The other thing that I get asked a lot about, ADHD. Everybody heard of ADHD, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. I test actually a lot of folks, a lot of kids and adults for ADHD. So that is looking at problems such as attention, focus, concentration, leaving tasks uncompleted, having a hard time focusing on multitasking or doing work demands whatever it might be, this can actually start in childhood. I will typically start seeing kids when they are probably about 6 to 8 years old and they all go up and I will see folks all the way through geriatric years. So a lot of my adults that I see is those are the folks that will come in and they will say, you know I was struggling in school little bit, managed to get C's, had a hard time turning my paper work, you know but I kind of got through things, but now I am struggling. As we grow older, more demands are placed on us, through work, family, you know whatever it might be and so they have a harder time kind of keeping it together because the plates _______ full of stuff, so we look at how they are doing and what types of things might be contributing to that, if it is an ADHD issue or if it could be something else. Why say something else, it is because I will also have a lot of folks come in and they will complain of ADHD like symptoms and whenever I look at them and do an evaluation, I will actually find out that, that it is not ADHD, it could be an issue with depression or it could be an issue with anxiety or it could be what we call a comorbid, so it could be anxiety, depression, and/or ADHD. So it kind of gets complicated as you will see. So the other part of my job in addition to therapy is, doing different types of assessments, so looking at how your brain is functioning and looking at the symptoms that are present, whether it would be depression, anxiety, ADHD issues or whatever else it could be and tease those factors apart because the worst thing that I have seen happen. When somebody come in and they will say you know I was diagnosed with ADHD whenever I was kid, I have been on this medication this whole time. I did not have symptom relief. I am like why are you still taking the medication, you know why are you still doing that. _______ we take a deeper look to kind of see what is going on, on the inside, we find out that they have misdiagnosed for say 10 to 15 years. So we get them on right medication, the right type of treatment, the right type of therapy or whatever it might be and they start improving in their functioning. So it is very important to actually clarify diagnosis and the same thing with kids too because I have a lot of kids that will come in for ADHD evaluation and then you know the parents will say my kid has been bouncing up the wall, bouncing up the coach, you know getting into trouble at school, whatever it might be and you know turns out that the kid has a sensory processing disorder issue. So has anybody ever heard of sensory processing disorder, some of you may have, some of you may not. So it is one of those things too that will mimic ADHD or mimic depression and anxiety, so all of this stuff plays on our playground together and you got to know what is you are doing, to be able to tease these apart to get the accurate diagnoses. If you got accurate diagnosis, you are going to get a better treatment outcome. The other part of this, it is really important to know too is that memory can be impacted by depression and anxiety. I will have folks that will come in, they will report concerns for memory issues, _______ guess what you do not have the _______ you don’t have Alzheimer's. You actually have ADHD. You know so again this is one of these things that it is very, very complicated, so that is why, my specialty and I preach to my patients, you know, lets get a clear diagnoses so we can know what are doing to provide that treatment.
