Similar thing but specifically for executive disfunction.
I signed up for an ADHD evaluation and it took me a year to return the forms. I’m pretty sure the interview/test was just a formality at that point.
If you submit, they’ll reject it, because you clearly don’t have crippling ADHD that’s preventing you from functioning normally. Your submitted 20-page form is proof.
If you don’t submit, they’ll reject it, because you must submit it to be considered.
What a great example of a catch-22
I have pretty bad ADHD. I just prefer not to share it. People tend to try to hold it against you. I mask heavily for work in the corporate management role I somehow still hold. Also weed. Lots of weed… and coffee. All the coffee.
Please really do watch out with the weed. Especially for people with ADHD it’s an insanely slippery slope. I know empty words are hard to get motivated over and it might seem like the only way you can function for now, but I had to go through all that; It’s gonna get to a point where you consistently break the rules you set for yourself so you can be perpetually high while the effect subsides more and more and then all you have left is to quit cold turkey.
I sympathize. Weed is bad for focusing, but good for helping me sleep when the Shame thoughts come. And at its peak I was drinking around 1000mg of caffeine via coffee a day and I still was barely functional. It took me at least three years to find a company that would take my insurance and also do the testing. Now that I have my brain drugs I don’t think I can go back. And it’s giving me mental space to work through the old traumas, which means less weed to sleep and less often. My goal is to not be reliant on cannabis or antidepressants, hopefully by the end of 2026. But I definitely need the medicine now so that I have the mental capacity to do the therapy work
I don’t mean to sound insensitive, as I totally support UBI and universal healthcare and removing corporate profit motives from anything related to individual, collective, or environmental well-being.
But this ADHD persecution complex can sometimes get out of hand. Could Katie really not ask a family member or close friend for help with this?
Again, not trying to downplay the bureaucratic nonsense or unfairness here. I’m just saying this paints the task as impossible when maybe it’s not.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for your replies. My partner struggles with ADHD and navigating medical bureaucracy, so I understand somewhat but I’m always learning.
As someone with a family who absolutely doesn’t give a single shit about the difficulty of living with ADHD and just tells me to “get over it and stop being so lazy”… yes, they most likely didn’t have anyone willing to lend a hand and help them in the way they needed help because regular people don’t tend to think of the things we struggle with as being challenging enough to warrant needing assistance with.
Having a supportive community is a privilege that so many take for granted.
That’s a very good point and I should have considered it. Appreciated.
As someone with ADHD, finding the energy to ask someone for help can be just as difficult as sucking it up and just filling out the form. That’s the problem with ADHD: your brain physically stops your body from getting up and doing the things it needs to do.
Personally I need to be high as fuck on stimulants to accomplish anything, which sucks ass cause I really hate how they make me feel. But I can’t accomplish shit unless I’m absolutely tweaking off my ass on Adderall like a fucking meth addict.
It’s the level of hoops an ADHD person needs to jump through to get any treatment, let alone adequate treatment. Forms, calling for appointments, more forms, tracking stuff, nagging your doctor to full prescriptions, and so on. Every step of which is another wall to climb for an ADHD person.
Everything about the process to get both diagnosed and treated involves tasks that are not compatible with the ADHD brain.
Or stuff that is really difficult to get. Part of the diagnostic process for my psychiatrist needs me to arrange a 30 minute interview with a family member (which only works if you have a family member who is willing to do so, believes that ADHD isn’t just a personal failing, or has the time to arrange such a thing), or reports from primary school, which most people aren’t likely to keep around when they’re an adult in university.
If you don’t have either of those, no diagnosis for you, and you’re out several hundred dollars for nothing.
You’re assuming they have someone supportive in their life.
Went through diag with husband last year. The paperwork they got me to fill out out was pretty basic, but detailed, and if he had the familial network to recognise and support his condition, he wouldn’t have gotten diagnosed in his 40’s.
I’ve been diagnosed with adhd. I’ve had multiple doctors completely ignore it. Just nothing. It’s still untreated. This is mental health is America.
Yeah, my partner has it too and says the exact same thing. Sorry bud :( Keep telling people, more folks need to know that’s how it is.
I had a friend trying to get disability for a laundry list of problems that left her unable to do much, and the judge ruled against her with an example job of folding sheets and towels at a hotel. No hotel we could find employed a person to do that job alone, nor am I convinced she or anyone could do that job for 8 hours at a time, but still it was enough to get her case dismissed.
However, it did start a paper trail that helped her win disability several years later in a more progressive district. She now lives in a 6 person polycule, 5 of whom are disabled.
In the context of a trillion dollar annual military budget with things like $10,000 screws, the idea that entitlements must be means tested to ensure nobody “undeserving” actually gets them demonstrates what this country actually values: the public coffers exist to line the pockets of capitalists at the expense of the public
No dispute from me there. The system is immensely fucked and it might take a long, long time to fix. But the reality here and now is that getting pretty much any kind of service requires paperwork and callbacks and all the other BS.
Sure, yeah
No I mean… you’re right. A lot of people are now claiming ADHD prevents them from being anything but a leech. It’s disrespectful as fuck to people with ADHD who bust their ass overcoming their disability. Its almost always from someone “self-diagnosed” also.
For some (like me) it’s less “overcome” and more “manage to the best of my ability”.
Sometimes I will forget something important. I forget interactions with people the next fucking day. I sit and scroll for hours on my phone and scream internally to get the fuck up and just not be able to.
Certain things help. But you can definitely be more then a leach.
Yep, but you’re trying. No one with actual ADHD is ever going to fully overcome it. I’m referring to the people who magically have crippling ADHD when it comes to being responsible with anything (Chores, a job, etc.) But if its something they want to do they’re magically fine. They can listen to instructions and follow them keenly when their family is taking them paragliding, but they couldn’t wash a dish for 8 seconds.
My understanding is that this is because it’s a dopamine problem. Some (many?) ADHD folks are wired such that they only function when their brains’ reward centers are getting pinged. That’s why they struggle with chores or bills or other ‘adult’ tasks that require focus but no feeling of reward or satisfaction until much later. According to my partner it’s a source of a tremendous amount of guilt and self-esteem problems.
That’s part of ADHD for a lot of people: hyperfixation/focus on topics that interest them, and struggles otherwise.
Yup. It’s something that’s crippling to us for sure, but imo doesn’t hurt to acknowledge that it makes us a total piece of work for our surroundings.
What I take the person above to say is that there’s just too many people who expect everyone else to accept their annoying habits.
Which, well, I don’t even accept in myself so it’d be rich to expect others to do.
So I guess AuADHD just doesn’t exist to you then, huh? You have no clue about proper mental health and the challenges people experience.
Seriously, shut the fuck up.
That’s exactly what they thought was going to happen. For-profit health care is a business. Businesses prioritize profits over all else. In the US, it’s just blatant corruption.
Wouldn’t matter if you filled it out you still be denied. You have to pay an attorney to be approved.
If you can’t afford to pay an attorney it’s very common for lawyers who are representing people applying for disability to work on contingency. If you’re approved for disability you usually get back pay dating to when you first started the process, and the lawyer takes a percentage of that as payment.
My brother (not adhd) was able to do it himself but basically compiled a database to do it.
Have a friend who is essentially bedridden who got denied 3 times before having an attorney file.
I wonder if it’s a bit like the food stamp process where what you get depends in large part on who you get as your program officer so it’s a bit of a crap shoot.
This isn’t about health care but disability services and social welfare but sure
Huh? How is it not healthcare? ADHD is a disorder that’s usually well-treated with medication.
I get the person is applying for a disability claim but surely they must already have tried and failed to achieve satisfactory symtpom adjustment to receive welfare?
It’s literally about filing a disability claim
Disability claims are part of healthcare
They’re filed with their state, not a health insurance company.
Does that mean
A) disability claims aren’t healthcare
B) insurance companies aren’t the only healthcare providers in the world
?
I can’t tell if this is an actual confusion about the difference between the American health care and social services systems or just like petty malicious internet one-upmanship.
Assuming it’s the former, disability payments aren’t actually part of the health care system in the United States. Like, you don’t get a payout from any organization that actually handles healthcare, it’s a separate bureaucracy that just serves to gatekeep disability income.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
I wish more people understood this.
Fuck yeah
I’ll get the bbq ready
Unfortunately, the requirements for the program are ridiculously severe. It’s super hard to get allowed, especially when you’re under 50 or only have mental health issues. We really just need UBI so people aren’t required to struggle to work to get by.
Imagine how much better the economy would be if people weren’t forced to prop up absolutely shitty companies they don’t believe in just to pay their bills. Like, we might actually have improving products and experiences instead of a constantly diminishing race to the bottom.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.Anyone who has been through the process of applying for, and succrssfully recieving SSDI, knows that every single step and element of the process is at least one, if not multiple Catch 22s.
Hey uh, here’s a real basic one:
Oh, are you homeless?
No permanent address?
You basically cannot apply for anything, anywhere, any kind of food assistance like SNAP, TANF, actual SSDI, Section 8…
You literally cannot even do step one if you’re already fucked out of a home.
This is why you really luck out if you can get into a shelter that lets you use them as an address, and also the staff isn’t stealing/opening the mail, or just maybe they lose half of it, or say you can’t have it now because your crippling injury meant you got back to the shelter 3 minutes after curfew, try next week, after it needs to already be sent back out again with a response, or you can’t apply again for 6 months.
Simultaneously, there are basically zero emergency housing resources for those who are not yet homeless, but going to become homeless soon.
Oh you’re not homeless yet? You don’t qualify.
Try again after your life has been ruined, no, we don’t try to stop lives from being ruined, we shuffle them around afterward.
Has to be the funniest novel I’ve ever read. So many moments that literally made me lol
You should read “The gospel according to Biff, Jesus’s childhood friend”
It’s my favorite. I have a shirt that has the Russian edition cover on the whole front. Makes it even more ironic now.
A friend had to have his foot amputated due to diabetes and when he filed for disability they asked him to complete a triple jump.
Sounds like some real UK government shit, that
My experience with some of such papers is that you are supposed to have professional help already that does it for you.
Shows that you need assistance.
I have had some that required a shit ton of paperwork from different sources to be returned within a 30 day window.
Its impossible to pull off, but a social worker who knows these pages makes 1 phone call and now you have 90 days. Makes another phone call if its still not done.
Cool!
We all know all mentally disordered people have strong support networks, the ability to schedule things, manage stress, move around a town or city, etc etc.
Not everybody has a partner, a friend, family to fall back on, lots of people are mentally disordered and in crisis because they got fucked over by those people.
The system is broken, and its on purpose.
I used to work for a nonprofit, we helped these people best we could, but the way the government makes you do things is a laughable joke, its broken.
But hey, that was at least back when any of this shit still had any funding and was still kind of working.
Now?
Now?!
Yeah, my guess would be if you started say an SSDI application today, handed it in finished perfectly… 1 to 2 years before you get your first pass/fail result back.
My partner actually went to the social worker to fill the papers with them.
Honestly that just sounds like a trap.
By design.
I’ve always been lucky, filling out forms has always been something I can hyper focus on, I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I guess I just really like putting pencil to paper and seeing my own handwriting
Try doing it with a broken wrist, to explain to them that your wrist, and many other bones and ligaments are broken, torn, etc.
The autism doesn’t help so much there.
