I've long had attention and focus problems, but never explored the possibility that I have ADHD till recently. I understand that it's a standard term, but I'm still a bit suspicious; Psychiatry doesn't seem like the most reliable field.
Are there good reasons for picking out the behaviors associated with ADHD and giving them a name? Obviously this is a different question than whether ADHD is a 'disorder' or 'disease', and whether ADHD medication is good or bad for people.
Answers that would satisfy me
- Behaviors associated with ADHD strongly cluster
- Analyzing questionnaires of attention and focus behaviors with faction analysis naturally produces an 'ADHD dimension' that explains a lot of variance (similar methodology to identifying Big 5 personality traits).
- ADHD diagnosis a strong predictor of anything interesting (income or grades or some contrived but interesting lab test)?
- Something else along these lines.
This would have been convincing if true, but is apparently false. Looks like the key difference is dose, at low doses stimulants aid focus and at high doses inhibit it (or something like that).
Interesting. I wonder if it would be possible to detect someone with ADHD by their preferred dose.
Come to think of it, the original test could still work. If we know that caffeine affects people with ADHD differently, the fact that it's because they're taking a smaller dose is irrelevant. It does mean that you're not allowed to control dosage, so it would be more prone to error.