I was really in the ADHD assessment saying I had no family history of neurodivergence, knowing damn well my dad and one of my sisters have the exact same symptoms of me
I got finally diagnosed recently and I know as a matter of fact that my father does have ADHD too and I’m keeping tabs on my little sister… If you start unraveling there’s a ton of family history in my case.
only a slim majority of the people who assessed me agreed that i’m on the spectrum and the dissenter likewise pointed at a lack of family history; somehow, she refused to believe that generations of entire families can have no medical history and refuse to see physicians of any kind.
i would later come to understand that she had a very privileged view that made it impossible to realize that poor people don’t have general practitioners, much less any kind of therapist and her actions set me back by almost a decade and costed me my livelihood several times in that decade. both of the assessors since her have agreed that i’m on the spectrum.
the people assessing you are people like anyone else complete with their on prejudices and priorities and the same goes for family; most of mine refuse to believe in adhd or autism or even psycho therapy and they likewise point to a lack of history, ignoring that we’re the first generation to even know what “general practitioner” means.
Yes, i was but i think i got very lucky in my doctor being awesome
Yep on autism and yep afaik on ADHD.
Maybe some of my cousins got diagnosed with ADHD and it wasn’t talked about, quite possibly, or maybe they beat me to the late-diagnosed adult ADHD line after I went no contact with one side of the family, also very much in the realms of possibility.
That is precisely how my assessment went. “Any family history?” “Like, doctor diagnosed? Or just because I damn well know they are?”
Outside of anxiety, I’m the only one diagnosed with autism. But I am pretty sure my mom, dad, and brother all have it too. All completely undiagnosed and rawdogging life without any sort of therapy. Somehow all are doing better than I am. I think both my mom and sister were diagnosed with anxiety but I do suspect my sister has undiagnosed OCD.
Oh, also I’m the only one that is diagnosed with severe depression. Yay.
I’m the first diagnosed, but I’m certain my mother also has ADHD and her mother probably has some mild OCD.
Yes but my sister was diagnosed not long after me
Both my parents are clearly ADD, but I was the one to get diagnosed. I clearly get a double dosage of those genes as well, unlike my elder siblings.
Yes for autism but somehow my grandma got diagnosed with ADHD years ago and no one else decided to look into it. My other side is pretty ND seeming but no diagnoses.
CW : mention of suicidal thoughts
spoiler
I’m first with any of the diagnostics I had along the way. Though hypomanic bipolarity fits quite well with my father where he had spurs of out of nowhere ideas and projects to then shortly abandon them later. His incomprehension of my self-harm and suicide idealisation while I was a teen, saying that it was for weak people, can also show how he coped with his own thoughts, but I’ll never know.
I’m pretty sure my big brother also has something, or just a classical cis-man with anger issues. But the rest of the siblings are churning along quite fine I believe.