Adult ADHD

What exactly are the symptoms of adult ADHD, and do they differ that much from the more well know childhood condition?  Adults with ADHD have problems that are often divided into six major areas of executive functioning, those of activation, focus, effort, emotion, memory and action.  The first is in the function of activation, which can cause difficulty getting started on projects, procrastination, excessive messiness and disorganization and an inability to prioritize tasks properly.  This can lead to an underestimating of the time needed to finish a task and can have major problems to a person’s working life.  They can also have problems with focus, which is an inability to screen out distractions, "Zoning out" when others are talking and randomly skipping from topic to topic in conversation.  This can cause people to have to read words over and over in order to grasp the meaning, and means people have to take longer on their tasks and have less time for other things.

Effort and persistence is the third area of problems, leading to a difficulty sustaining effort over long periods of time, the starting of multiple tasks, and the missing of deadlines.  It can also lead to difficulty going to sleep at night and staying focused during the day.  Emotion and the difficulty in regulating emotions is also a problem area, people become easily bored, suffer a low tolerance for frustration and experience unstable, unpredictable moods.  A quick temper and constant worrying can also be negative effects for a person who has difficulty in regulating emotions.

The fifth area of problems is in the area of memory, with trouble remembering things, inability to recall conversations, and the forgetting of appointments being common.  People can also lose or misplace things easily, which of course leads to major problems with both work and family life.  The final area of problems is with action, including problems with  self-regulation and self-control .  This means people have an inability to delay gratification, speak without thinking and act impulsively without regard for consequences.  This can make people jump to conclusions and make rash and thoughtless decisions, which would also cause problems in work and relationships.