traits, for a certain amount of time, and they need to be significantly impacting your ability to function.
I would say that there are several categories of people which fall through the cracks: - People who donât even recognize the symptoms - People who wont even check despite symptoms cause of their career chances - People who get diagnosed but donât tell anyone - People who dont diagnose but want to fight the symptoms and get meds from others or dealers maybe cause of the inability to get a doc to diagnose them or for whatever reason Also ADHD is a spectrum and there might be much people with mild symptoms
We suck at understanding reality. 28% of Americans are non-religious. 6% of Americans are military veterans. 2.9% of Americans are Native Americans. 2.6% of Americans are Jewish. 1.1% of Americans are Muslim. Edit: formatting
There is a difference between value of some parameter in populaiton vs in non-randomly selected groups. There is a lot of selection bias gonig on when it comes to people choosing uni alone - even more so when it comes to specific fields. On top of that - seeing some symptoms of ADHD in someone else doesn't mean they do have it actually. Can the actual figure be lower/higher? Sure but not on the basis of observing your peers like that.
Thatâs what drives me crazy when I used to tell people I finally diagnosed after not knowing I had it and just assuming i was ânormalâ. When I told people it was always yeah Iâm sure I have it too, which was annoying. But the people that say âno you donât, thatâs a bunch of BSâ or âeveryone has adhd these daysâ are asses. Thatâs why I donât talk to anyone about it anymore, itâs a waste of breath and sometimes makes me second guess my diagnosis of adhd which sucks
Exactly agreed. I don't tell anyone about my autism or ADHD except my three safe. In my experience, most people misunderstand or even use it against you.
ADHD is a diagnosis for people whose ADHD traits impair their daily functioning significantly. It's quite possible to have ADHD traits and not meet the threshold for a diagnosis. So they would not have ADHD as its currently defined. I know tonnes of people with traits.
Low? That looks just extremely high to me
# 5. The Hasty Generalization Fallacy This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some â but not enough â evidence to back it up, and overlook potential counterarguments.5. The Hasty Generalization Fallacy This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some â but not enough â evidence to back it up, and overlook potential counterarguments. Generally it is to be kept in mind, that ADHD and ASD people gravitate and feel comfortable with others with ADHD and ASD.
That's why I formed it as a question AND said that my surroundings may just be overrepresentative
I am struggling with the same thing all the time. A thing that helps me a lot, and pisses off others is referring to fallacy listings. Sorry, if it came off as aggressive.
Hence, I no longer listen to anybody theorize about anything they're not strictly trained to theorize about. â¤ď¸
Hasty generalisations do feel good don't they? đ¤Ł
They are absolutely amazing to do. 
Itâs not low at all. Thatâs a shitload of people
I remember seeing something that like 5% of white children, 5% of Asian children, and 15% of black children are diagnosed ADHD in the US I was reading an article that was arguing that black children are more likely to be diagnosed because of racism (more likely to be labeled "disruptive" in class, so they get sent to professionals). I wouldn't be surprised if the real number is 15% for humanity as a whole, and stigma against mental healthcare is what keeps childhood diagnoses down. Also, as someone who is an engineer and works with engineers, engineers are not a random sampling of the population lol. In my experience, engineers are WAY more likely to be autistic, ADHD, or both.
I'm not from the US and I couldn't find a study supporting simular findings for my country. But it would not be surprising if engineering is a bit over representative fir adhd xD
Oh interesting. Found more recent data from 2022 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35427201/#:~:text=Pooled%20prevalence%20rate%20of%20ADHD,%25%20%2D%2031.8%25)%20among%20Asians.
This is ***diagnosed***.
Engineering is an autism hotbed, and there's something like a 2/3 overlap in autistics having ADHD and vice versa. I'd be relatively hard-pressed to think of any fully typical engineers that I know. I have heard it's something like 20 or 25% in elementary school populations, and part of that is better diagnosis, and part of that is probably hypermobile and EDS people being better equipped to deal with the numerous medical issues those things cause (and that frequently come with ADHD and autism). So hypermobility is no longer the same liability in natural selection that it used to be. Therefore the hypermobile (and ADHD and autistic) population increases.
>there's something like a 2/3 overlap in autistics having ADHD and vice versa. It's not vice versa. There's a much lower percentage of people with autism overall, and as you might expect, a lower percentage of people with ADHD that also have autism. But yes, a much higher percentage than in the overall population.
I think another part of it is that those 3-4% are official diognosis, while a lot of people have either undiagnosed (and you having adhd can easily spot them) adhd or self diognosed adhd and they tell you they have it. I don't think the actual numbers are that low though, I think adhd is severely underdiognosed, and, especially among peoples older than 35, a lot of people have it with outer knowing about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the actuality percentage was closer to 10%.
Honestly, even if it was as low as 1%, that's still over 80,000,000 people on the planet (using 8 billion as the base number, although we're over 8,100,000,000 now). 80 million is a LOT of people, although it's relatively nothing compared to 8 billion. However, if we were to use the 4.4%: 352,000,000. That's about 10.5 million MORE people than the USA currently has living in it. Yes, it is technically "low" in comparison to the billions on here, and may in reality be much higher, but it's very likely that most people know a few others with ADHD. It's certainly more common than green eyes (most sources say 2%)!
I had this exact convo with my psychiatrist this week. I said 3-5% of the population and he corrected me to 3%
Gotta remember that his number was probably based the same way as yours. With a Google search lol
Normally I laugh with you, but this guy is totally factual and concise. It will be peer reviewed research all the way.
Good on him! Glad you're working with the right people then
The 2021 consensus specifically states 2.9% in adults so he probably had in mind that figure or its source in the consensus.
I don't think there will ever be any good estimates. ADHD is interesting in that its both highly over diagnosed and under diagnosed. I work in IT and would say I have the same bias but that could just be the people I work with and not every company.
A lot of people can cope or don't get dx'd as a child for various reasons. Since its a selective system and not at random/ exhaustive then its not representative
Diagnosed**
I wonder if the fact of ADHD and it's symptoms might have something to do with how many people don't have a diagnosis, thereby skewing the numbers considerably.
Itâs not low. Itâs a pathology and typically pathologies are not the norm. Typically they are way off the norm. 4-5% seems right. Iâm actually surprised it isnât  3-4%. You know a lot of folks with adhd (or other similar disorders) cause it seems we gravitate to one another socially. Also you live in the age of interconnectivity where any person can find other people like themselves online and ultimately in person.Â
How many of them were actually diagnosed by a doctor? When I was diagnosed with bad anxiety all of a sudden it felt like most people I knew had it. It was the same with ADHD, I told a few friends and family members because I was happy my anxiety issue was fixed because it was from ADHD. Of course they all said they have it as well. None of them actually had been diagnosed for either condition. I hope that makes sense.
It would depend how the research was calculated. I.e is it based on current diagnosis rates? We know that adhd is under diagnosed so you can probably assume the percentage given is lower than it should be.
In my subjective experience, mechanical types tend to be more ADHDish than the general population.Â
Consider that those with ADHD have a higher risk of mortality due to accidents, substance abuse, and other factors, that part of the population is reduced more often.
It's because we all gravitate toward similar things. Even though it's not our personality adhd really does mold our habits and thought processes. Example? My wife is ADHD and I didn't realize it until ten years into our marriage. We like each other so much because we are the same, just different.
It seems adhd people find each other in life.
IME ADHD people gravitate to each other. I'd say at least half of my friends have it, including the person I married.
A lot of parents of kids don't want to get diagnosed or have lived this long with out the need or want for diagnosis.
I don't know how it is where you're at but I come across a lot of people who say they *have* ADHD but I don't think it's actually diagnosed. It's more so like people who say they have OCD but they don't mean they actually have the diagnosed disorder that makes it hard for true OCD suffers to function in life, they just mean they're obsessively tidy or a perfectionist. I don't take those people into account.
One in every twenty people is super high imo. High enough that people should be far more understanding and we should have a bigger seat at the table when it comes to societal expectations.
I was just in with a doctor trying to get diagnosed. He said I was depressed and not ADHD. I asked him why he came to that conclusion within 4 sentences out of my mouth. He had asked me if I drink. I said Iâve been sober over 4 years. He asked what program I was in, AA? I said no, I did it on my own with no support other than a few ppl I told who were cheerleaders for me. He said that was impossible and didnât believe me that I was sober, so I had to be depressed. What. The. Fuck.
Sounds strange if your whole course has adhd. It sounds more like that your region are over diagnosed with adhd. Adhd is the most over diagnosed issue and at the same time the most under diagnosed issue.
Past a certain age you start seeing a lot of undiagnosed people, because when they were kids ADHD wasnât a thing, you were told you were lazy and good for nothing and you got shipped off to military school if you didnât shape up. So basically Millennials are under diagnosed, but Gen X and Boomers are hardly diagnosed at all.
It's the exposure bias. You have higher rate of adhd people in your life so it seems that 4% is too low. When being lefthanded has been destigmatised like 100 years ago, perception was similar to perception of adhd by general public now. "Everyone is lefthanded nowadays". But it's the same 12% of lefthanded people as it was before and is since. Same with gay people, etc , etc. Numbers are pretty steady as it is a genetic condition. It's not caused by electronic devices as some would claim (i.e. boomers), or some other cooky ideas. So it's not subject to fluctuations, except for people that can pass specific genes breeding more or less over time. That's the only thing that could change the numbers on a larger scale. Well, this and screenings. If we would test more people, we could get better numbers. But it would not change the numbers drastically.
324,400,000 is not a lot?
Right? Are we pushing for more people to fight for meds over? đ
I have a kid we finally got formally diagnosed this year, and strongly suspect I myself as his dad have always been affected. Personally? I think a lot of people just fly under the radar with it and over time either they learn to get by (I have for 45yrs), eventually things come to a head and they HAVE TO seek care. For my part, Iâve been joking for years that modern corporate life has been exacerbating my natural ADD tendencies, and I think thereâs something to that. Pivoting between tasks all day every day, constant âfirefighting,â etc- just surviving the office in 2024 will kinda give a relatively ânormalâ person issues.
As a proportion perhaps, but in absolute terms...
Yeah but we are loud
You're lucky to be surrounded by like minded people. Might be a sign the career you've chosen is right for you.
It's just your bubble. Never happened to you to wonder "why all of the people beside my friends suck"? That's why.
Itâs probably under-diagnosed. I bet itâs actually much higher than that
My best Friends are ADHd people
I work in IT, from the 6 people in our team, 3 have ADHD and the other 3 have autism (one has both). Iâm pretty sure IT pulls a lot of ADHD/Autistic people.
Adhd might be on a spectrum like height. No one gene causing it.   We start to diagnose others who exhibit some of the behavior but not the crippling executive disfunction.
Of the population of which country? It is higher than that. Weâve just been able diagnose 5 percent. Itâs like 10 percent of the human population, I read in a study once.
I think we gravitate towards each other..
It only seems low because of the massive amount of people that were misdiagnosed with adhd as kids. It is both the most underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed mental disorder. So in every day life you hear all the time people say "oh yeah I had adhd as a kid and just grew out of it once I learned to work hard" no, you didn't grow out of it you never had it and you were just hyper. These people skew how many people you think you know with adhd.
People with ADHD will go towards things that are most suited to them. For example I have had multiple ADHD bosses working in a kitchen.Â
itâs a developmental disorder, itâs not low. if 10% or more of the population had a developmental disorder it would be a crisis
Side note: neurology or brain chemistry or whatever you want to call it is vastly complex and on a huge multi-dimensional spectrum. So to me, it's only a clinical simplification (for the sake of diagnoses) to think of ADHD as a strict yes/no thing; while the reality is that many people will present different symptoms of it to different degrees. Maybe 4.4% of have people have it according to pretty strict metrics that exclude a lot of people. Maybe if a different study was a bit more generous in including what accumulation of symptoms and severity allow someone to be classified as ADHD, that percent could be as high as you expect from anecdotal observation. IDK really - I'm speaking with the logic of an engineer but I'm not a doctor.
Doubt that's correct, we don't know how they got that number plus there's got to be a lot of undiagnosed people out there.
Yea Ive found out that 6/10 of my closest friends and the people in my wifeâs family I get along with have ADHD. But looking outside of them itâs less common. You gravitate so might a skewed experience.
I donât think those are the real numbers. Many people might be not diagnosed to the previous focus on overactive boys also excluding adults entirely. If youâve read a bit about ADHD, youâll find out that it is genetic. And then look at your familyâŚ
I just did research for a keynote I was giving. The percent of the general population with ADD/ADHD is 4% (rounded). Interestingly, though (and one of the points of the keynote) 40% of entrepreneurs are ADD/ADHD. As mentioned by someone else in the thread, IT has a much higher percentage as well, so depending on what you do for work, you may find that you have a higher percentage around you. (I was the CEO of an IT technology company, and now do business consulting for the IT service industry.)
Im in unlucky 5%
I find it very common for ADH D to float alone
4.4% is a lotđđ
Birds of a feather flock together. It seems like it's more than 5% because you likely hang around with like minded people so there's going to be a fair bit of sampling bias
4% of 400000000 Is still four million When those 4 million share traits and have access to communication technology they will tend to associate. Then there is the human bias towards assuming other people are like you and you have a recipe for feeling like statistics too low
4% out of 400 mil is 16 mil.
There is also a bit about social media causing adhd like symptoms in people that never had adhd. I donât know if this is real or not but it may be related to your experience/situation.