ADDitude has a great article on Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria today. It is part of the emotional dysregulation that comes with ADHD for many. “New Insights Into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.” It’s a great article. But if you weren’t reading super carefully, you might have missed something really important.
“It’s widely understood that the diagnostic criteria for ADHD in the DSM-V only fit well with elementary school age children (6-12) and have never been validated in a group of people over the age of 16.1 They are based on only observational or behavioral criteria that can be seen and counted. The traditional diagnostic criteria intentionally avoid symptoms associated with emotion, thinking styles, relationships, sleeping, etc. because these features are hard to quantify. For clinicians who work with later adolescents and adults, the DSM-V criteria are almost useless because they ignore so much which is vital to understanding how people with an ADHD nervous system experience their lives.”
This is one of the main reasons we have so many incompetent clinicians in America, when it comes to ADHD. If you are truly “in the know.” there is a wealth of information on ADHD, diagnosis, treatment, medication, etc. But, if you are going by the book, the one book that you are supposed to go by to diagnose and treat all mental disease and disorders… well, then you’re shit out of luck in terms of knowing what you are doing. It is really shameful.