Is ADHD a Disability?

Transcription:
Coming soon!

[@the_real_littlepinkhousefly]

It drives me crazy that "disability" is considered "bad" or "wrong" by so much of the "normal" world (and even those who are disabled). As a person with ADHD, multiple chronic physical illnesses and other mental health issues, the fact that I am dis-abled in some ways is just that ... fact. Parts of me don't work as they should. No shame. And yet...the NT/healthy world still finds ways to trigger shame, and we buy into it (I haven't figured out how to completely let the shame go yet). I wish we could all (NDs and sick/physically/mentally disabled people) could find ways to reach acceptance and not put so much stock in what other people think. I'm working on it, but not there yet.

[@Catlily5]

Glasses are a good example. I would be badly disabled without them. I am legally blind without them. But since they exist it is practically a non issue. Am I made to feel guilty about wearing them? Very very rarely. If only ADHD could be treated as easily. Maybe in the future.

[@CreativeSnail]

I've seen many people refusing to call adhd a disability because they don't want to be considered disabled. To me, that speaks of prejudices against disabled people. And it also can make it difficult for other people who have adhd to fight for their rights to accommodations. Disability is not a bad word.

[@DrawnByDandy]

Very valuable video, thank you! Personally, I gained a lot of self-acceptance when I came to acknowledge that my ADHD was a disability. I realized expecting myself to do things the way neurotypical people did / in the same time frame / without any accommodations was kind of unreasonable and unfair to myself. And I've come to see that there's no shame in associating with the wider disability community. Other sectors of the community have pioneered language and tools that can be adapted to be useful to ADHDers as well - not to mention the hard-won civil rights they fought for. I'd love to see the neurodivergent community build stronger ties with the wider disability community. Ableism hurts us all, and we all benefit from dismantling it.

[@caraevans2609]

I have a physical disability and use a manual wheelchair full time and I would absolutely consider ADHD a disability. It doesn’t matter the severity of a disability if it changes the way you live your daily life in a way where you need adaptations then it should be considered a disability.

[@tris5602]

My favorite thing I ever heard on the topic of disability: the opposite of disability is enabled, not abled. Accommodations enable us to participate in a society that is structured around people with abilities that differ from ours.

[@yay-cat]

I feel like i’m not playing with a full deck of cards. I won’t get promoted as often or achieve as many life goals or live as long as my neurotypical peers. yeah i’ve got a disability. But i’m not a lesser person who needs to be defined by my disability just like a person with blindness can have a fantastic full life not defined by being blind

[@randomhuman_05]

A lot of people just don’t realize that disability is such a broad term, and things affect people differently. We as a society genuinely just need to accept that a lot of people have different needs and/or are just different from what’s considered “normal”. Accommodating a person’s needs, no matter what type, should be seen as basic human decency.

[@rebeccadolashewich7094]

I still live in an area where my own doctors still haven’t taken my ADHD seriously & act like it’s not a real issue and that I can just figure it out on my own. I have been diagnosed by both a psychiatrist & a psychologist. I was registered through the disability’s office at my college & even still I have even had a hard time with another psychiatrist who refused to even acknowledge my own medical history. It’s a disability in how we are left to jump through the same hoops, regardless of the money and time, again & again- to even be taken seriously. I have had doctors treat it like it’s not a real issue. These same doctors made it like it was made up and somehow something I had thought I had and wouldn’t have if I stopped thinking I had it. It’s so messed up that so many people still abuse ADHD people & I’m so grateful I found this channel, because I feel less alone in a world that doesn’t take our own disability as being serious or real, so we don’t get any help - again & again, & then get treated like we are somehow defective for not being “normal”, while not being helped for the very real impairments we have. It’s a struggle. I researched information on the drugs we are given on aging brains & it just said no research. Women weren’t even seen as being ADHD until recently. We are still being studied, so we have to advocate for ourselves & our family members, as my own sons are also ADHD like I am.

[@georgeb.wolffsohn30]

I had a period when I was between jobs in my career. I experimented with "disclosing" during interviews.every time I did it it was visually obvious that the interviewer immediately lost interest their eyes glazed over and wanted nothing more than for me to leave.

[@peachy9591]

As someone with adhd and dyslexia and a slew of other learning disabilities it always made me slightly upset when people called them 'learning differences' my dyslexia is a disability.

[@reemmohsena5229]

As ER doc with ADHD You help me a lot during my hard times , thank you

[@alphafert608]

Getting accommodations as an adult is a nightmare. I spent the last year trying different therapists & being run around between "you need to be retested", "I'm not qualified to test you", "I think anxiety is your problem" & "it's probably depression".

[@birdiexoxo]

This! I work in an accessibility office at a school (and I myself am disabled) and I try to get students and teachers to realize this every day! Disabled just means you need some help to get on a level playing field with your peers. Literally the definition of equity. Disabled is not a bad word. I think it is engrained in our society to believe that you aren’t disabled unless you are severely disabled, but that leaves so many people out.

[@egangray5590]

I have adhd, I opened KZbin to watch a tutorial for a class

[@NuthouseKid88]

I've never understood the idea that having a disability makes you lesser or worse. If you put two runners on a track together, and one runner's lane has hurdles while the other does not, then even if the runner with the hurdles loses the race you can't really say it's because they're slower. To me, it feels more harmful to try to argue that that runner doesn't really have a harder race to run.

[@myfirstseven8316]

I wish there would be “deadline forgiveness” for diagnosed ADHD people. I suffer so much from being time blind, it hurts.

[@YEDxYED]

If we acknowledge it as a disability, then it can finally be taken seriously

[@ruaoneill9050]

With the social model, I feel comfortable saying my adhd is a disability, but in regular everyday life, I still feel uncomfortable which I think is based in that old 'you could do it if you tried, you're just lazy' thinking because I feel like I don't deserve the same consideration as people with 'real' (read physical and obvious) disabilities. Of course I don't think this about anyone else with adhd so it's obvious just something I jave to work on.

[@keeganschilz9063]

My dad always tells me that I should basically “get used to it” because the world isn’t going to accommodate for me, which is true, but it also just puts all of the hesitations about sharing my difficulties with living with ADHD so much more difficult. It makes me want to “cure” it, which you can’t. I need to work on accepting myself and doing what I need for myself, and I hope you all can do that too :)