ADHD Awareness Month: APDO members share their experiences of ADHD

To mark ADHD Month, APDO professional organisers share their experiences of working with clients with ADHD. In this article, which follows Sarah Bickers' article on ADHD published earlier this month, Cherry Rudge, Lisa Pantling and Anita Fortes each give their insight into ADHD from their own experiences.

Cherry Rudge

What does ADHD mean?

I originally went along to the Fastminds ADHD Support Group about five years ago, to find out whether it was suitable to refer my clients to - which it most certainly was, and still is.

It's common for my clients and members of the support group to have:

- received a late diagnosis of ADHD, Autism, or other neurological disorders

- a diagnosis of or exhibit symptoms of ADHD (or Autism), and/or other neurological disorders where Executive Dysfunction is present

- been treated for mental illnesses such as Anxiety and Depression, without getting to the root cause of their issues, which - in my experience - can often be explained by an underlying neurological disorder

- been incorrectly diagnosed with mental illnesses such as Borderline Personality Disorder, and later diagnosed with a neurological disorder (such as ADHD), which more accurately describes their symptoms.

Often, they have low self-esteem, lack confidence, and can suffer with extreme anxiety, depression, and self-harming. Many experience feelings of anger, grief and frustration for the difficulties and challenges they've faced throughout their life, and how different their life might have been if only their condition had been diagnosed sooner.

Personal experience

When people ask me about the benefits of receiving a diagnosis, I can personally vouch for the fact that even without taking medication it improved my understanding of myself and why overdoing things too much sometimes lead to burn-out and stress-related illness over the years.

I chose to go for a private ADHD assessment, as unfortunately NHS waiting lists are so long in some places that it can take between 2-3 years before some people get assessed by their local Neurodevelopmental ADHD service.

Medication has been great for me, as it's not only suppressed my appetite and enabled me to lose over a stone in weight (in almost 11 months), it's also helped me stay focused, become less easily distracted, and concentrate much more on self-care instead of focusing on helping others as much as I did before.

Citizen Advocacy work

What I especially love about being involved with an ADHD support group is that it's full of wonderfully creative neurodiverse people who can all empathise with the difficulties each other experience on a daily basis. Sadly, many of the members experience so many problems with Executive Functioning and mental/physical health issues that they're extremely vulnerable to abuse, have employment issues, or struggle to get support from social care.

So the founder of the support group and I do a lot of Citizen Advocacy work - accompanying members to virtual and in-person appointments (medical, employment, Citizen's Advice, social care, etc), helping them fill in forms, encouraging them to be really mindful about their strengths and weaknesses in terms of Executive Functioning (for example, for PIP claims or Care Needs Assessments, to explain in detail what works for them and what doesn't), appealing benefits decisions, and so on. Otherwise these experiences can be overwhelming and confusing for them, and they're likely to forget what was discussed or agreed. Especially if they have what I describe as the multiple ingredients for a 'œCocktail of Clutter Chaos'