Recently ADDitude Magazine featured 30 truths to combat the often-misrepresented claims regarding ADHD’s prevalence, validity, and side-effects.

The top lies and truths we want to reiterate are:

LIE: ADHD is not a real medical disorder.
TRUTH: ADHD is a real medical disorder formally recognized by the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Education, and American Psychiatric Association

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (formerly known as just attention deficit disorder) is biologically based. Research shows that it’s a result of an imbalance of chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, within the brain. Its primary symptoms are inattention, impulsiveness, and, sometimes, hyperactivity.

LIE: ADHD is more of an issue with boys.
TRUTH: Girls are just as likely to have ADHD as are boys, and gender makes no difference in the symptoms caused by the disorder. But because this myth persists, boys are more likely to be diagnosed than girls.

ADHD manifests differently in girls sometimes. Inattentive symptoms such as distractibility, forgetfulness, and disorganization may be overlooked or mistaken for another condition, which leads to ineffective treatment and low self-esteem.

LIE: People with ADHD just have motivation problems, or are just lazy.
TRUTH: People with ADHD are often of above-average intelligence, recent studies show. They certainly aren’t lazy. In fact, many well-known, high-achieving individuals from the past are thought to have had ADHD, including Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, George Bernard Shaw, and Salvador Dali. The list of high-achieving people with ADHD in business today includes top executives, such as David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airways, and Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s.

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