Mental Health
Unfortunately, ADHD is quite closely associated with mental health difficulties and especially anxiety and depression in later life.
Being aware of this can help you to prepare for such eventualities and take measures to protect yourself if you begin to experience problems.
Mental health in young people with ADHD
Many young people have difficulties with friendships and social interaction, caused partly by their immaturity (i.e. developmental delay) and lack of social skills, and that this can have a profound effect on self-esteem. For all that we tend to think of ADHD as the very over-confident child or ‘class-clown’, such youngsters can be very lonely and unsure about their place in the peer group.
Early self esteem difficulties may predict difficulties in later life
It is important that we recognise that those with low self esteem in early life are often extremely vulnerable and may experience very poor outcomes in later life.
The majority of adults with ADHD in the UK are not being treated for their ADHD, but are instead receiving medication for anxiety and depression instead.
Many are also ‘self-medicating’, which means using substances available in the community to alleviate their ADHD symptoms.
The most common forms of self-medication for those with ADHD involve:
Nicotine
Alcohol
Cannabis
These may offer temporary relief, but can lead to serious health and mental health complications.
For obvious reasons, it is important to be very careful about using anything that might provide short-term symptom relief but increase difficulties over the long term.
Both cannabis and alcohol fall into this category, with the former being associated with increased risk of quite serious mental health problems in the late teenage years, and the latter with liver damage and depression.
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Struggling with your mental health?
Why not contact us for a chat? We have lots of experience supporting those with mental health difficulties and can signpost you to people and organisations with specialist experience of supporting and improving mental health.