Are these symptamatic of an AD/HD person.....

Yes, I really think she has AD/HD.
AD/HD does also runs in families.
I also have AD/HD,and the problems you describe were so close to home its scary.
I believe I been suffering with this condition all my life, but only been diagnosed for the past three years.
There plenty of information on AD/HD at www.chadd.org

She may have adhd, but not all her symptoms fit adhd symptoms. It sounds like other mental things going on, it is common for adhd to occur alongside other problems. Right now, she sounds extremely abusive. I realize it is hard for men to find help from abusive spouses but I really feel you need to get some help. I would say she probably needs psych help too, a second opinion about the executive dysfunction. I can see that in her messiness, lack of organization. However, she also sounds a bit paranoid. Has anyone considered bipolar? The lack of sleep (mania), the rages, worrying.
It may be that you should talk to the counselor alone and tell him what you have told us. Please get some help, this isn’t good for the kids even if she doesn’t actually touch them. Let us know how things go.
Amy

The symptoms that you have noted in your marriage are characteristic of several disorders, one of which is ADHD. But there were also some things that you said that reminded me of an adult that I have worked with that was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Because of all of the different medications out there, it is very important to work with a doctor that is open to your symptoms and not just interested in putting you on any medication. What you really need is a diagnosis for her based on all of the things that you just posted. I would suggest either going to a psychologist that could do the initial screening, or possibly taking her to a neuropsychologist. They could do the official diagnosing and then you could either go to a psychiatrist or PCP from there.

ADHD involves symptoms like inattention (distractibility, short attention span), hyperactivity (hyperkinesis), and impulsivity.

Sorry about my spelling, my typing skills leave a bit to be desired.
The real question is, how do i convince her to go to a doctor? I hesitate to think about how bad it will be if I even suggest she seek tat type of analysis. I can see the fight now……

Maybe the marriage therapist can help with that. Keep a log of the behavior, when it happens, what sets things off. Bring that with you to counseling sessions. This is what many parents of kids do when their doctors won’t listen or say things like ‘I am sure you are just overreacting’. If you can show a pattern, then the doc should be able to see there is more going on and can refer you further. That’s assuming that your therapist is competent. Keep trying.

Well, I’ll do that. I have a log now of every time I’ve been struck by her, with time, date, and background. I guess I’ll expand that.

Since she is apparently “out of control” you might consider a court intervention to get help for her that she is currently unable to get for herself. Violence in the home is intolerble so please don’t hesitate to call the police if she gets violent again. When you don’t act we call that enabling and it never works. Use the old tough love approach, your family will love you for it later. Good luck

It sounds like you’ve got a lot going on! The symptoms you describe could be ADHD, could also be the bipolar disorder others have mentioned. Or those with even other diagoses. ADHD and bipolar are often comorbid and to confuse things more are often misdiagnosed as each other!

Where to start. If you feel she will not go to psych/counseling, there is still something you can do. Assuming you are looking at ADHD as a component of what’s going on (even if it’s not the whole story) there’s a lot you can do. See if you can get her to an environmental physician. They may be able to help her look at allergies, hidden food sensitivities, nutritional deficiencies. Before you shake your head, you should know I too had raging (typical of ADHD in adults), scattered thinking, forgetfulness and impulsiveness. By removing dairy and salicylates from my diet (through the Feingold Program…see www.feingold.org) and by supplementing daily and without fail with omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil and flax seed oil) the raging and most other ADHD symptoms have stopped. If I go off my diet or forget my supplements they come right back. My dh can notice within a day of an infraction that I’m slipping!

Trying dietary intervention can’t hurt and it may help. Many adults and children find some relief from symptoms by removing artificial additives (high in phenols which we may be less able to process) and other things like salicylates from our diets. An environmental physician may be able to do blood tests and other tests to see if your wife is maybe being adversely affected by food and chemical sensitivities. My ds gets aggressive if he has wheat, my dd gets depressed (scarily so) if she ingests anything containing or derived from corn. It’s hard to believe such hard psychological and neurological symptoms can come from something you eat, but it can.

It might be a way to start her in treatment if you can’t get her to agree to psychological interventions.

I wish you the best of luck. Sorry to say, I’ve been there. She needs your support and you can fix this together. Try researching the Feingold Association, Provocation/Neutralization Therapy, ALCAT testing, and look at work by Dr. Doris Rapp.

Dear Confused and Bewildered,
You’ve got alot on your shoulders. I wish you the very best and I admire the efforts you’re making on behalf of yourself and your family. In your first message, you said “…(some) things that cause strife in our lives-I realize some of them every marriage goes through.” Well, that’s true, but on the other hand life isn’t supposed to make you feel demoralized and hunted in your own home. I speak as a person who recognizes some of the symptoms you’ve listed in your wife as being present in myself. Being diagnosed, getting treatment, both behaviorally and taking medicine, has helped me very much. I still am uncomfortable thinking of myself as “disabled” with ADHD…but I see evidence of it in my life everyday (I”ll spare you the details).

In anycase, please persist! If for nothing else, you must believe that you and your children deserve peace and tranquility in your lives. My last thought for you is that it is unacceptable for the children to see parents hitting each other (in your case, your wife striking you). It sends a message to them that it is okay, on some level, to do that. My ex (untreated ADD also and unmanaged anger problems) used to scream and yell at me or the kids all the time. I realized one day that my kids are going to think that screaming, on a daily basis, over trivial things, was acceptable behavior. He left 3 years ago when the kids were 18 mos and 3 yrs. Since, my little girl has said to me “It’s so nice not having Daddy yelling at us.” or “Daddy can’t live with us because he’s so mean to you.” Talk about tear-jerkers.

You seem to be doing the right sorts of things, getting help, looking for information—hang tough!

It sounds like you could use some support right now. It sounds like a lot of chaos and unpredictability. There’s a good book called “Boundaries in Marraige” by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. I think that’s the name of it. Also, you would probably benefit from meetings like Alanon or Codependents Anonymous. They’re 12 step meetings where you learn to focus on yourself when living in a situation where you have to walk on egg shells because the person you live with is unstable. Alanon is for people who are in relationships with Alcoholics, but your wife could fit the description of a later stage alcoholic. You would get as much benefits as the other people that are married to alcoholics. I know. I have benefited much and never lived with an alcoholic, but with an unstable unpredictable partner.

Try it, it couldn’t hurt.

Good luck.

To begin, if you do anything dosomething for yourself first- you could probably use somone to talk to on a regular basis just to cope…..
Secondly, your wife needs some serious re-evaluation- I grew up with a bi-polar mom and she sure seems to fit the profile
before she can improve- someone has to pinpoint what is really going on- once she is coprrectly diagnosed and begins a program to adapt- then you may both be able to work on the relationship
I wish you luck

Case Studies in Violence
Many of the child-killers in the Littleton-style incidents were taking mind-altering psychiatric drugs, which had been prescribed by doctors. T.J. Solomon, the 15-year-old from Conyers, Georgia, who shot six classmates in May 1999, was on Ritalin; Eric Harris, 18, one of the two Columbine killers, was taking the anti-depressant Luvox; and Kip Kinkel, the 15-year-old from Springfield, Oregon, who killed both his parents and two schoolmates, and wounded 20 other students in May 1998, had been prescribed the anti-depressant Prozac, one of the most widely prescribed drugs.

These are not isolated cases. Of more than 6 million kids under 18 years of age in America, who have been prescribed Ritalin, Luvox, Prozac, Paxil, and other anti-depressants and psychiatric drugs, for emotional and behaviorial problems, many have committed violent acts, even killings. Many others are walking time-bombs.

On March 6, U.S. News & World Report documented these less-known cases: In California, 16-year-old Jarred Viktor was convicted of murder for stabbing his grandmother 61 times. Ten days earlier, Jarred had been prescribed the anti-depressant Paxil, for preexisting problems. In Kansas, 13-year-old Matt Miller committed suicide (he was found hanging in his closet) after taking the anti-depressant Zoloft for a week. The Miller family has sued Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft.

But the most horrible revelation to date is the documentation that increasing numbers of infants, toddlers, and pre-school children are being zombified with psychiatric drugs produced for adults, before they can even learn to talk, let alone read.

According to JAMA’s Feb. 23 article, “Trends in the Prescribing of Psychotropic Medications to Pre-Schoolers,” children from poor families, especially African-American children, are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AHDH) and prescribed the stimulant Ritalin (methylphenidate) at younger and younger ages, with the number of prescriptions in two study groups having increased more than 300% during 1991-95. The anti-depressant Prozac is just as abused; the article reports that a psychiatric newsletter, citing marketing data compiled by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, reported some 3,000 prescriptions for fluoxetine hydrochloride (the generic name for Prozac) written for children younger than one year old!

The findings, written by a group of doctors from the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and the Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente, in Portland, Oregon, were presented in May 1999, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, D.C. But the dangerous practices haven’t stopped.

The team studied ambulatory care prescription records from 1991 to 1995 from two Medicaid programs (a Midwest state and a Mid-Atlantic state), and from one HMO (health maintenance organization) in the Northwest. Records were checked for enrollees between two and four years old, during those years.

The results should shock the nation: In all three programs, psychotropic medications prescribed for pre-schoolers increased dramatically. The use of methylphenidate increased in all three sites: threefold for the Midwest database, 1.7-fold for the Mid-Atlantic group, and 3.1-fold at the HMO. These records involved over 200,000—more than 158,000 enrolled in the Midwestern state, 54,237 in the Mid-Atlantic state, and 19,322 enrolled in the HMO.

One noticeable pattern is the prevalence of poor children. The Medicaid youth were almost entirely eligible under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC, the former Federal welfare program), and, within the Medicaid groups, “non-whites were over-represented,” i.e., a greater number than in the general population.

There’s no question that the poorest children are being abused. The article says that in 1998, “Pediatric researchers noted that 57% of 223 Michigan Medicaid enrollees aged younger than four years with a diagnosis of ADHD, received at least one psychotropic medication to treat this condition.” Methylphenidate was one of the two most prescribed.

These results show a pattern of premeditated medical abuse. At a March 3 press conference, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) addressed the concerns posed by the JAMA article. He showed the warnings printed with every bottle of Ritalin. In large type, one says: “Warning: Ritalin should not be used in children under six years, since safety and efficacy in this age group have not been established.” A second warning says: “Precautions: Long-term effects of Ritalin in children have not been well-established.” Sen. Dodd demanded that more tests be conducted to test psychiatric drugs on children before they are given out so widely. But the scope of the problem, and the fact that drugs like Ritalin have already killed children in normal doses, and that Ritalin is one of the top ten most abused drugs in the U.S., shows that Sen. Dodd, and others, though well-meaning, are refusing to go beyond “business as usual,” against a phenomenon that is escalating the occurrence of the new violence.

The HMOs—Nazi Drug Dispensaries
In 1998 and 1999, the United Nations’ report on international drug trends, sounded the warning that 85 to 90% of the MPD (methylphenidate, or Ritalin), produced in the world, is consumed in the United States.

On June 22, Pennsylvania State Rep. LeAnna Washington (D-Phila.), testified at Ad Hoc Democratic Party Platform Hearings, facilitated by Lyndon LaRouche’s Presidential campaign committee, in Washington, D.C. Rep. Washington stated:

“In 1987, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was literally voted into existence by the American Psychiatric Association. Within one year, 500,000 children in the United States were diagnosed with this affliction.

“In 1990, the lucrative doors were opened to a cash welfare program to low-income parents whose children were diagnosed with ADHD. A family could get more than $450 a month for each child. In 1989, children with ADHD made up 5% of the disabled population. In 1995, it rose to 25%. In 1991, education grants also funded schools an additional $400 in annual grants money for each child. The same year, the Department of Education recognized it as a handicap, providing children with special services. In 1997, some 4.4 million children were diagnosed with ADHD. In 1996, some $15 billion was spent annually on the diagnosis, treatment, and study of these so-called disorders.

“Ritalin and similar drugs are prescribed to an estimated 6 million to 9 million children and adolescents in the United States. This reflects why Ritalin production has increased an incredible 700% since 1990.”

In fact, studies cited in JAMA and the Journal of Public Health, surveying school nurses in two districts of Virginia in 1998, show that among white male students in the fifth grade, 18% and 20%, respectively, were being given Ritalin for “behavioral problems.”

But a major reason for this catastrophic rise in rates of psychiatric drug use is the Nazi policy known as “managed health care,” through the HMOs that have taken over most health plans today, including Medicaid for the poor, according to Family Therapy Networker an on-line magazine.

The runaway prescribing of anti-depressant drugs for children—with almost 3 million prescriptions written in 1999—is due, in large part, to pressure from managed-care companies that will not pay for therapy or other treatments for children, says an article titled “Generation Rx,” by Rob Waters in Family Therapy Networker. This prescribing of drugs as a substitute for therapy, means that children “are being given unproven threatments more haphazardly, and with fewer practical and legal protections, than adults who volunteer to be paid subjects in the clinical trials of new drugs,” the article says. In fact, many of the drugs being given to children have not been approved for use in children, and have severe physical and psychological side effects.

“Some doctors say they are uneasy about prescribing psychoactive drugs to kids,” the article notes, “but they do so because they doubt that the child’s family can get around managed care’s barrier to therapy,” in which a health plan may refuse to pay, or create months of delays. The situation is even worse for children in poor families. Child psychiatrist Joseph Woolston, the medical director of the children’s psychiatric unit at Yale-New Haven Hospital, says the practice of giving psychoactive medication to children has skyrocketed under managed care. “The pressure to medicate children has increased enormously,” Woolston says. “Every single day we have at least one case where the managed-care reviewer says to us, ‘If you don’t start the child on medications within 24 hours after admission, we will not fund another day of hospital.”

Woolston says that even more alarming, is the practice of putting “probably tens of thousands of kids” on random combinations of psychoactive medications. “We’re using them as guinea pigs, and not even keeping track of them,” he says.

Therapists in private practice say that managed-care reviewers almost always suggest referring children for medication after four to six sessions, even when a child’s distress is clearly related to a parental divorce or some other identifiable interpersonal problem. “Managed care sees this as a cheap way to get rid of the problem,” says one child psychologist.

Heart attacks have felled some children on Ritalin, including a 14-year-old boy in Michigan, and an 11-year-old girl from Ohio. The physical side effects are bad enough, but the psychological ramificiations is nothing short of menticide—America’s “opium war” against her own children.

To me it sounds like your wife is a very unhappy person. Maybe it’s a mixuture of having an LD and whatever her personal struggles might be. Maybe she takes it out on you because you are the only one with whom it is most socially acceptible to fight with. Have you researched Executive Function Disorder? TO answer your question, wheather or not she has ADHD or not is kind of obsolete at this point. She’s got some other stuff going on. Maybe depression or a mood disorder coupled with the stress of everyday life. Nevertheless it’s refreshing to see a concerned husband. Theres hope. I have you and your wife in my prayers.