Question:
I had a very rough couple of years at work and personally.
I have been under treatment for depression, and after an intense
situation at work (Oct), the dr added med for anxiety.
I have known I have ADD, since I was studying CPsy at the
U of Minn and working with a researcher in ADHD in 1971.
I recently came across a screening questionnaire for Adult ADD
and in the questions were my behaviors for the last two years.
I was under a lot of stress at work and personally, especially the last
year.
I wonder if the severity was due to the stress level,
or do the symptoms get worse with age, or both?
Answer:
In my experience stress/anxiety makes my symptoms much
worse, but also worsen with added responsibilities for
instance when I became a parent...as for age: I can't
tell if my symptoms are just more noticable as I age
(skipping gets strange looks when you're adult)or
whether they are actually worse.
Certainly stress (including parenting) has an effect. But I also find
that lack of sleep is very bad (I should stop now and go to bed!!!).
Now that you mention it, when my son was very young and his
mother went overseas for a short term religious mission, it was
very difficult dealing with the extra load, daily care of four horses
and my three year old son. Never thought it was ADD related.
I don't know if the symptoms get worse with age so much as they get
worse with increasng responsibility, which often happens with age. It
really hit the fan for me when I had children.
I'm 33 but I've been telling my docs for over *2* years now that
something hormonal was going on...yes I've become more chaotic
over the past few years but I've also been having hot flashes,
palpitations, panic attacks and ooh, "about" 3 periods in the
past 2 years. My doc had some hormone levels tested and they
showed that I wasn't on the verge of menopause and she just
chalked it up to being due to panic disorder or the meds I was
using.
So finally a month or so ago I got referred to a gynaecologist
who quickly discovered my prolactin levels were far too high...
Thursday I'm finally having an MRI to rule out lovely
stuff like prolactinoma(benign tumour of the pituitary gland).
Now I'm left wondering whether I even have panic disorder:
could all those symptoms be due to this prolactin stuff, and
is the worsening of my ADHD symptoms due to that, age, stress
or what? I won't get the results till the 9th of February...my
patience is really being tried.
