Since my diagnosis with ADHD and beginning to take medication, my thoughts have been dominated by three main themes:

1. What are the characteristics of the disorder? What do we know? What do we not yet understand? What are the driving forces behind it?

2. These questions have led to a far more significant and fundamental one: if ADHD is responsible for many of the things that made me and others unhappy, then how does one decouple who you are as a person from the actions that you may have performed (or not performed) that led to the distress? In other words, my actions have led to the perception that I was unmotivated, disorganized, absent minded, and not very competent in many respects. But now, I find that I had a limitation that can be corrected through therapy and medication. Does that mean that innately, I'm actually not lazy and incompetent? That I am actually a very capable person with tremendous potential and all I need to do is correct my mental nearsightedness?

3. Well if it's true that all I had to do was make a few changes, and that innately I am not lazy, disorganized, and incompetent, then what does it say about us as people that we are ready to condemn a person who exhibits these behaviors and make moral judgements about them?

As this Blog goes on we're going to look at this in detail. ADHD and the attitudes surrounding it say a lot about us as a society. And what it says isn't all that good sometimes.