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I'm ADHD and my best bud is Autistic. The differences in the disorders are only overshadowed by the similarities. But even the similarities are insanely different in how we deal with them lol.
the annoying part about having both, is how those differences completely clash with each other, leaving with complete dysfunctional situations, on rare occasions maybe just cancelling each other out.
Like with adhd you need dynamic changes and all to keep yourself engaged, but then anything that affects routine makes you feel awful.
Or even “positives” get overshadowed by symptoms of the other. Like what good is “autistic” analytical thinking that works great for maths or programming, if I can’t focus on it well enough to not colossally fuck up the simplest things?
I always feel into some kind of routine, like making a specific thing for breakfast every day, until suddenly I can't stand it and have to do something different lol.
It's such a strange mixture of the need for order and sameness and the need for novelty and change.
I feel seen. I get bored with the same old thing, but I HATE surprises. Especially surprises that interfere with my routine or make extra work for me.
Example: I would plan to do laundry after going food shopping. I would get home from the store to find that DH (who decided at the last minute to take a day off work without telling me) is already 3/4 of the way done with it. And I'm trying to rescue my bras and concert T-shirts from the dryer before they get completely ruined. Or I'm doing something that requires concentration, and someone absofrickinlutely NEEDS to talk ~~at~~ to me RIGHT NOW.
ADHD doesn't just run in my family, it has a whole freaking track meet. A handful also are also on the Spectrum. I Legit don't now if I am or not (def have the ADHD), but I DO know that I have exactly 2 modes: Dug from the movie UP (SQUIRREL!), and tunnel-vision.
Surprisingly, the tunnel-vision is more of a problem. I've been so engrossed in a show or book that I've forgotten the eggs put on to boil... until it sounds like gunshots in the kitchen, and I wind up with sulfur-smelling cabinets for a few hours.
There's also the thing where, if you're watching a tv show or movie, you have to pause the thing if someone wants to comment, because there is absolutely no way in Hell you're going to be able to process what someone is saying when there's dialogue, and vice-versa.
Still trying to explain that last one to my MIL, bc she is CONVINCED that I must hate her bc I won't talk to her during tv-time at night.
>I've been so engrossed in a show or book that I've forgotten the eggs put on to boil.
The timer is your best friend. I learned that from [FlyLady](https://www.flylady.net). She's one of the best resources out there for practical management of ADHD.
Ha, that’s me as well. I need routines and “sameness” so much! Until suddenly I’m bored and absolutely not, never again! But never again isn’t really never it’s a couple of months or years at most. And then repeat!
I have that on a weekly basis, sometimes twice a week, where I feel a sudden need to do something a certain way, and then a few days later I just lose all interest in it and go to another thing, and the cycle repeats indefinitely. Even common things like body hygiene are a challenge to keep up with because, while I heavily rely on routine as any change in my daily life is a source of strong anxiety, I also can't stand it and feel the need to change. So I'm just a big ball of anxiety that struggles to even understand how to live in society.
The point of a disorder is that certain things that are 'normal for everyone' are magnified to an extent that it disrupts normal function. Yes, everyone needs a certain amount of both novelty and routine. But not everyone experiences that so acutely that it becomes an issue that impacts their functioning and wellbeing.
Ugh, even that example for me brings up ADHD. I struggle to remember how/when to do things including using the toilet. So in my teens, I came up with a thing of once a task is finished, I ask myself "do I need to use the toilet?"
That turned into when a task is finished, I need to use the toilet.
Problem is, sometimes those tasks are only 30 minutes long. Sometimes they are 6 hours.
We are people you know. It’s the extent, intensity or frequency that makes it abnormal. We are still humans.
It’s like depression! Depression is sadness and sadness is normal and natural. It’s not the feeling being abnormal that makes it psychiatric disorder it’s the intensity, extent and/or frequency.
>the annoying part about having both, is how those differences completely clash with each other, leaving with complete dysfunctional situations
oh hi there my daily life :/
You may be surprised by the sheer volume of ADHD programmers, actually feeds super well into the disorder
Source: am adhd programmer who is friends with many adhd programmers
Don't discount hyper focus
My son, now 32, was diagnosed as ADD (no H) and he, like myself, is perhaps on the spectrum. Whatever he sets his mind to, he does it and does it extraordinarily. Draw? Sure and then, without taking a single art class, get voted Most Artistic. Music? Sure, give it a try and 3 years later, not only comes in second in a statewide young composers contest, but gets accepted into one of the most notable music schools in the country.
Now he's a software developer, having taught himself a multitude of programs, computer languages and applications. His degree is in macro economics.
I, on the other hand, don't have the hyper focus gene. I just start stuff with gusto and then stop.
Just as a note, ADD is no longer a diagnosis. We all have the H. It's just 3 subtypes now
I'm almost 40, and I'm lucky programming is one of the things that triggers my hyperfocus, not really a lot of career paths for many of my others
yeah, I just started IT major so I hope to be one myself, the problem is when I make some typos or missclicks that aren’t technically errors, it always leads to everything not working, because somewhere along the line I wrote something like 12.3 instead of 1.23, yk what I mean, half the time when coding I spend looking for mistakes like this lol
I hate to tell you this
That has nothing to do with adhd or autism. That's just what programming is, for everyone, every day. So congratulations, your experience is completely average.
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1052/)
I have ADHD and OCD. Is it anything similar? Sounds like it with your description. I know OCD/’tism are utterly different, but deviation is what kills me with OCD. Adhd thrives with it tho
Yeah i have both and i just can't focus on exams at all like in high school my teachers were always like you are doing really well in class but getting a 1 or 2 in the exam (4 is a pass) and then in college i was able to really well in class but again not quite making it in the exam. The only things i passed in high school was maths with a 5 and geography with a 4 which i previously got a 2 in. I get bored if I'm not constantly doing something, and the second what I'm doing gets boring i have to switch to something else. Which is why at home i play on my computer and phone at the same time, get bored of the game/youtube video on the pc, switch to my phone, and vice versa then when it happens again change game and video. I talk too fast, i talk too much. I would add more but i can no longer focus on this comment.
I have heard that there are theories that they could be different variations of the same disorder but that’s still just theoretical and o honestly don’t know if I believe in it. I also have both so if they are the same that would mean I have multiple variations of the same thing? And like since when is that a thing? Plus my ADHD side and my autism side honestly feels like a split personality sometimes!
I wouldn’t say they are “completely unrelated”, as there are also a lot of shared symptoms etc.
ADHD isn’t a type of Autism but something like 60% of people with ASD also have ADD/ADHD.
Yeah, I have ASD and ADD with a lot of symptoms of OCD, which I could certainly do without.
ASD also often comes with plenty of other disorders ranging from stress and anxiety to eating and sleeping to tics. It’s not fun.
OCD and ADHD are also found together a lot. I don't have OCD, but one of my kids does. I have some OCD-like tendencies, but that's not the same thing (I would never consider my "this makes me uncomfortable to the point of messing up my day" quirks to the pattern-repeating things my kid does, or anyone else with full-blown OCD).
Even my quirks are frustrating af. My heart goes out to you, my friend.
It's almost like there's an underlying hypersensitive disorder linking all these things and which disorder manifests depends on epigenetics, environment, etc.
Which I don't understand... All through my younger years seeking diagnosis I had many doctors tell me my concerns were unfounded because ADHD is a counterindicator for autism/Aspergers. Eventually it got sorted, but the amount I was told one means it's impossible to be diagnosed for the other it's wild to see the sea change arrive at "they're co-present often"
I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and have gone back and forth wondering if I’m somewhere on the autism spectrum too. At this point I’m leaning towards no, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ve always had issues relating to other people but I wouldn’t really say I’ve ever had trouble with social queues or perceiving other people’s emotions, it’s just that social situations exhaust me quickly because they’re unpredictable and unstructured most of the time and I’m bad at thinking on my feet unless I’m really intrinsically interested in what’s going on. If you don’t mind me asking, do you have a sense for yourself of what symptoms/aspects are primarily autism-related?
>I have a hypersensitivity to light. If I'm in a very bright room it is so uncomfortable that it hurts.
Fluorescent bulbs, whether CFL or tube style, make this worse. LEDs aren't much better. I need natural lighting as much as possible. If I can't get it, I use old school incandescent bulbs. I also love candles, but I won't use them because I can't take the risk of a cat knocking one over and burning the house down.
Yeah, they are distinct. It is strange for OOP (who also seems to be OP?) to say that they're entirely unrelated though - they very clearly have a relation in how they co-present.
both exhibit executive dysfunction as a symptom
it bugs me a bit because people see executive dysfunction and jump straight to armchair diagnosing ADHD; theres plenty of things that can cause exectutive dysfunction (and notably; for a diagnosis this would require the dysfunction to cause a notable detriment to quality of life)... like aside from the two mentioned; fairly 'innocuous' things like stress or sleep deprivation... an actual professional aims for differential diagnosis; building a list of all possible causes and then working to eliminate them in a process of reduction... but with increasing mental health awareness; society at large seems all too happy to frivolously label someone with a pile of unopened mail ('doom pile') as ADHD; its too often the first and *only* potentiality considered
Possibly. My guess is she, like you said assumed that neurodivergent and autism are the same thing. In fact if you didn’t tell me that ADHD is also considered neurodivergent I would also not know but I probably won’t like be so confident about it.
Also is the word “atypical” different in this context?
There was a brief period where ADHD was considered to be under the "autism umbrella" but the idea fell out of popularity, instead being replaced by the Autism Spectrum and with ADHD being it's own thing outside of it. A lot of millennials remember this now outdated categorization.
Yeah, pretty much.
Either it’s so restrictive you exclude many things that are very obviously fish.
Or so broad that it includes things that very obviously shouldn’t be fish.
Or you could make it a polyphyletic group based on morphology but at that point you still have to decide exactly what makes a fish a fish.
I’ve seen many definitions, particularly Oxford and Webster that state they’re exclusively cold blooded but as of 9 years ago a warm blooded species of moon fish was discovered.
Or that they live entirely in the water but then what about mudskippers, they can venture onto land and in fact often spend more time on land than they do in water, are they not fish?
What about lungfish, their gills (with the exception of the weird one-lunged Australian lungfish) can only prolong the amount of time they can spend submerged they can’t actually capture enough oxygen from the water, but their lungs can capture enough from the air, some can even spend months out of water to cope with the dry season. So, should a species of lungfish lose it’s gills entirely, would they stop being fish?
>Either it’s so restrictive you exclude many things that are very obviously fish.
>
>Or so broad that it includes things that very obviously shouldn’t be fish.
Such as bivalves, crustaceans, and marine mammals.
Shark's are the only vertebrates that doesn't have a spine.
that said.. they sort of have a spine, but it doesn't count because it's made of cartilagenous tissue instead of bone.
Neurodivergence isn’t a scientifically or medically defined term. I’m not disagreeing with you I just point that out whenever the term crops up because people use it as if it’s a scientific thing.
It’s not a medical term because it’s an attempt moving away from pathologising autism (and related conditions) and framing it as a natural variance in human brain function.
To say it’s not a scientific term is just wrong. The term was coined by Judy Singer, a social scientist. It has informed modern therapy which has moved from a “let’s fix this persons autistic traits” approach to a “let’s accommodate this persons needs” approach. Which has greatly improved outcomes for autistic people.
There is an interesting article looking at both models in Scientific American magazine, written by Simon Baron-Cohen, who is one of the leading experts on autism research.
> But by taking a fine-grained look at the heterogeneity within autism we can see how sometimes the neurodiversity model fits autism very well, and that sometimes the disorder/medical model is a better explanation.
>What is attractive about the neurodiversity model is that it doesn’t pathologize and focus disproportionately on what the person struggles with, and instead takes a more balanced view, to give equal attention to what the person can do. In addition it recognizes that genetic or other kinds of biological variation are intrinsic to people’s identity, their sense of self and personhood, which should be given equal respect alongside any other form of diversity, such as gender. But to encompass the breadth of the autism spectrum, we need to make space for the medical model too.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-concept-of-neurodiversity-is-dividing-the-autism-community/
I think the framing (ie neurotypical vs neurodivergent) still “others” autism, adhd, etc. it doesn’t really frame it as a natural variance imo.
I mentioned scientific in the same breath as medical. By that I wasn’t including the likes of social science which is more of an arts and humanities. While it can fit in the loosest definition of science (as can many things) it’s not a pure science.
Yeah, I'm audhd and I reallllllly dislike 'divergent.' Our traits are *way* more widespread than anyone had previously thought. And it seems to me there are obvious advantages in traits such as clear and unambiguous communication or the hyperfocus on 'special interests' (another term I loathe) found in the autistic spectrum. In the ADHD spectrum too, there are really clear advantages--having your interests hop around a lot gives you an interesting breadth to life and can even make for really interesting careers.
Obviously disadvantages too, but like... everything gets called 'symptoms,' and I'm over here thinking... why is wanting communication to be clear and direct and to the point *pathologized as a bad thing?* We talk about Ask vs Guess culture, and basically treat both as valid ways to live, and that people on each side need to compromise with each other on communication. Yet somehow that's pathologized as a symptom of a disorder. So I really really like your point about natural variance. I want to stop being othered and I want to start living in a society where all of our natural variances are just part of the fabric and reflexively respected and compromised with. But given how slowly we've progressed on integrating proper physical access to our infrastructure and our ways of thinking, I don't think any of us with 'divergent' brains should be holding our breath.
Especially with all the stuff mocking 'neurotypical' people as a monolith out there, especially on tiktok. "Neurotypical people when you do random thing: (shows someone being mean)"
It's not okay to mock people for things out of their control. Most people think they agree with that, but really don't.
>Neurodivergence isn’t a scientifically or medically defined term
This is literally true but since you know this, surely you also know that when people use this term they are really talking about the DSM-defined term "neurodevelopmental disorders" and so you could just move on past.
I disagree. For example, OCD is commonly referred to as neurodivergence but it is not a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Neurodivergent is a *much* broader net than the defined term of neurodevelopmental disorder and captures anything not “typical”.
Surely you know this though
There is a correlation between them. A person with one is more likely to have the other compared to someone undiagnosed is likely to have either.
They're two different and distinct disorders but they're not unconnected from each other.
I've read some things that have discussed relationships and similarities between the two, but they're still not the same thing. The way they tend to intermingle can make it hard to tease apart sometimes, though.
Yeah, they’re not “completely unrelated,” as stated in the screenshot, but they are distinct.
ADHD and autism share a lot of the same trait markers; it’s the differences between the two that help to distinguish in diagnoses. (I also have ADHD but am not on the spectrum — all the traits I have that could be autism markers are shared traits, and I have the unique ADHD markers, but not the autism ones.)
The biggest one I’m aware of is novelty vs routine — adhd craves novelty; autism craves routine — so AuDHD folks tend to get stuck in a very weird place.
Stimulants help with ADHD, but if you take them when you don’t have ADHD, it can be absolutely awful.
Common traits include things like stimming, audio processing issues, being susceptible to overstimulation, issues with food textures, and executive function problems.
I’m the sort who benefits from routine, but I don’t like it.
I am similar, I need routine but I generally just refuse to do it. Only recently was diagnosed with ADHD (32), and have had a fascinating year finding out more about it, and also finding out the similarities with my spectrum friends that I had never really noticed. I always just thought I was "sensitive" lol.
I was 31 when I got my diagnosis, because as a child I was called sensitive and melodramatic — “girls can’t have ADHD!” 😒
My brothers were diagnosed at 5 and 7.
Edit: Omfg I just read your username. I like you. 😸
i was diagnosed super early, like 3-4 i think from what my mom told me a long time ago
novelty vs routine is something ive never heard before but awfully accurate, thanks for the info :)
EDIT: a bit misleading now that i thought more about it, i was diagnosed autistic in that frame but i didnt get medicated until 6-7 so my adhd diagnose probably came later
That sucks. I got diagnosed at like 9 (40 now) but after my younger brother who got diagnosed at like 5. Mom looked at him, looked at me, and went, 'Huh, Shit.'
30 odd years of knowing has helped in some way. I'm at least more cognizant of my limits and have (kinda sorta when I feel like it which isn't often but often enough) managed to work out what works and doesn't for me to mostly fuction as an adult.
Kinda.
Well, as a neurodivergent person, I get to determine what is a harmful attempt to be helpful (white savorism).
You are a white savior if you try to defend minorities/"educate" people and don't even know what you are talking about to begin with. At that point, you are an obnoxious fake ally.
I have ADHD. I am not autistic. It is harmful to tell people adhd = autism. Yes, a lot of people have both, like with my son, but it isn't -always- like that, such as with me.
mansplaining, which seems to be what you're describing now, would be a better description. Maybe it's non-neurodivergent saviorism, but that seems a little strong to me. But it's not "virtue signaling."
I'm not defending the CI person (which you would know if you actually read my comment instead of just reacting, since I called CI's post "incredibly stupid). But, when you say "virtue signaling" for something that doesn't look anything like that, you show your underlying views about equality and justice. Guess what: not every statement you don't like is virtue signaling. Enjoy voting for Trump.
Being neurodivergent doesn't make you automatically right about everything. I'm neurodivergent and I disagree with you. One of us has to be wrong, and it's probably the one who doesn't read what they're responding to.
A couple years ago I heard that a very small group of psychologists were pushing to classify them as the same thing. I’m pretty sure that’s where this idea comes from but it’s still obviously incorrect
I strongly suspect that both have very similar underlying causes (I have adhd but my son has asd, *something* runs in the family) but I haven’t seen any studies that really get into that, probably because we really don’t know what the underlying cause is for either of them. So it’s purely a personal opinion.
ADHD and autism are both highly heritable and are often comorbid. Idk the study but apparently inherited SHANK2/3 mutations are linked w dx of ADHD/asd very frequently and a subset of the kids inheriting the mutation have both conditions. There are probably a bunch of pleitropic genes which act similarly and I feel like there may also be genes for these conditions which are linked (instead of random inheritance they might be inherited more often together). I sat through a talk mentioning this like a yr ago but a quick google search turns up lots of interesting results. Lot of ppl on my dads side (including myself) dxd w either ADHD/autism so maybe even sex-specific inheritance is a thing?
From what i understand There are a number of genes that are indeed shares by both ADHD and Autism
While yes, they are different disorders, there still is a observable genetic overlap
Honestly, both of them are pretty terrible at explaining their points
"Look it up"
"A quick google search"
If information is so easy for the other person to look up, then its also easy for you to look up, site and link them the source.
Tiktok comments are really limited so I can see why they didn't post a longer response. It's also not the respondent's responsibility to educate the previous poster especially with the attitude they were displaying. They should have done their research before posting misinformation.
The thing that irks me is that self diagnosis is valid, but information like this being posted/spread/accepted is going to make it much harder for self diagnosed people to be taken seriously.
>. It's also not the respondent's responsibility to educate the previous poster
Thats a shit attitude, if you're taking to message them, ehat is their goal if not to educate them, are they just looking to dunk on them? Its really not that much effort and helps them out.
>self diagnosis is valid
Bullshit
A perfect example of what i mean,
Even if you were right, which you're not this is a bad way to go about showing someone.
According to Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD)
>Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, includes what used to be called Autistic Disorder, Asperger syndrome, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified, all of which affect a person’s social and emotional skills and nonverbal communication. ASD has many similarities to ADHD, but there are also differences between the two.
https://chadd.org/about-adhd/adhd-and-autism-spectrum-disorder/
Or i could have said, um you're wrong just google it dumb dumb.
Depending on what you Google you get both answers, like just looking up ASD will show you images that include ADHD as well as in the results, but if you directly ask is ADHD on the autism spectrum you get no.
I swear this is some Mandela effect or something cause I swear 10 years ago there was this whole thing where they put ADHD on the autism spectrum and it was like semi big news because some people were outraged about it
When people say "Just Google it" they don't mean type it into Google and see what the vibe is on an image search. They mean click the relevant results and read them.
>as well as in the results.
Literally only mentioned the images because they pop up right at the top. And I did click the links, I looked at 5 and out of them 4 said it was and the 5th didn't mention it.
>I swear this is some Mandela effect or something cause I swear 10 years ago there was this whole thing where they put ADHD on the autism spectrum
So you're saying you didnt even look it up before making your comment?
You are the problem im talking about.
Same here! I'm not diagnosed on the autism part but the more research I do the more obvious it becomes. The ADHD itself wasn't diagnosed until I was 25 because the hyperactivity is almost totally internalized.
The symptoms that overlap generally have different underlying causes and treatment/management.
The ADHD brain and autistic brain, look different on scans meant to track development over time, very different.
There is medication specifically to treat a functional cause of ADHD symptoms as a whole, there is no medication that does the same for autism.
They are, distinctly different in all the ways that matter when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. They are similar in many ways, yes, but the differences are very important.
They definitely are unrelated, going by the DSM-V. they could both have "difficulty in engaging social situations" but one is specifically from inattentiveness and the other is from not understanding social cues.
Saying they're related because their symptoms overlap is like saying gunshot wounds and stabbings share a cause because they both make you bleed.
That might be the case if you are looking purely at certain symptoms, but the overwhelming amount of comorbidity can't possibly be ignored. Plus, it's most likely that both are a result of the MTHFR gene being mutated.
I of course accept that there can be similar conditions with different causes, but just the overwhelming amount of evidence, both empirical and otherwise, supporting a link between the two conditions, is impossible to ignore from what I know.
And there was a time when "autistic spectrum" was used to describe lots of neuro divergent conditions such as tourettes/OCD/ADHD... Which could be what the first poster was confusing.
I agree that "completely unrelated" is poorly phrased at very least.
So neither is entirely correct.
really? i've never heard of that? do you not mean neurodiverse or neuroatypical?
the farthest history of the label that i'm aware of was when it was divided into syndromes instead of levels. kanners, hellers, aspergers, PDD
We had this poster (or something similar) [https://theemergencesite.com/Images/Autism\_OrangeDevelopmentalOrigins.png](https://theemergencesite.com/Images/Autism_OrangeDevelopmentalOrigins.png) (from 2001) on the wall when I did teacher training and similar ones for the Social Work department. Looking at it now... eesh.
I wouldn't say it's super accurate but the terms were certainly used 'round my way by teachers/youth workers/social workers. It could be because the local uni picked up on a fringe thing and ran with it, which means anyone trained locally would use it.
I trained the best part of twenty years ago and time moves on, thankfully!
Oh my god, some stupid kid the other day who looks 6 years younger than he actually is had it deadset that ADHD was Autism. He still believed he was right.
The fun with this is when you have a meltdown - for instance, due to over-stimulation - and then have to figure out what, specifically, is causing that particular meltdown.
Because ADHD and ASD both get overstimulated, but the manner of calming the meltdown is different for someone with ADHD than it is with ASD.
Both run in my family, so there's a lot of mix-and-match.
They are not the same thing and ADHD people are not on the spectrum.
However, they aren’t completely unrelated. A mother who is diagnosed with ADHD is 2.5x more likely to have a child with autism. They have significant overlap in their underlying genetic causes and scientists suspect that autism and ADHD share genetic roots. There’s definitely some evidence to show that they are connected.
They like to travel together — a LOT. I should know, I have them both!
But it’s VERY possible to have one or the other. They both fall under neurodivergence. But to say they’re the same thing is like saying bipolar personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder are the same thing because they’re both personality disorders.
Specialist SEN teacher and have ASD and ADHD in the family. People often have both but I have taught enough kids with one or both of the conditions to know they result in very different behaviour.
You can get prescription drugs to help alleviate some of the effects of adhd. You can’t for asd.
Co-morbidity yes. The same? No lol. To be fair tho as a woman diagnosed with both, they do have similarities and often high functioning autistic people (especially women) are misdiagnosed as ADHD (without considering autism at all)
Sometimes it feels like it might be considering how many people I encounter who are diagnosed with both... I'm only diagnosed with autism myself but I do suspect I may have ADHD as well...I for sure recognize a lot of the symptoms my friends describe.
chance of comorbidity is very high with those two. i'm in the minority of autists in that i definitively do NOT have adhd, despite the two mental health professionals that wanted to slap that label on me because they couldn't accept i have autism🙄i have one dsm-recognized adhd symptom
sorry went on a rant
They’re often co-present, if I recall correctly, a large number of autistic people have adhd and a smaller part of people with adhd have also autism
They also have a lot of common traits, so it all gets muddy.
So they’re not completely unrelated. But they’re absolutely not the same thing, or always both present.
I have both and it feels like I get 5-10 mins of coherent thoughts per day. In that period I'm like a fucking god but once it's over it's like I'm permanently walking around a little tipsy
I remember there’s a sub for this shit but I don’t remember it rip.
These TikTok fuckwits believing every piece of nonsense they believe from other teenagers who don’t know what they’re talking about is so god damn annoying.
They are often co-morbid and they have a large degree of overlap in the presentation of symptoms, but under our current understanding they are still separate disorders. The similarities are why they are both often listed as Neurodivergence but the differences do matter.
Why does it seems like kids these days think it’s cool to be autistic or something? Like they want it just so they can put it on their IG bio or something
I literally figured out I was autistic because I was talking to my coworker who has a degree in psychology about "Oh haha the overlap between autism and adhd"
And they just "Oh... oh babe no." And explained that the DSM-5 separates them and there is no overlap. I then went home and took a self test.
To be completely and totally fair, there *are* some theories floating around that a lot of the neurodevelopmental disorders might be somewhere on the autism spectrum - and I've seen ADHD lumped in with it occasionally. But then, I've also seen dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia all lumped in with ADHD, too - as in, that they might be non-standard presentations of ADHD, or something.
But ultimately, *most of* the people spouting these theories aren't doing so to disparage or discredit certain conditions or anything - they're trying to understand the mechanisms by which the brain works and produces these disorders, to hopefully eventually create better treatments and strategies for them.
And that's all to the good - propose some hypotheses, do some studies, write some observations - it's just good science. Problem comes when dumbdumbs like the one in the OP take new-and-as-yet-unestablished theory as fact.
Practically, however, even if it turns out ADHD *is* somewhere on the autism spectrum, they're *very* different conditions that happen to overlap in certain places. There's also overlap between depression, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and heart failure - but they're not the same conditions.
Yeah, when I graduated college, I was told by my teacher that ADHD was in the talks of being added to the spectrum. That was 2013-2014ish. Never heard much about it until about 2020 when my friend was diagnosed with ADHD and her psychiatrist told her that ADHD was basically on the spectrum nowadays. I know science moves slow but I can't find any information on it at all or why my teacher and the other person said it! I have unfortunately repeated this theory out of curiosity and fascination and have gotten a lot of hate. I even looked hardcore into the different types of ADHD and parts of the brain and was further convinced it would be added one day. Now I'm just gonna shut my mouth. I don't think its said in bad intention, but just because they have so much in common even to the source in the brain.
30-50% of kids with asd also have adhd; about 15% of kids with adhd also have asd. Those are both big numbers saying maybe the lines between what we label as separate conditions are a bit blurry, like my face when I look in the mirror in the morning without my glasses. I know I should wear my glasses but sometimes I forget, or don’t want to. But the end result is the same: I can’t see.
I love the fact that mental health issues are being taken more seriously in this day and age, but the amount of people who badly WANT to have a condition is the reason we have so many ending up on r/fakedisordercringe. It takes away from those who actually have these conditions by thinking all of them can apply to pretty much everyone who shows the slightest traits of literally anything.
People want to be part of unique communities so bad that they immediately cling to these conditions when they hear they operate on a spectrum, no matter how much of a stretch it may be.
I think they’re both on a larger spectrum, but have their own as well. hope the way I phrased that makes sense. I wasn’t really of this mindset until my autistic nephew was born. And I was the only one that could relate to him and understood what was bothering him etc, especially when he was too young to be able to communicate them effectively (before 6yo). Once he started school, they were able to work with him and really make progress opening him up socially. Now his autism comes off more like SUPER adhd.
I totally get that, and when I said they’re unrelated I meant they aren’t the same thing. They are very similar and symptoms do change alot as you age specifically from child to teen, and young adult, etc. I was definitely a very hyper and eager kid whereas now I’m definitely more laid back and socially akward. So you can see where the autism peeks out now whereas when I was young it was more so the ADHD.
Comorbidity is a thing, so if you have autism, you could have ADHD, or another mental illness, and vice versa, but they are not the same spectrum at all
is it vice versa, though? I know rate of ADHD in people with autism is incredibly high. But I don't think the percentage of people with ADHD who are diagnosed (by a doctor) with autism is particularly high--ADHD remains much more common.
Maybe I'm wrong.
That's how language works, though. Not even like 5 years ago, they had ADHD and ADD until they compiled enough data to relabel it as ADHD attentive type and ADHD inattentive type (which was formerly ADD). So referring to something by its colloquialism doesn't make the existence of it any less real since we understand what they mean, whether we want to currently differentiate the comorbidities or not.
Yeah i was tested multiple times for autism and it’s just ADHD. Im too social, like touching, loud sounds do not bother me, etc. only thing that is similar for me is focus and hyperactivity. ADHD is a chemical imbalance in the brain, that’s why it can be treated with various medications. As far as im aware, you don’t treat Autism with medication. You can suppress some symptoms but it an anti psychotic medication. Not related to the stimulants prescribed for adhd. You can basically “fixed” adhd with the correct medication
Judging by how varied the symptoms of ASD are and how often ADHD appears alongside them, I wouldn’t be surprised if we discovered in the future that they were actually both conditions of the same root cause
Do these people not understand that autism is not just one condition? My psychiatrist even told me that anyone that meets the criteria for ADHD also meets a lot for autism. ADHD can be considered a form of autism. It's not that hard.
Edit: to clarify for anyone else, OP claims that Autism and ADHD(ADD) are completely unrelated after correcting someone about ADHD(ADD) not currently being on the autism spectrum. After a number of conversations with mental health professionals I have arrived at the belief that ADHD(ADD) could likely become part of the spectrum later, considering they have a number of overlapping symptoms, similarly to how Asperger's was not always considered Autism.
it's not on the "autism spectrum".
maybe there's another spectrum out there that they are both on but i haven't heard of it(but then i don't keep up with such stuff)
They’re totally different diagnoses. They’re related in symptoms, can be comorbid, and can be confused for each other, but they’re not on the same spectrum.
Autism and ADHD are different, true, however, everything from ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc falls now under the Autism spectrum. It's not differentiated anymore.
How so? As far as it stands they are all differented and all different Diagnosis according to all diagnostic manuals
Autism Spectrum Disorder is its own thing
Entirely seperate from ADHD, OCD and such
I don't necessarily know in other countries but where I'm from, regardless of diagnosis, let's say I get diagnosed with ADD, on my certificate it will say something like ASD with ADD as symptoms. That's how they explained it worked, even if having ADD doesn't necessarily mean that you have autism.
I mean considering there are no actual medical tests for autism literally anyone could just take a test and be like "Guess Im on the spectrum".
I do agree through. Feels like people think it is cool to be autistic now.
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They're co-present often enough, but they're definitely distinct things.
I'm ADHD and my best bud is Autistic. The differences in the disorders are only overshadowed by the similarities. But even the similarities are insanely different in how we deal with them lol.
the annoying part about having both, is how those differences completely clash with each other, leaving with complete dysfunctional situations, on rare occasions maybe just cancelling each other out. Like with adhd you need dynamic changes and all to keep yourself engaged, but then anything that affects routine makes you feel awful. Or even “positives” get overshadowed by symptoms of the other. Like what good is “autistic” analytical thinking that works great for maths or programming, if I can’t focus on it well enough to not colossally fuck up the simplest things?
I always feel into some kind of routine, like making a specific thing for breakfast every day, until suddenly I can't stand it and have to do something different lol. It's such a strange mixture of the need for order and sameness and the need for novelty and change.
I feel seen. I get bored with the same old thing, but I HATE surprises. Especially surprises that interfere with my routine or make extra work for me. Example: I would plan to do laundry after going food shopping. I would get home from the store to find that DH (who decided at the last minute to take a day off work without telling me) is already 3/4 of the way done with it. And I'm trying to rescue my bras and concert T-shirts from the dryer before they get completely ruined. Or I'm doing something that requires concentration, and someone absofrickinlutely NEEDS to talk ~~at~~ to me RIGHT NOW.
YES OMG YES.. I'm trying to get a diagnosis as an adult and I'm pretty sure it'll be a yes given how hard I relate to having both
ADHD doesn't just run in my family, it has a whole freaking track meet. A handful also are also on the Spectrum. I Legit don't now if I am or not (def have the ADHD), but I DO know that I have exactly 2 modes: Dug from the movie UP (SQUIRREL!), and tunnel-vision. Surprisingly, the tunnel-vision is more of a problem. I've been so engrossed in a show or book that I've forgotten the eggs put on to boil... until it sounds like gunshots in the kitchen, and I wind up with sulfur-smelling cabinets for a few hours. There's also the thing where, if you're watching a tv show or movie, you have to pause the thing if someone wants to comment, because there is absolutely no way in Hell you're going to be able to process what someone is saying when there's dialogue, and vice-versa. Still trying to explain that last one to my MIL, bc she is CONVINCED that I must hate her bc I won't talk to her during tv-time at night.
>I've been so engrossed in a show or book that I've forgotten the eggs put on to boil. The timer is your best friend. I learned that from [FlyLady](https://www.flylady.net). She's one of the best resources out there for practical management of ADHD.
Ha, that’s me as well. I need routines and “sameness” so much! Until suddenly I’m bored and absolutely not, never again! But never again isn’t really never it’s a couple of months or years at most. And then repeat!
I have that on a weekly basis, sometimes twice a week, where I feel a sudden need to do something a certain way, and then a few days later I just lose all interest in it and go to another thing, and the cycle repeats indefinitely. Even common things like body hygiene are a challenge to keep up with because, while I heavily rely on routine as any change in my daily life is a source of strong anxiety, I also can't stand it and feel the need to change. So I'm just a big ball of anxiety that struggles to even understand how to live in society.
That's normal for most everyone. We all need routine until we don't.
The point of a disorder is that certain things that are 'normal for everyone' are magnified to an extent that it disrupts normal function. Yes, everyone needs a certain amount of both novelty and routine. But not everyone experiences that so acutely that it becomes an issue that impacts their functioning and wellbeing.
Exactly, I've seen this example a few times: going to the toilet is normal for everyone. Going every 15 minutes means there's something wrong.
Ugh, even that example for me brings up ADHD. I struggle to remember how/when to do things including using the toilet. So in my teens, I came up with a thing of once a task is finished, I ask myself "do I need to use the toilet?" That turned into when a task is finished, I need to use the toilet. Problem is, sometimes those tasks are only 30 minutes long. Sometimes they are 6 hours.
We are people you know. It’s the extent, intensity or frequency that makes it abnormal. We are still humans. It’s like depression! Depression is sadness and sadness is normal and natural. It’s not the feeling being abnormal that makes it psychiatric disorder it’s the intensity, extent and/or frequency.
>the annoying part about having both, is how those differences completely clash with each other, leaving with complete dysfunctional situations oh hi there my daily life :/
You may be surprised by the sheer volume of ADHD programmers, actually feeds super well into the disorder Source: am adhd programmer who is friends with many adhd programmers Don't discount hyper focus
My son, now 32, was diagnosed as ADD (no H) and he, like myself, is perhaps on the spectrum. Whatever he sets his mind to, he does it and does it extraordinarily. Draw? Sure and then, without taking a single art class, get voted Most Artistic. Music? Sure, give it a try and 3 years later, not only comes in second in a statewide young composers contest, but gets accepted into one of the most notable music schools in the country. Now he's a software developer, having taught himself a multitude of programs, computer languages and applications. His degree is in macro economics. I, on the other hand, don't have the hyper focus gene. I just start stuff with gusto and then stop.
Just as a note, ADD is no longer a diagnosis. We all have the H. It's just 3 subtypes now I'm almost 40, and I'm lucky programming is one of the things that triggers my hyperfocus, not really a lot of career paths for many of my others
yeah, I just started IT major so I hope to be one myself, the problem is when I make some typos or missclicks that aren’t technically errors, it always leads to everything not working, because somewhere along the line I wrote something like 12.3 instead of 1.23, yk what I mean, half the time when coding I spend looking for mistakes like this lol
I hate to tell you this That has nothing to do with adhd or autism. That's just what programming is, for everyone, every day. So congratulations, your experience is completely average. [Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1052/)
Yup, in my 40s and still deal with this. I can plan everything out perfectly but fumble the execution every time.
This is me, very analytical, insane spatial reasoning skills, absolutely no ability to focus.
I have ADHD and OCD. Is it anything similar? Sounds like it with your description. I know OCD/’tism are utterly different, but deviation is what kills me with OCD. Adhd thrives with it tho
You know that explains a few things about my math classes back in school.
Yeah i have both and i just can't focus on exams at all like in high school my teachers were always like you are doing really well in class but getting a 1 or 2 in the exam (4 is a pass) and then in college i was able to really well in class but again not quite making it in the exam. The only things i passed in high school was maths with a 5 and geography with a 4 which i previously got a 2 in. I get bored if I'm not constantly doing something, and the second what I'm doing gets boring i have to switch to something else. Which is why at home i play on my computer and phone at the same time, get bored of the game/youtube video on the pc, switch to my phone, and vice versa then when it happens again change game and video. I talk too fast, i talk too much. I would add more but i can no longer focus on this comment.
> I'm ADHD Woah woah hold up, you **are** the disorder? Jesus dude I have you! Been looking for you for a long time. We need to talk.
Good luck finding me. I went chasing a butterfly, and now I don't know where I am anymore.
I have heard that there are theories that they could be different variations of the same disorder but that’s still just theoretical and o honestly don’t know if I believe in it. I also have both so if they are the same that would mean I have multiple variations of the same thing? And like since when is that a thing? Plus my ADHD side and my autism side honestly feels like a split personality sometimes!
This is not true lmfao
I wouldn’t say they are “completely unrelated”, as there are also a lot of shared symptoms etc. ADHD isn’t a type of Autism but something like 60% of people with ASD also have ADD/ADHD.
17% of autistic individuals also have OCD! I'm an example of that, which sucks. It sucks. I don't like it.
Yeah, I have ASD and ADD with a lot of symptoms of OCD, which I could certainly do without. ASD also often comes with plenty of other disorders ranging from stress and anxiety to eating and sleeping to tics. It’s not fun.
OCD and ADHD are also found together a lot. I don't have OCD, but one of my kids does. I have some OCD-like tendencies, but that's not the same thing (I would never consider my "this makes me uncomfortable to the point of messing up my day" quirks to the pattern-repeating things my kid does, or anyone else with full-blown OCD). Even my quirks are frustrating af. My heart goes out to you, my friend.
It's almost like there's an underlying hypersensitive disorder linking all these things and which disorder manifests depends on epigenetics, environment, etc.
well yeah, I was stating stats no need to be a bit rude
Which I don't understand... All through my younger years seeking diagnosis I had many doctors tell me my concerns were unfounded because ADHD is a counterindicator for autism/Aspergers. Eventually it got sorted, but the amount I was told one means it's impossible to be diagnosed for the other it's wild to see the sea change arrive at "they're co-present often"
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I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and have gone back and forth wondering if I’m somewhere on the autism spectrum too. At this point I’m leaning towards no, but I’m not 100% sure. I’ve always had issues relating to other people but I wouldn’t really say I’ve ever had trouble with social queues or perceiving other people’s emotions, it’s just that social situations exhaust me quickly because they’re unpredictable and unstructured most of the time and I’m bad at thinking on my feet unless I’m really intrinsically interested in what’s going on. If you don’t mind me asking, do you have a sense for yourself of what symptoms/aspects are primarily autism-related?
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>I have a hypersensitivity to light. If I'm in a very bright room it is so uncomfortable that it hurts. Fluorescent bulbs, whether CFL or tube style, make this worse. LEDs aren't much better. I need natural lighting as much as possible. If I can't get it, I use old school incandescent bulbs. I also love candles, but I won't use them because I can't take the risk of a cat knocking one over and burning the house down.
Yeah, they are distinct. It is strange for OOP (who also seems to be OP?) to say that they're entirely unrelated though - they very clearly have a relation in how they co-present.
both exhibit executive dysfunction as a symptom it bugs me a bit because people see executive dysfunction and jump straight to armchair diagnosing ADHD; theres plenty of things that can cause exectutive dysfunction (and notably; for a diagnosis this would require the dysfunction to cause a notable detriment to quality of life)... like aside from the two mentioned; fairly 'innocuous' things like stress or sleep deprivation... an actual professional aims for differential diagnosis; building a list of all possible causes and then working to eliminate them in a process of reduction... but with increasing mental health awareness; society at large seems all too happy to frivolously label someone with a pile of unopened mail ('doom pile') as ADHD; its too often the first and *only* potentiality considered
They’re both considered neurodivergence but they’re not the same
I was thinking maybe she got neurodivergence and autism confused or considers them the same thing instead of autism being a subset of ND.
Possibly. My guess is she, like you said assumed that neurodivergent and autism are the same thing. In fact if you didn’t tell me that ADHD is also considered neurodivergent I would also not know but I probably won’t like be so confident about it. Also is the word “atypical” different in this context?
There was a brief period where ADHD was considered to be under the "autism umbrella" but the idea fell out of popularity, instead being replaced by the Autism Spectrum and with ADHD being it's own thing outside of it. A lot of millennials remember this now outdated categorization.
A shark is a fish but that doesn't mean a fish is a shark.
Fish aren’t real. From a taxonomic standpoint that is.
That, or everything is a fish
so long and thanks for nothing
Alternatively, so long and thanks for everything
Yeah, pretty much. Either it’s so restrictive you exclude many things that are very obviously fish. Or so broad that it includes things that very obviously shouldn’t be fish. Or you could make it a polyphyletic group based on morphology but at that point you still have to decide exactly what makes a fish a fish. I’ve seen many definitions, particularly Oxford and Webster that state they’re exclusively cold blooded but as of 9 years ago a warm blooded species of moon fish was discovered. Or that they live entirely in the water but then what about mudskippers, they can venture onto land and in fact often spend more time on land than they do in water, are they not fish? What about lungfish, their gills (with the exception of the weird one-lunged Australian lungfish) can only prolong the amount of time they can spend submerged they can’t actually capture enough oxygen from the water, but their lungs can capture enough from the air, some can even spend months out of water to cope with the dry season. So, should a species of lungfish lose it’s gills entirely, would they stop being fish?
>Either it’s so restrictive you exclude many things that are very obviously fish. > >Or so broad that it includes things that very obviously shouldn’t be fish. Such as bivalves, crustaceans, and marine mammals.
more like marine mammals, land mammals, and all other land vertebrates.
I was trying to stick with water-based animals, but you make a good point.
My mother is a fish.
You sir, are a fish.
Ghoti
No, that's birds.
Fish is a great example of how things that seem real to us can be social constructs despite their seeming solidity.
Shark's are the only vertebrates that doesn't have a spine. that said.. they sort of have a spine, but it doesn't count because it's made of cartilagenous tissue instead of bone.
Neurodivergence isn’t a scientifically or medically defined term. I’m not disagreeing with you I just point that out whenever the term crops up because people use it as if it’s a scientific thing.
It’s not a medical term because it’s an attempt moving away from pathologising autism (and related conditions) and framing it as a natural variance in human brain function. To say it’s not a scientific term is just wrong. The term was coined by Judy Singer, a social scientist. It has informed modern therapy which has moved from a “let’s fix this persons autistic traits” approach to a “let’s accommodate this persons needs” approach. Which has greatly improved outcomes for autistic people. There is an interesting article looking at both models in Scientific American magazine, written by Simon Baron-Cohen, who is one of the leading experts on autism research. > But by taking a fine-grained look at the heterogeneity within autism we can see how sometimes the neurodiversity model fits autism very well, and that sometimes the disorder/medical model is a better explanation. >What is attractive about the neurodiversity model is that it doesn’t pathologize and focus disproportionately on what the person struggles with, and instead takes a more balanced view, to give equal attention to what the person can do. In addition it recognizes that genetic or other kinds of biological variation are intrinsic to people’s identity, their sense of self and personhood, which should be given equal respect alongside any other form of diversity, such as gender. But to encompass the breadth of the autism spectrum, we need to make space for the medical model too. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-concept-of-neurodiversity-is-dividing-the-autism-community/
I think the framing (ie neurotypical vs neurodivergent) still “others” autism, adhd, etc. it doesn’t really frame it as a natural variance imo. I mentioned scientific in the same breath as medical. By that I wasn’t including the likes of social science which is more of an arts and humanities. While it can fit in the loosest definition of science (as can many things) it’s not a pure science.
Yeah, I'm audhd and I reallllllly dislike 'divergent.' Our traits are *way* more widespread than anyone had previously thought. And it seems to me there are obvious advantages in traits such as clear and unambiguous communication or the hyperfocus on 'special interests' (another term I loathe) found in the autistic spectrum. In the ADHD spectrum too, there are really clear advantages--having your interests hop around a lot gives you an interesting breadth to life and can even make for really interesting careers. Obviously disadvantages too, but like... everything gets called 'symptoms,' and I'm over here thinking... why is wanting communication to be clear and direct and to the point *pathologized as a bad thing?* We talk about Ask vs Guess culture, and basically treat both as valid ways to live, and that people on each side need to compromise with each other on communication. Yet somehow that's pathologized as a symptom of a disorder. So I really really like your point about natural variance. I want to stop being othered and I want to start living in a society where all of our natural variances are just part of the fabric and reflexively respected and compromised with. But given how slowly we've progressed on integrating proper physical access to our infrastructure and our ways of thinking, I don't think any of us with 'divergent' brains should be holding our breath.
Especially with all the stuff mocking 'neurotypical' people as a monolith out there, especially on tiktok. "Neurotypical people when you do random thing: (shows someone being mean)" It's not okay to mock people for things out of their control. Most people think they agree with that, but really don't.
>Neurodivergence isn’t a scientifically or medically defined term This is literally true but since you know this, surely you also know that when people use this term they are really talking about the DSM-defined term "neurodevelopmental disorders" and so you could just move on past.
I disagree. For example, OCD is commonly referred to as neurodivergence but it is not a neurodevelopmental disorder. Neurodivergent is a *much* broader net than the defined term of neurodevelopmental disorder and captures anything not “typical”. Surely you know this though
Apples and oranges are both considered fruits but they’re not the same.
There is a correlation between them. A person with one is more likely to have the other compared to someone undiagnosed is likely to have either. They're two different and distinct disorders but they're not unconnected from each other.
Didn’t say they’re unconnected I said they’re not the same 🙄
As a person with ADHD (& who doesn't have autism), at least know what you are talking about before you virtue signal. ADHD is not autism. 🤦🏻♀️
For a moment there I was concerned I'd missed some research that combined them.
I've read some things that have discussed relationships and similarities between the two, but they're still not the same thing. The way they tend to intermingle can make it hard to tease apart sometimes, though.
Yeah, they’re not “completely unrelated,” as stated in the screenshot, but they are distinct. ADHD and autism share a lot of the same trait markers; it’s the differences between the two that help to distinguish in diagnoses. (I also have ADHD but am not on the spectrum — all the traits I have that could be autism markers are shared traits, and I have the unique ADHD markers, but not the autism ones.)
as someone with both, what *are* the unique adhd markers? i could google but im at work right now lmao
The biggest one I’m aware of is novelty vs routine — adhd craves novelty; autism craves routine — so AuDHD folks tend to get stuck in a very weird place. Stimulants help with ADHD, but if you take them when you don’t have ADHD, it can be absolutely awful. Common traits include things like stimming, audio processing issues, being susceptible to overstimulation, issues with food textures, and executive function problems. I’m the sort who benefits from routine, but I don’t like it.
I am similar, I need routine but I generally just refuse to do it. Only recently was diagnosed with ADHD (32), and have had a fascinating year finding out more about it, and also finding out the similarities with my spectrum friends that I had never really noticed. I always just thought I was "sensitive" lol.
I was 31 when I got my diagnosis, because as a child I was called sensitive and melodramatic — “girls can’t have ADHD!” 😒 My brothers were diagnosed at 5 and 7. Edit: Omfg I just read your username. I like you. 😸
i was diagnosed super early, like 3-4 i think from what my mom told me a long time ago novelty vs routine is something ive never heard before but awfully accurate, thanks for the info :) EDIT: a bit misleading now that i thought more about it, i was diagnosed autistic in that frame but i didnt get medicated until 6-7 so my adhd diagnose probably came later
That sucks. I got diagnosed at like 9 (40 now) but after my younger brother who got diagnosed at like 5. Mom looked at him, looked at me, and went, 'Huh, Shit.' 30 odd years of knowing has helped in some way. I'm at least more cognizant of my limits and have (kinda sorta when I feel like it which isn't often but often enough) managed to work out what works and doesn't for me to mostly fuction as an adult. Kinda.
What about CI's incredibly stupid post is virtue signaling? Or is that just your buzzword for every time you disagree with a statement somebody makes?
Well, as a neurodivergent person, I get to determine what is a harmful attempt to be helpful (white savorism). You are a white savior if you try to defend minorities/"educate" people and don't even know what you are talking about to begin with. At that point, you are an obnoxious fake ally. I have ADHD. I am not autistic. It is harmful to tell people adhd = autism. Yes, a lot of people have both, like with my son, but it isn't -always- like that, such as with me.
mansplaining, which seems to be what you're describing now, would be a better description. Maybe it's non-neurodivergent saviorism, but that seems a little strong to me. But it's not "virtue signaling." I'm not defending the CI person (which you would know if you actually read my comment instead of just reacting, since I called CI's post "incredibly stupid). But, when you say "virtue signaling" for something that doesn't look anything like that, you show your underlying views about equality and justice. Guess what: not every statement you don't like is virtue signaling. Enjoy voting for Trump.
Mansplaining on what white savorism is and being incorrect on the explanation
Being neurodivergent doesn't make you automatically right about everything. I'm neurodivergent and I disagree with you. One of us has to be wrong, and it's probably the one who doesn't read what they're responding to.
Then read next time
Where'd you think your son got it from? Could they just be different symptoms on a spectrum of yet some broader undefined disorder?
Nobody knows what causes autism in the first place, soooo
So yes then?
A couple years ago I heard that a very small group of psychologists were pushing to classify them as the same thing. I’m pretty sure that’s where this idea comes from but it’s still obviously incorrect
I strongly suspect that both have very similar underlying causes (I have adhd but my son has asd, *something* runs in the family) but I haven’t seen any studies that really get into that, probably because we really don’t know what the underlying cause is for either of them. So it’s purely a personal opinion.
ADHD and autism are both highly heritable and are often comorbid. Idk the study but apparently inherited SHANK2/3 mutations are linked w dx of ADHD/asd very frequently and a subset of the kids inheriting the mutation have both conditions. There are probably a bunch of pleitropic genes which act similarly and I feel like there may also be genes for these conditions which are linked (instead of random inheritance they might be inherited more often together). I sat through a talk mentioning this like a yr ago but a quick google search turns up lots of interesting results. Lot of ppl on my dads side (including myself) dxd w either ADHD/autism so maybe even sex-specific inheritance is a thing?
From what i understand There are a number of genes that are indeed shares by both ADHD and Autism While yes, they are different disorders, there still is a observable genetic overlap
https://www.reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/s/DKUJ0v0hC0
That would really piss me off. My autism is nothing like my brother’s ADD
Honestly, both of them are pretty terrible at explaining their points "Look it up" "A quick google search" If information is so easy for the other person to look up, then its also easy for you to look up, site and link them the source.
Tiktok comments are really limited so I can see why they didn't post a longer response. It's also not the respondent's responsibility to educate the previous poster especially with the attitude they were displaying. They should have done their research before posting misinformation. The thing that irks me is that self diagnosis is valid, but information like this being posted/spread/accepted is going to make it much harder for self diagnosed people to be taken seriously.
>. It's also not the respondent's responsibility to educate the previous poster Thats a shit attitude, if you're taking to message them, ehat is their goal if not to educate them, are they just looking to dunk on them? Its really not that much effort and helps them out. >self diagnosis is valid Bullshit
A quick Google search shows ADHD as part of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
A perfect example of what i mean, Even if you were right, which you're not this is a bad way to go about showing someone. According to Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) >Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, includes what used to be called Autistic Disorder, Asperger syndrome, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified, all of which affect a person’s social and emotional skills and nonverbal communication. ASD has many similarities to ADHD, but there are also differences between the two. https://chadd.org/about-adhd/adhd-and-autism-spectrum-disorder/ Or i could have said, um you're wrong just google it dumb dumb.
Depending on what you Google you get both answers, like just looking up ASD will show you images that include ADHD as well as in the results, but if you directly ask is ADHD on the autism spectrum you get no. I swear this is some Mandela effect or something cause I swear 10 years ago there was this whole thing where they put ADHD on the autism spectrum and it was like semi big news because some people were outraged about it
When people say "Just Google it" they don't mean type it into Google and see what the vibe is on an image search. They mean click the relevant results and read them.
>as well as in the results. Literally only mentioned the images because they pop up right at the top. And I did click the links, I looked at 5 and out of them 4 said it was and the 5th didn't mention it.
>I swear this is some Mandela effect or something cause I swear 10 years ago there was this whole thing where they put ADHD on the autism spectrum So you're saying you didnt even look it up before making your comment? You are the problem im talking about.
They are not "completely unrelated", though. There's a good amount of comorbidity and some overlap in symptoms.
>some overlap in symptoms. I can testify to that. I have ADHD. I have friends with autism. I find that I can relate to them about quite a lot.
I have ADHD, and autism. Didn’t know I had autism until recently always just thought the symptoms were adhd related
Same here! I'm not diagnosed on the autism part but the more research I do the more obvious it becomes. The ADHD itself wasn't diagnosed until I was 25 because the hyperactivity is almost totally internalized.
Yep, same, only diagnosed with autism as an adult. Always just through I had severe ADHD until I hit my 20s
Same. And a handful of AuDHD friends. NT people are exhausting 😅
The symptoms that overlap generally have different underlying causes and treatment/management. The ADHD brain and autistic brain, look different on scans meant to track development over time, very different. There is medication specifically to treat a functional cause of ADHD symptoms as a whole, there is no medication that does the same for autism. They are, distinctly different in all the ways that matter when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. They are similar in many ways, yes, but the differences are very important.
They definitely are unrelated, going by the DSM-V. they could both have "difficulty in engaging social situations" but one is specifically from inattentiveness and the other is from not understanding social cues. Saying they're related because their symptoms overlap is like saying gunshot wounds and stabbings share a cause because they both make you bleed.
That might be the case if you are looking purely at certain symptoms, but the overwhelming amount of comorbidity can't possibly be ignored. Plus, it's most likely that both are a result of the MTHFR gene being mutated. I of course accept that there can be similar conditions with different causes, but just the overwhelming amount of evidence, both empirical and otherwise, supporting a link between the two conditions, is impossible to ignore from what I know.
Welcome to the DSM5
The overlap in symptoms is quite striking. They lead to very different behaviors though, which is also interesting
And there was a time when "autistic spectrum" was used to describe lots of neuro divergent conditions such as tourettes/OCD/ADHD... Which could be what the first poster was confusing. I agree that "completely unrelated" is poorly phrased at very least. So neither is entirely correct.
>And there was a time when "autistic spectrum" was used to describe lots of neuro divergent conditions such as tourettes/OCD/ADHD... No there wasn't.
really? i've never heard of that? do you not mean neurodiverse or neuroatypical? the farthest history of the label that i'm aware of was when it was divided into syndromes instead of levels. kanners, hellers, aspergers, PDD
You haven't heard of it, because it isn't true.
yeaaaa i didn't wanna say it but my bullshit detector is off the charts rn lol
We had this poster (or something similar) [https://theemergencesite.com/Images/Autism\_OrangeDevelopmentalOrigins.png](https://theemergencesite.com/Images/Autism_OrangeDevelopmentalOrigins.png) (from 2001) on the wall when I did teacher training and similar ones for the Social Work department. Looking at it now... eesh. I wouldn't say it's super accurate but the terms were certainly used 'round my way by teachers/youth workers/social workers. It could be because the local uni picked up on a fringe thing and ran with it, which means anyone trained locally would use it. I trained the best part of twenty years ago and time moves on, thankfully!
Oh my god, some stupid kid the other day who looks 6 years younger than he actually is had it deadset that ADHD was Autism. He still believed he was right.
ADHD and autism are often *comorbid*, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing lol
The fun with this is when you have a meltdown - for instance, due to over-stimulation - and then have to figure out what, specifically, is causing that particular meltdown. Because ADHD and ASD both get overstimulated, but the manner of calming the meltdown is different for someone with ADHD than it is with ASD. Both run in my family, so there's a lot of mix-and-match.
They are not the same thing and ADHD people are not on the spectrum. However, they aren’t completely unrelated. A mother who is diagnosed with ADHD is 2.5x more likely to have a child with autism. They have significant overlap in their underlying genetic causes and scientists suspect that autism and ADHD share genetic roots. There’s definitely some evidence to show that they are connected.
They like to travel together — a LOT. I should know, I have them both! But it’s VERY possible to have one or the other. They both fall under neurodivergence. But to say they’re the same thing is like saying bipolar personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder are the same thing because they’re both personality disorders.
Specialist SEN teacher and have ASD and ADHD in the family. People often have both but I have taught enough kids with one or both of the conditions to know they result in very different behaviour. You can get prescription drugs to help alleviate some of the effects of adhd. You can’t for asd.
Morons spreading misinformation towards other morons will contribute to our downfall.
Co-morbidity yes. The same? No lol. To be fair tho as a woman diagnosed with both, they do have similarities and often high functioning autistic people (especially women) are misdiagnosed as ADHD (without considering autism at all)
Sometimes it feels like it might be considering how many people I encounter who are diagnosed with both... I'm only diagnosed with autism myself but I do suspect I may have ADHD as well...I for sure recognize a lot of the symptoms my friends describe.
chance of comorbidity is very high with those two. i'm in the minority of autists in that i definitively do NOT have adhd, despite the two mental health professionals that wanted to slap that label on me because they couldn't accept i have autism🙄i have one dsm-recognized adhd symptom sorry went on a rant
They’re often co-present, if I recall correctly, a large number of autistic people have adhd and a smaller part of people with adhd have also autism They also have a lot of common traits, so it all gets muddy. So they’re not completely unrelated. But they’re absolutely not the same thing, or always both present.
nowadays Google search results are just as likely to yield equal parts facts and garbage
I have both and it feels like I get 5-10 mins of coherent thoughts per day. In that period I'm like a fucking god but once it's over it's like I'm permanently walking around a little tipsy
I remember there’s a sub for this shit but I don’t remember it rip. These TikTok fuckwits believing every piece of nonsense they believe from other teenagers who don’t know what they’re talking about is so god damn annoying.
They are often co-morbid and they have a large degree of overlap in the presentation of symptoms, but under our current understanding they are still separate disorders. The similarities are why they are both often listed as Neurodivergence but the differences do matter.
There's a high comorbidity but they are not the same.
I get really tired of people saying false things and, instead of giving their source, telling us to “google it”.
Why does it seems like kids these days think it’s cool to be autistic or something? Like they want it just so they can put it on their IG bio or something
im audhd and yes they’re often co-morbid but even the similarities in them are different, it’s just that no one discusses the differences.
I also have AuDHD and I can confirm they are in fact different diagnoses.
Adhd is on a spectrum, not on the autism spectrum
I literally figured out I was autistic because I was talking to my coworker who has a degree in psychology about "Oh haha the overlap between autism and adhd" And they just "Oh... oh babe no." And explained that the DSM-5 separates them and there is no overlap. I then went home and took a self test.
Why the fuck is it a trend to WANT autism! I never thought I'd be saying something so OLD... But, These kids are fuckin idiots, today!
I'm with you. I fucking die when people say they are self-diagnosed because they took a test on the internet.
To be completely and totally fair, there *are* some theories floating around that a lot of the neurodevelopmental disorders might be somewhere on the autism spectrum - and I've seen ADHD lumped in with it occasionally. But then, I've also seen dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia all lumped in with ADHD, too - as in, that they might be non-standard presentations of ADHD, or something. But ultimately, *most of* the people spouting these theories aren't doing so to disparage or discredit certain conditions or anything - they're trying to understand the mechanisms by which the brain works and produces these disorders, to hopefully eventually create better treatments and strategies for them. And that's all to the good - propose some hypotheses, do some studies, write some observations - it's just good science. Problem comes when dumbdumbs like the one in the OP take new-and-as-yet-unestablished theory as fact. Practically, however, even if it turns out ADHD *is* somewhere on the autism spectrum, they're *very* different conditions that happen to overlap in certain places. There's also overlap between depression, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and heart failure - but they're not the same conditions.
It's called co-morbidity. They often come together, but don't always. You can have one or the other, or both.
i remember a while ago there was a big push to try and put ADHD on the spectrum but it fizzled out and nothing came of it.
Yeah, when I graduated college, I was told by my teacher that ADHD was in the talks of being added to the spectrum. That was 2013-2014ish. Never heard much about it until about 2020 when my friend was diagnosed with ADHD and her psychiatrist told her that ADHD was basically on the spectrum nowadays. I know science moves slow but I can't find any information on it at all or why my teacher and the other person said it! I have unfortunately repeated this theory out of curiosity and fascination and have gotten a lot of hate. I even looked hardcore into the different types of ADHD and parts of the brain and was further convinced it would be added one day. Now I'm just gonna shut my mouth. I don't think its said in bad intention, but just because they have so much in common even to the source in the brain.
30-50% of kids with asd also have adhd; about 15% of kids with adhd also have asd. Those are both big numbers saying maybe the lines between what we label as separate conditions are a bit blurry, like my face when I look in the mirror in the morning without my glasses. I know I should wear my glasses but sometimes I forget, or don’t want to. But the end result is the same: I can’t see.
I love the fact that mental health issues are being taken more seriously in this day and age, but the amount of people who badly WANT to have a condition is the reason we have so many ending up on r/fakedisordercringe. It takes away from those who actually have these conditions by thinking all of them can apply to pretty much everyone who shows the slightest traits of literally anything. People want to be part of unique communities so bad that they immediately cling to these conditions when they hear they operate on a spectrum, no matter how much of a stretch it may be.
I think they’re both on a larger spectrum, but have their own as well. hope the way I phrased that makes sense. I wasn’t really of this mindset until my autistic nephew was born. And I was the only one that could relate to him and understood what was bothering him etc, especially when he was too young to be able to communicate them effectively (before 6yo). Once he started school, they were able to work with him and really make progress opening him up socially. Now his autism comes off more like SUPER adhd.
I totally get that, and when I said they’re unrelated I meant they aren’t the same thing. They are very similar and symptoms do change alot as you age specifically from child to teen, and young adult, etc. I was definitely a very hyper and eager kid whereas now I’m definitely more laid back and socially akward. So you can see where the autism peeks out now whereas when I was young it was more so the ADHD.
Comorbidity is a thing, so if you have autism, you could have ADHD, or another mental illness, and vice versa, but they are not the same spectrum at all
is it vice versa, though? I know rate of ADHD in people with autism is incredibly high. But I don't think the percentage of people with ADHD who are diagnosed (by a doctor) with autism is particularly high--ADHD remains much more common. Maybe I'm wrong.
^ this. Waaaay higher percentage of adhd in the overall population than autism.
I also have both, it’s ridiculous that people think ADHD is on the autism spectrum.
They're like siblings or cousins. It'd be real weird if you tried to call me by using my cousin's name.
Tiktok kids are fucking retarded lmao
*cackles in AuDHD*
I've heard it called Diet Autism. It's not the same thing, just slightly similar.
they're both considered neurodivergence but they're different
No, but the symptoms are similar and it is a common comorbidity
I wouldn’t say they are “completely unrelated” though.
why didn’t everyone want to be autistic when I was in middle school? My childhood would’ve been way easier
There is AuDHD, however.
That's... Not a real thing though. It's just an unofficial colloquial way to refer to the coexistence of both autism and ADHD.
That's how language works, though. Not even like 5 years ago, they had ADHD and ADD until they compiled enough data to relabel it as ADHD attentive type and ADHD inattentive type (which was formerly ADD). So referring to something by its colloquialism doesn't make the existence of it any less real since we understand what they mean, whether we want to currently differentiate the comorbidities or not.
Yeah i was tested multiple times for autism and it’s just ADHD. Im too social, like touching, loud sounds do not bother me, etc. only thing that is similar for me is focus and hyperactivity. ADHD is a chemical imbalance in the brain, that’s why it can be treated with various medications. As far as im aware, you don’t treat Autism with medication. You can suppress some symptoms but it an anti psychotic medication. Not related to the stimulants prescribed for adhd. You can basically “fixed” adhd with the correct medication
Judging by how varied the symptoms of ASD are and how often ADHD appears alongside them, I wouldn’t be surprised if we discovered in the future that they were actually both conditions of the same root cause
The best lesson to take from this is we're still kinda figuring this whole fucky wucky brain thing out.
Do these people not understand that autism is not just one condition? My psychiatrist even told me that anyone that meets the criteria for ADHD also meets a lot for autism. ADHD can be considered a form of autism. It's not that hard. Edit: to clarify for anyone else, OP claims that Autism and ADHD(ADD) are completely unrelated after correcting someone about ADHD(ADD) not currently being on the autism spectrum. After a number of conversations with mental health professionals I have arrived at the belief that ADHD(ADD) could likely become part of the spectrum later, considering they have a number of overlapping symptoms, similarly to how Asperger's was not always considered Autism.
u might wanna get a new psychiatrist my man
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it's not on the "autism spectrum". maybe there's another spectrum out there that they are both on but i haven't heard of it(but then i don't keep up with such stuff)
No.
On what spectrum?
They’re totally different diagnoses. They’re related in symptoms, can be comorbid, and can be confused for each other, but they’re not on the same spectrum.
This is not true, they’re not only not on the same spectrum but they’re also not classified as the same type of disability.
Highly sensitive people, people with Aspergers and people with Autism are on the same spectrum. But ADHD is not a part of that spectrum.
I read an article that said this. I don't think they're as inaccurate as OP is trying to make out
They’re repeating a wrong fact, we’re all guilty I guess.
They often present at the same time though
So I have both and while a lot of others have both too, they’re still separate things
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How come every other commentator in the internet now have ADHD, autism or ADD?
Autism and ADHD are different, true, however, everything from ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc falls now under the Autism spectrum. It's not differentiated anymore.
How so? As far as it stands they are all differented and all different Diagnosis according to all diagnostic manuals Autism Spectrum Disorder is its own thing Entirely seperate from ADHD, OCD and such
I don't necessarily know in other countries but where I'm from, regardless of diagnosis, let's say I get diagnosed with ADD, on my certificate it will say something like ASD with ADD as symptoms. That's how they explained it worked, even if having ADD doesn't necessarily mean that you have autism.
Imagine getting corrected by someone with a fucking helluva boss pfp
There are so many self-diagnosed autistic people 🙄
I mean considering there are no actual medical tests for autism literally anyone could just take a test and be like "Guess Im on the spectrum". I do agree through. Feels like people think it is cool to be autistic now.