Navigating the intricate landscape of mental health can often feel like deciphering a complex puzzle, especially when differentiating between conditions ADHD vs.anxiety. This challenge is further compounded by the similarities in symptoms and the potential for misdiagnosis. However, understanding the nuances and interconnections between these conditions can empower individuals to seek appropriate treatment and improve their quality of life.
ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. While commonly diagnosed in childhood, ADHD persists into adulthood for many individuals, affecting various aspects of their daily lives, from academic performance to personal relationships. On the other hand, anxiety disorders encompass a range of conditions marked by excessive fear, worry, and physical symptoms such as heart palpitations and dizziness.
The intersection of ADHD and anxiety is a topic of significant interest within the mental health community. Individuals with ADHD often experience anxiety, partly due to the challenges and frustrations stemming from ADHD symptoms. Similarly, the constant struggle with focus and organization can exacerbate feelings of anxiety, creating a cyclical relationship between the two conditions.
A critical aspect of differentiating ADHD from anxiety involves examining the onset and progression of symptoms. ADHD is present from an early age, with symptoms often becoming noticeable during childhood. In contrast, anxiety can develop at any point in life, triggered by stressors or traumatic events. Therefore, a thorough evaluation of an individual's history is vital in distinguishing between the two.
Moreover, the manifestation of symptoms can offer clues. For example, while both ADHD and anxiety can lead to concentration difficulties, the underlying reasons differ. In ADHD, the inability to focus is often due to intrinsic attention regulation issues. In anxiety, however, the concentration problems may arise from excessive worry or fear that consumes cognitive resources.
Understanding the unique and overlapping aspects of ADHD and anxiety is crucial for effective treatment. For ADHD, interventions typically include medication, such as stimulants, alongside behavioral strategies to enhance executive functioning skills. Anxiety disorders, meanwhile, may be treated with a combination of psychotherapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and, in some cases, medication to manage symptoms.
The integration of treatment modalities is paramount, particularly for individuals experiencing both ADHD and anxiety. Addressing the ADHD symptoms can often alleviate anxiety by improving self-esteem and coping mechanisms. Similarly, managing anxiety can reduce the overall stress load, making ADHD symptoms more manageable.
In conclusion, ADHD and anxiety represent two distinct yet interrelated conditions within the spectrum of mental health. The complexity of their relationship underscores the importance of personalized, comprehensive treatment plans. By fostering a deeper understanding of these conditions, individuals can navigate the path to wellness with greater clarity and confidence. This journey, though challenging, is a testament to the resilience and strength inherent in the human spirit, as we seek to understand and overcome the obstacles that lie within our minds.
TRANSCRIPT
Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. We are talking about ADHD vs anxiety, how to tell the difference, kind of get you in the know of what is what.
Today, we have Dr. Ryan Sultan. He is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. He knows all the things about ADHD and cannabis use, does a lot of research in this area, and I want to get the tea on all things ADHD and anxiety so that we can work it out. So many of you listening have either been misdiagnosed or totally feel like they don’t really understand the difference. And so, let’s talk about it. Welcome, Dr. Sultan.
ADHD vs. ANXIETY
Ryan: Thank you. I really like doing these things. I think it’s fun. I think psychiatrists, which is what I am, I think one of the ways that we really fail, and medical doctors in general don’t do well at this, which is like, let’s spend some time educating the public. And before my current position, I did epidemiology and public health. And so, I learned a lot about that, and I was like, “You know how you can help people? We have a crisis here. Let’s just teach people things about how to find resources and what they can do on their own.” And so, I really enjoy these opportunities.
WHAT IS ADHD vs. WHAT IS ANXIETY?
I was thinking about your question, and I was thinking how we might want to talk about this idea of ADHD versus anxiety, which is a common thing. People come in, and they see me very commonly wanting an evaluation, and they think they have ADHD. And I understand why they think they have ADHD, but their main thing is basically reporting a concentration or focus issue, which is a not specific symptom. Just like if I’m moody today, that doesn’t mean I have a mood disorder. If I’m anxious today, it doesn’t mean I have an anxiety disorder. I might even feel depressed today; it doesn’t mean I have a depression disorder. I could even have a psychotic symptom in your voice, and it does not mean that I have a psychotic disorder. It’s more complicated than that.
I think one of the things that the DSM that we love here in the United States—but it’s the best thing we have; it’s like capitalism and democracy; it’s like the best things that we have; we don’t have better solutions yet—is that it describes these things in a way that uses plain language to try to standardize it. But it’s confusing to the general public and I think it’s also confusing to clinicians when you’re trying to learn some of these conditions.
WHEN IS ADHD vs. ANXIETY DIAGNOSED?
And certainly, one of the things that have happened in my field that people used to talk a lot about is the idea that, is pediatric, meaning kid diagnosis of ADHD, which often in my area here in the United States will be done by pediatrician, are they adequately able to do that? Because poor pediatricians have to know a lot. And ADHD, psychiatric disorders are complicated. Mental health conditions are super complicated. They’re so complicated that there are seven different types of degree programs that end up helping you with them. PsyD, PhD, MD, clinical social worker, mental health counselor, and then there’s nurse practitioner. So, like super complicated counseling. So, how do we think about this?
The first thing I try to remind everyone is, if you’re not sure what’s going on with you, please filter your self-diagnosis. You can think about it, that’s great. Write your notes down, da-da-da, but I would avoid acting purely on that. You really want to do your best to get some help from the outside. And I know that mental health treatment is not accessible to everyone. This is an enormous problem that existed before the pandemic and still exists now. I say that because I say that all the time, and I wish I had a solution for you. But if you have access to someone that you think can help you tease this throughout, you want to do that.
SYMPTOMS OF ADHD vs. ANXIETY
But what I would like us to do, instead of listing criteria, which you can all Google on WebMD, let’s think about them in a larger context. So, mental health symptoms fall into these very broad categories. And so, some of them are anxiety, which OCD used to be under, but it’s now in its own area. Another one, would be mood. You can have moods that are really high, moods that are really low. Another one you could take ADHD, you could lump it in neurodevelopmental, which would mix it with autism and learning disorders. You could lump it with attention, but the problem with that is it would also get lumped with dementia, which are processes that overlap, but they’re occurring at different ends of the spectrum.
So, let’s think about ADHD and why someone might have ADHD or why you might think someone has ADHD, because this should be easier for people to tease out, I think. ADHD is not a condition that appears in adulthood. That’s like hands down. Adult ADHD is people that had ADHD and still have ADHD as adults. And most people with ADHD will go on to still have at least an attenuated version, meaning their symptoms are a little less severe, maybe, but over 60% will still meet criteria. It’s not a disorder of children. Up until the ‘90s, we thought it was a disorder of kids only. So, you turned 18, and magically, you couldn’t have ADHD anymore, which didn’t make any sense anyway.
So, to really get a good ADHD diagnosis, you got to go backwards. If you’re not currently an eight-year-old, you have to think a little bit about or talk to your family, or look at your school records. And ideally, that’s what you want to do, is you want to see, is there evidence that you have, things that look like ADHD then? So, you were having trouble maintaining your attention for periods of time. Your attention was scattered in different ways. Things that are mentally challenging that require you to force yourself to do it, that particularly if you don’t like them, this was really hard for you. You were disorganized. People thought that things went in one year and out the other.
Now this exists on a spectrum. And depending on the difficulty of your scholastic experience and how far you pushed yourself in school, these symptoms could show up at different times. For example, it’s not uncommon for people to show up in college or in graduate school. Less so now, but historically, people were getting diagnosed as late as that, because now they have to write a dissertation. For those of you guys who don’t know, a dissertation is being asked to write a book, okay? You’re being asked to write a book. And what did you do? You went to college. Okay, you went to college, and then you had some master’s classes, and then you get assigned an advisor, and you just get told to figure out what your project is. It is completely unstructured. It is completely self-sufficient. It is absurd. I’m talking about a real academic classic PhD. That is going to bring it. If somebody has ADHD, that’s going to bring it out because of the executive functioning involved in that, the organization, the planning. I got to make an outline, I got to meet with my mentor regularly, I got to check in with them, I got to revise it, I got to plan a study or a literature review. There’s so many steps involved. So, that would be something that some people doesn’t come up with then.
Other kids, as an eight-year-old boy that I’m treating right now, who has a wonderful family that is super supportive, and they have created this beautiful environment for him that accommodates him so much that he has not needed any medication despite the fact that there’s lots of evidence that he is struggling and now starting to feel bad about himself, and he has self-esteem issues because he just doesn’t understand why he has to try so hard and why he can’t maintain his attention in this scenario, which is challenging for him.
So, ADHD kids and adults, you want to think of them as their brains as being three to five years behind everyone else in their development, okay? And they are catching up, but they’re more immature, and they’re immature in certain ways. And so, this kid’s ability to maintain his attention, manage his own behaviors, stay organized, it’s like mom is sitting with this kid doing his homework with him continuously, and if she stops at all, he can’t hold it together on his own. So, when we think about that with him, like, okay, well, that’s maybe when it’s showing up with him. That’s when it’s starting to have a struggle with him.
But let’s relate it to anxiety. One problem would be, do you have ADHD or do you have anxiety? Well, there’s another problem. Another problem is having ADHD is a major risk factor for developing an anxiety disorder, okay? So now I’m the eight-year-old boy, and this eight-year-old boy does not have the financial resources to get this evaluation, or the parents that are knowledgeable enough to know that, it might even have been years ago where there was less knowledge about this. And he’s just struggling all the time, and he feels bad about himself, and he’s constantly getting into trouble because he is losing things because he can’t keep track of things because he’s overwhelmed. And now he feels bad about himself. Okay. He has anxiety associated with that. So now we’re building this anxiety. So he might even get mood symptoms, and now we have a risk for depression.
So, this is just one of the reasons why these things are like these tangled messes. You ever like have a bunch of cords that you have one of the dealies, you keep throwing them in a box, and now you’re like, “What do I do? Do I just throw the cords out or entangle them?” It’s a very tangled mess. Of course, it takes time to sort through it. The reason I started with ADHD is that it has a clear trajectory of it when it happens. And in general, it’s a general rule, symptomatology, meaning like how severe it is and the number of symptoms you have and how impairing it is. They’re going to be decreasing as you get older. At least until main adulthood, there’s new evidence that shows there might be a higher risk for dementia in that population.
But let’s put geriatric aside. There’s a different developmental trajectory. Whereas anxiety, oh God, I wish I could simplify anxiety that much. Anxiety can happen in different ways. So, let’s start with the easy thing. Why would you confuse them in this current moment? If I am always worried about things, if I’m always ruminating about things, I’m thinking about it over and over again, I’m trying to figure out where I should live or what I should do about this, and I just keep thinking about it over and over again, and I’m in like a cycle. Like, pop-pa-pa pop-pa pop-pa-pa-pa. And then you’re asking me to do other things. I promise you, I will have difficulty concentrating. I promise you, I can’t concentrate because it’s like you’re using your computer and how many windows do you have open? How many things are you running? I mean, it doesn’t happen as much anymore, but I think most of us, I meant to remember times where you’re like, “Oh, my computer is not able to handle this anymore.” You’re using up some of your mind, and you can call that being present.
So, when people talk about mindfulness and improving attention, one of the things that they’re probably improving is this: they’re trying to get the person to stop running that 15, 20% program all the time. And it’s like your brain got upgraded because you can now devote yourself to the task in front of you. And the anxiety is not slowing you down or intruding upon you, either as an intrusive thought in an OCD way or just a sort of intrusive worry that’s probably hampering your ability to do something concentration-intensive. And then if you have anxiety problems and you’re not sleeping right, well, now your memory is impaired because of that. So, there’s this cycle that ends up happening over and over again.
IS HYPERACTIVITY ANXIETY OR ADHD?
Kimberley: Yeah, I think a lot of people as well that I’ve talked to clients and listeners, also with anxiety, there’s this general physiological irritability. Like a little jitteriness, can’t sit in their chair, which I think is another maybe way that misdiagnosis can -- it’s like, “Oh, they’re hyperactive. They’re struggling to sit in their chair. That might be what’s going on for them.” Is that similar to what you’re saying?
Ryan: Yeah. So, really good example, and this one we can do a little simpler. I mean, the statement I’m going to say is not 100% true, but it’s mostly true. If you are an adult, like over 25 for sure, and you are physically jittery, it is very unlikely that that is ADHD. Because ADHD, the whole mechanism as we understand it, or one of the mechanisms causing the thing we call ADHD, which of course is like a made-up thing that we’re using to classify it, is that your prefrontal cortex is not done developing. So, it needs to get myelinated, which is essentially like -- think about it like upgrading from dial up to some great, not even a cable modem. You’re going right to Verizon Fios. Like amazing, okay. It’s much faster, and it’s growing. And that’s the part of you that makes you most human. That’s the most sophisticated part of your brain. It’s not the part that helps you breathe or some sort of physiological thing, which, by the way, is causing some of those anxiety symptoms. They’re ramped up in a sympathetic nervous system way, fight or fight way. It’s the part that’s actually slowing you down. That’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down, calm down, calm down.” This is why, and everyone’s is not as developed. So, we’re all developing this thing through 25, at least ADHD is through 28.
Car insurance goes down to 25 because your driving gets better, because your judgment gets better, because you can plan better, because you are less risk-taking. So, your insurance has now gone down. So, the insurance company knows this about us. And our FMRI scans, you scan people’s brains, it supports that change. These correlate to some extent with symptomology, not enough to be a diagnosis to answer the person’s question that they’re going to have that. I wish it was. It’s not a diagnosis. We haven’t been able to figure out how to do that yet.
So, by the time you’re 25, that’s developed. And the symptoms that go away first with ADHD are usually hyperactivity, because that’s the inability to manage all the impulses of your body, not in an anxious, stressed-out way, but in an excited way. You think of the happy, well-supported, running around ADHD kid is kind of silly and fun. It’s a totally different mood experience than the anxiety experience. Anxiety experience is unpleasant for the most part. Unless your anxiety is targeting you to hyper-focus to get something done, which is bumping up some of your dopamine, which is again the opposite experience of probably having ADHD, it’s a hyper-focus experience, certainly, the deficit part of ADHD, you’re going to be feeling a different physiological, the irritability you talked about 100%. You’re irritable because you are trying so hard to manage this awful feeling you have in your body. You physically feel so uncomfortable. It is intolerable.
I have this poor, anxious young man that has to do a very socially awkward thing today. Actually, not that socially awkward. He created the situation, which is one of the ways we’re working on it with him in treatment. And I’m letting him go through and do this as an exposure because it’ll be fine. And he’s literally interacting with another one of our staff members. But he finds these things intolerable. He talks about it like we are lighting him on fire. So, he’s trying to hold it together, or whatever your physiological experience is. It may not have been as dramatic as I described. You’re irritable when people are asking things of you because you don’t have much left. You’re not in some carefree mood where you’re like, “Whatever, I’m super easygoing. I don’t care.” No, you’re not feeling easygoing right now. You’re very, very stressed out.
Stress and anxiety are very linked. Just like sadness and depression are very linked, and like loneliness and depression are linked, but they’re not the same thing. Stress and anxiety are very, very linked, and they’re similar feelings, and they’re often occurring at the same time and interacting with each other.
ADD vs. ADHD
Kimberley: Right. One question really quick. Just to be clear, what about ADD vs. ADHD?
Ryan: We love to change diagnostic criteria. People sit around. There’s a committee, there’s a whole bunch of studies. And we’re always trying to epidemiologically and characterologically differentiate what these different conditions are. That’s what the field is trying to do as an academic whole. And so, there’s disagreements about what should be where. So, the OCD thing moving is one of them.
The ADD thing, it’s like a nomenclature thing. So, the diagnosis got described that the new current version of the diagnosis is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and then you have three specifiers, okay? So, that’s the condition you have. And then you can have combined, which is hyperactive and inattentive. Just inattentive, just hyperactive. And impulsive is built in there. So, it’s really not that interesting. People love to be like, “No, no, I have ADD. No, I don’t have the hyperactive.” And I’m like, “I know, but from a billing point of view, the insurance company will not accept that code anymore. It doesn’t exist.”
DOES ADHD OR ANXIETY IMPACT CONCENTRATION?
Kimberley: Yeah. So, just so that I know I have this right, and you can please correct me, is if you have this more neurological, like you said, condition of ADHD, you’ll have that first, and then you’ll get maybe some anxiety and some depression as a result of that condition. Whereas for those folks, if their primary was anxiety, it wouldn’t be so much that anxiety would cause the ADHD. It would be more the symptoms of concentration are a symptom of the anxiety. Is that what you’re saying?
Ryan: Yes, and every permutation that you can imagine based on what you just said is also an option. Like almost every permutation. Like how are they interacting with each other? How are they making each other worse? How are they confusing each other? Because you can have anxiety disorders in elementary school. I mean, that is when most anxiety disorders, the first win, like the wave of them going up is then. And you think about all the anxiety you have.
I got a friend of mine who’s got infants. And it’s fun to see like as they’re developing, when they go through normal anxiety, that that is a thing that they’re going to pass. And then there’s other things where, at some point, we’re like, actually, now we’re saying this is developmentally inappropriate, which means, nope, we were supposed to have graduated from this and it’s still around.
And so, one of the earlier ways that psychiatric conditions were conceptualized, and it’s still a useful way to conceptualize them, is the normal behavior version of it versus the non-normal behavior version of it. And again, I hate non-normal, I don’t want to pathologize people, but non-normal being like, this is causing problems for you. And if you think about it from an evolutionary point of view, all of these conditions have pretty clear evolutionary bases of how they would be beneficial. Anxiety is going to save your ass, okay? Properly applied anxiety, it’ll save your tribe. You want someone who’s anxious, who’s going to be like, “We do not have enough from this winter.” An ADHD person was like, “It’ll be fine. I’m just going to go find something else.” And you’re like, “No.” And then when that winter’s really bad and you save that little bit of extra food, that 30% that the anxious person pushed for, maybe you didn’t eat all 30% of it, but you know what, it probably benefited you and it might’ve actually made the whole tribe survive or more people survive or better health condition. So, it’s approving everyone’s outcomes.
The ADHD individual, you get them excited about something—gone. They’re going to destroy it. They’re going to find all the berries. They’re going to find all the new places. They’re going to find all the new deer. They’re going to run around and explore. It’s great. Great, great, great.
Depression is like hibernation. And if you look at hibernation in a mammal, like what happens, there’s a lot of overlaps. Lower energy, maybe you store up some food for the winter. It’s related to the seasons. You’re in California, right? This is not a problem you have, but for those of us in New York, where we have seasonality, seasonal depression is a thing. It’s very much a thing. It’s very noticeable, and it’s packed on top of these conditions everyone else is having.
But the idea is that the hibernation or the pullback is like something happens to you that upsets you, which is the psychosocial event that’s kicking you in the face that might set off your depression. That’s why people always say, “Oh, depressions just don’t come out of nowhere. This biochemical thing isn’t true.” What they’re saying is something has to happen to start to kick off the depression, but that’s not enough. It’s that you then can’t recover from it.
And so, a normal version of it is that you get knocked out and you spend a week or two, you think about it. Rumination is a part of depression for many people. You reevaluate, and you say, “You know, I got kicked in the face when I did that. That was not a good plan for me. I need a new plan. I either need to do something different or I need to tackle that problem differently.” And so, that would be the adaptive version of a depressive experience. Whereas the non-adaptive version is like, you get stuck in that and you can’t get out.
Kimberley: Or you avoid.
Ryan: The avoiding doing anything about it, and then that makes it worse. So, you started withdrawing. I mean, that’s the worst thing you can do. This is a message to everyone out there. The worst thing that you can do is withdraw from society for any period of time. Look, I’m not saying you can’t have a mental health day, but systematic withdrawal, which most of us don’t even realize is happening, is going to make you worse because the best treatment for every mental health condition is community. It is really. All of them. All of them, including schizophrenia.
I used to work in Atlanta. I did my residency. There’d be these poor guys that have a psychotic disorder. They hear voices. The kinds of people that, here in New York City, are homeless, they’re not homeless there. Everyone just knows that Johnny’s just a little weird and his mom lives down the street. And if we find Johnny just in the trash can or doing something strange, or just roving, we know he’s fine, and someone just takes him back to his mom’s house and checks on him. Because there’s a community that takes care of him, even though he’s actually quite ill from our point of view. But when you put him in an environment where that community is not as strong, like a city, it does worse, which is why mental health conditions are much higher rates in urban areas. Probably why psychiatry and mental health in general is such a central thing in New York City.
TREATMENT FOR ADHD vs. ANXIETY
Kimberley: Yeah. Okay, let’s talk quickly about treatment for ADHD. We’re here always talking about the treatment for anxiety, but what would the research and what’s evidence-based for ADHD if someone were to get that clinical diagnosis?
Ryan: So, you want to think about ADHD as a thing that we’re going to try to frame for that person as much as how is it an asset, because it historically has made people feel bad about themselves. And so, there are positive aspects to it, like the hyper focus and excitability, and interest in things. And so, trying to channel into that and then thinking about what their deficits are. So, they’re functional deficits. If you’re talking adult population, functional deficits are going to be usually around executive functioning and organization planning. Imagine if you’re like a parent of small children and you have untreated ADHD, you’re going to be in crazy fight-or-flight mode all the time because there’s so many things to keep track of. You have to keep track of your wife and their life.
Kimberley: I see these moms. My heart goes out to them.
Ryan: And they’re probably anxious. And the anxiety is probably protecting them a little bit. Because what is the anxiety doing? You think about things over and over and over again, and you double check them. You know what that’s not a bad idea for? Someone who’s not detail-oriented, who’s an ADHD person, who forgets things, and he gets disorganized. So, there’s this thing where you’re like, “Okay, there may actually be a balance going on. Can we make the balance a little bit better?” So, how do you organize yourself?
MEDICATIONS FOR ADHD
Right now, there’s a stimulant shortage. Stimulants are the most effective medication for reducing ADHD symptoms. They are the most effective biological intervention we have to reduce the impact of probably any psychiatric condition, period. They are incredibly effective, like 80, 90% resolution of symptoms, which is great. I mean, that’s great. That’s great news. But you also want to be integrating some lifestyle changes and skills alongside of that. So, how do you organize yourself better? I mean, that’s like a whole talk, but like lists, prioritizing lists, taking tasks, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces. Where do you start? What’s the first step? Chipping away. You know what? If you only go one mile a day for 30 days, you go 30 miles. That’s still really far. I know you would have gone 30 miles that day, especially if you have ADHD, but you’re still getting somewhere.
And so, that kind of prioritization is really, really important. And so, you can create that on your own. There are CBT-based resources and things to try to help with that. There are ADHD coaches that try to help with that. It’s consistency and commitment around that. So, how do you structure your life for yourself? That poor PhD candidate really needs to structure their life because there is no structure to their life.
The other things we want to think about with that, I mean, really good sleep, physical exercise. People with ADHD, we see on FMRI scans when you scan someone’s brain, there’s less density of dopamine receptors, less dopamine activity. You want to get that dopamine up. That’s what the medications are doing, is predominantly raising the dopamine. So, physical activity, aerobic exercise, in particular, is going to do that. Get that in every day, and look, it’s good for you. It’s good for you. There is no better treatment for every condition in the world other than exercise, particularly aerobic. It basically is good for everything. If you just had surgery, we still want you to get out and walk around. Really quickly, that actually improves your outcome as fast as possible.
So, those are the things I like people to start with if they can do that, depending on the severity of what’s going on, the impact, what other things have already been tried. Stimulant medications or non-stimulant medications like Wellbutrin, Strattera, Clonidine are also pretty effective. Methylphenidate products, which is what Ritalin is. Adderall products mixed in amphetamine salts, Vyvanse, these are very effective medications for it. There’s a massive shortage of these medications that people are constantly talking about, and is really problematic and does not appear to have an endpoint because the DEA doesn’t seem ready to raise the amount that they allow to be made because they are still recovering from the opioid crisis, which is ongoing. And so, they’re worried about that. Really, they want to be very thoughtful about this. These medications have a very low-risk potential for misuse. In fact, people with ADHD, they appear to reduce the risk of developing a substance use disorder. It’s the most common thing that people worry about. So, treatment actually reduces that.
That said, the worst -- I mean, I don’t want to say the worst thing. I mean, people hate me. The really not great way to get psychiatric treatment is to show up to someone once and then intermittently meet with them where they write a prescription for a medication for you that’s supposed to help you, and stimulant medications are included on that. So, that’s probably why I didn’t lead with that, even though there’s actually more science to support them, is that by themselves, it’s really going to limit how much help you’re going to get.
Kimberley: Can you share why?
Ryan: Because you need to understand your condition, because you need to spend time with your clinician learning about your condition and understanding how it’s affecting your life, and understanding how the medication is actually meant to be a tool. It should be like wearing glasses. It doesn’t do the work for you. It doesn’t solve all your problems, but it’s easier to read when you put your glasses on than without it. It supports you. You still need to figure out how to get these things done. It lowers the activation energy associated with it. But you also want to monitor it. You can’t take these medications 24 hours a day and just be ready to go and work, which is things that people have tried. It doesn’t work because you need to sleep, because you will die. They’ve tried this. We know that you will literally die, like not sleeping. And in the interim, you are damaging yourself significantly. So, taking it and timing it in an appropriate way, still getting sufficient sleep, prioritizing other things—they are like a piece of a puzzle, and they are a really powerful piece. But you really don’t want that to be the only thing driving your decision-making, or that be what the interaction is really about. And by the way, the same thing is true for all psychiatric medications.
Kimberley: I was going to say that’s what we know about OCD and anxiety disorders too. Medication alone is not going to cut you across the line.
Ryan: And for most people, therapy alone is also not going to cut the line. You have to have a mild case for therapy alone to be okay. And I can trouble for that statement. But the other thing is lifestyle. What lifestyle changes can I make? And those together, all three, are going to mean that you get better faster, you get more better than you would have, you’re more likely to stay better. And they start to interact with each other in a good way, where you get this synergistic effect of ripples of good things happening to you and personal growth. You look back, and you’re like, “Geez, I’m on version 3.0 of me. I didn’t know that there was a new, refined personal growth version of me that could actually function much better. I didn’t actually believe that.”
DOES ADHD IMPACT SELF-ESTEEM?
Kimberley: Well, especially you talked about this impact to self-esteem too. So, if you’re getting the correct treatment and now you’re improving, as you go, you’re like, “Okay, I’m actually smart,” or “I’m actually competent,” or “I’m actually creative. I had no idea.”
Ryan: Yes. “I’m not stupid.” Lots of people with ADHD think they’re stupid.
Kimberley: Yeah. So, that’s really cool. One question I have that’s just in my mind is, does --
Ryan: And that should be part of your treatment, is the working through. That was essentially a complex trauma. It’s the complex trauma of having this condition that may not have been treated that made you think that you were an idiot because you were being shoved into a situation that you did not know how to deal with because your ADHD evolved to be an advantage for you as a hunter-gatherer for the hundreds of thousands of years that we had that, and that modern world is not very compliant for. It doesn’t experience you as fitting into it well. And then you feel bad about yourself.
ADHD IN MALES vs. FEMALES
Kimberley: Right. You’re the class clown, or you’re the class fool, or the dumb girl, or whatever. Now, my last question, just for my sake of curiosity, is: does ADHD look different between genders?
Ryan: This is an area of significant research. So, historically, the party line has been that ADHD is significantly more common in boys and girls. And the epidemiology, the numbers, the prevalence have always supported that. Like 3 to 1, 2 to 1, like a much more, much more common. Refining of that idea has come up with a couple of thoughts. One, for whatever reason, I don’t know how much of this is genetic. I have no idea how much of this is environmental, sociological. All other things being equal, after a certain young age, girls just always seem to be ahead of boys in their development. I mean, talk to any parent that’s had a lot of kids, and they’ll tell you that they’re like, “I don’t know why the girls are always maturing faster.” So, that’s a bias that is going to always make at any given point. The boys look worse because their brains are not developed. So, they’re going to be -- remember that immature younger thing? They’re going to be immature and younger. And so at any given marker is that.
The other thing that’s come up is that the hyperactivity seems to be something we see a lot more in males than in females. That’s another thing. And versus inattentiveness, which you see in both and is usually the predominant symptom. And the kid who gets noticed is the little boy who’s like -- I mean, not that you could do this in today’s world, but has scissors and is about to cut a kid’s cord. I’m trying to make a silly imagery. That kid’s getting a phone call. No one didn’t notice that. The whole class called that. Whereas like daydreaming, I’m not really listening—this is a more passive experience of ADHD. And they’re not disrupting the room. Forget about the gender thing. Just that presentation is also less noticed.
So, I think the answer is the symptomology presentation is a little different. It tends to be predominantly hyperactive. Are the rates different? Yes, they’re probably not as wide of a difference as we think they are, because we’re probably missing a good number of girls. Are we missing enough girls to make it 50/50? I don’t know. That would be a lot of -- it’s a big gap. It’s not close. It’s a pretty big gap. Maybe we’re certainly missing some.
And then the other aspect of it is particularly post-puberty. Even before puberty, there’s hormonal changes going on. And these hormones, particularly testosterone, which is present in everyone, we think about it as a male thing, but it’s really just like a balance thing. You have significant amounts of both. It affects a number of things, and attention is one of them. So, there’s so many complexing factors to it. That’s why I said, it’s something we’re still trying to sort out.
One of the things that’s really interesting that goes back to the hormone thing is that if you talk to young women— so postmenstrual, they’ve gone through puberty—they will tell you over and over again that their symptomology, just like we have mood symptoms tend to be worse during that time period of when you’re ovulating, the ADHD symptoms will be worse as well. And so, there’s increasing evidence that if you’re on ADHD medication and you have ADHD, which again, we’re making lots of presumptions here, go get that confirmed, guys. But if you’re on that time period just leading up to ovulation a little bit after, you may actually need a higher dose of your medication to get the same effect. That there’s something about the way progesterone and whatever is changing that it affects functionally your attention and your experience of your symptomatology.
Kimberley: Interesting. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Is there anything you feel like we’ve missed or a point you really want to make for the folks who are listening who are trying to really untangle, like you said, that imagery of untangle, anxiety, ADHD, all of the depression, self-esteem?
Ryan: This is like a sidebar that’s related. So, one of my other areas of interest is cannabis. And here in New York, we’ve had a lot going on with cannabis. And there’s a lot of science going on around, can cannabis be used to treat things, particularly psychiatric disorders? And I know that a lot of people are interested in that.
One of the things that I’ve been really trying to caution people around with it is that the original thing that I was probably taught in the ‘90s about cannabis, marijuana being like this incredibly unsafe thing, is not true. But the narrative that it’s totally fine and benign is also not true. And that it is probably going to be effective in reducing anxiety acutely, and it will probably be effective in maybe even improving your mood. And some people with ADHD even think it improves their attention by calming their mind. I am very cautious about people starting to use that as part of their treatment plan. And I can tell you why.
Kimberley: Because you did say there’s an increase in substance use.
Ryan: The problem is that it’s not rolled out in a way that reflects an appropriate medical treatment. So, if you do it recreationally, obviously, it’s basically like alcohol. You just get what you want, and you decide what you want. If you do it medically, depending on the state, as a general rule, you just get a medical card and then you decide what you’re going to do, which just seems crazy to me. I mean, you don’t do that. You don’t send people home with an unlimited amount of something that is mind-altering and tell them to use as much as they need. And the potencies, the strength of it has gotten stronger and stronger.
And so, I really caution people around this because when you use it regularly, what ends up happening is you get this downregulation, particularly daily use. You get this downregulation of your receptors, your cannabinoid receptors. We all have cannabinoid receptors. And you have fewer and fewer of them. And because you have so much cannabinoid in your system because you’re getting high that your body says, “I don’t need these receptors.” So then when you don’t get high, those cannabinoid receptors that modulate serotonin, dopamine—so functionally, your attention, your mood, your anxiety level—there’s none of them left because they’ve been getting bound like crazy to this super strong thing. And you’re making almost none yourself, so you’re going to feel awful. You’re going to feel awful. And it’s not dosed in any kind of appropriate way. We’re not giving people guidance on this.
So, I really caution people when they’re utilizing this, which the reality is that a lot of people are, that they be thoughtful about that and thoughtful about the frequency that they’re using and the amounts that they’re using, and if they’re at a point where they’re really trying to self-medicate themselves, because that can really get out of control for people. They can get really out of control. And I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a better system to help people with that. That is more like the evaluation of an FDA-approved medication or something like that has a system through it.
So, I just wanted to add that because I know this is something that a lot of people are thinking about. And I think it can be hard to get really good science information on since there’s a big movement around making this change. When we’re doing a big movement around pushing for a change, we don’t want to talk about the reasons that the change might be a little problematic, and therefore slow the change down. So, we forget about that. And I think for the general public, it’s important to remember that.
Kimberley: Yeah, I’m so grateful that you did bring that up. Thank you. Where can our listeners learn more about you or be in touch with you?
Ryan: So, if they want to learn more about my practice, my clinical practice, integrativepsych -- no, integrative-psych.org. We changed. We wrote .nyc. There we go. And then if you want to learn about my science and my lab and our research, which we also love, if you just go to Sultan (my last name) lab.org, it redirects to my Columbia page, and then you can see all about that and send some positive vibes to my poor research assistants that work so hard.
Kimberley: Wonderful. I’m so grateful for you to be here. Really, I am. And just so happy that you’re here. So much more knowledgeable about something that I am not. And so, I’m so grateful that you’re here to bring some clarity to this conversation, and hopefully for people to really now go and get a correct assessment to define what’s going on for them.
Ryan: Yeah, I hope everyone is able to digest all this. I said a lot. And can hopefully make better decisions for themselves for that. Thank you so much.
Kimberley: Thank you.