Patients with ADHD frequently have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and depression, drug or alcohol abuse, autism spectrum disorders, sleep disorders, learning disabilities, and antisocial, oppositional defiant, conduct, and/or personality disorders.
Roughly 80 percent of those with ADHD are diagnosed with at least one other psychiatric disorder sometime during their life. The most common ADHD comorbidities are learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, sensory processing disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder.
Symptoms of ASD that often overlap with ADHD, such as hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and inattention, may respond to the medications used to treat ADHD, if not as well.
One type of ADHD masking — known as mirroring — involves intentionally or unintentionally mimicking the speech, movements, or behaviors of someone else. While ADHD mirroring and body doubling may seem similar at first glance, you can work alongside a body double without imitating them in any way.
This is what's known as ADHD masking. It happens when a person tries to hide their ADHD symptoms to blend in with the crowd and protect themselves from judgment. This is done by mimicking the behaviors of those around them. In some instances, it can be a helpful strategy.
Definition. "Overlap syndromes" refers to a diverse group of conditions that have clinical features of, and meet classification criteria for, more than 1 well-characterized rheumatic disease. They usually present subacutely with clinical manifestations that can include different organ systems.
Diagnosis Implications
✦ Firstly, anxiety symptoms may mask ADHD symptoms as anxiety can lower impulsivity.
Signs of misdiagnosis
If the prescribed treatment for ADHD is not helping you manage your symptoms, you might have been misdiagnosed. But sometimes, your doctor may need to try a few different ADHD medications before finding an effective one. Doctors are human and can make mistakes.
1. Eye contact: Avoidance of eye contact is ADHD behaviour – your child/young person may look as if they are ignoring you but some find making eye contact really difficult.
This is a great question, and the short answer is “yes.” ADHD symptoms exist on a spectrum or a continuum.
ADHD and sensory overload
This is in large part because their brains are still developing, and they have not fully learned how to handle the conflicting stimuli around them. Although not all individuals with ADHD experience sensory overload, these conditions often co-occur .
ADHD symptoms in adulthood greatly interfere with daily functioning, and are associated with high number of psychiatric comorbidities3 Among them, borderline personality disorder (BPD) in particular is encountered far more often than expected by chance in adults with ADHD.
The most common psychiatric comorbidities that co-occur with ADHD in adults are depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, SUDs and personality disorders.
The brain of someone with ADHD might not be able to regulate pain-like activity, which would explain why rejection is so much more troubling and painful to someone with RSD.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
Anxiety, depression, learning disorders, physical health, and many other conditions can cause symptoms that look like ADHD but aren't.
Overlap syndromes are inflammatory rheumatic conditions in which patients have clinical manifestations suggestive of multiple distinct immune diseases. The diseases most commonly involved in overlap syndromes include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, and myositis.
A comorbidity, or overlapping conditions, is when two or more conditions or diseases are present at the same time in a patient. For example, it is not at all unusual for a patient with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to have fibromyalgia.
Doctors often mistake ADHD symptoms in adults for mood disorders, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other conditions with overlapping symptoms. For adults, hyperactivity can be turned inward.
This is because some symptoms, such as hyperactivity and sensory overload, can lead to fatigue. These symptoms can make sleeping challenging, further contributing to their tiredness. Symptoms relating to sensory overload can result in mental and physical exhaustion.
An ADHD diagnosis increases the risk of trauma exposure for several key reasons. Children with ADHD alone are at a heightened risk for factors that are strongly linked to trauma, including: Interpersonal and self-regulatory problems. Substance abuse.
Can sensory issues be a symptom of ADHD? Sensory issues and sensory processing disorders are prevalent in people with ADHD. Although scientists are still researching the exact correlation, research has shown that kids and adults with ADHD are more likely than neurotypical people to experience sensory overload.