What is the Relationship between ADHD and Emotional Management?

Managing emotions is not included in the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and yet it’s a big element of what people with ADD often complain about.

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I always spend quite a bit of time talking with people about what ADHD is, explaining, for example, that it’s been around for a long time. It was first written in English literature in about 1902 and for a long time it was just little kids with behavior problems. And 1980 was when they first came out with the diagnostic criteria that we’re pretty much familiar with now and haven’t made many changes, even though I think they should. And then what we know now is that there are these other aspects of it. For example, the rating scales that I use and several the other people who develop rating skills use, include items on managing emotions.

Managing emotions is not included in the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and yet it’s a big element of what people with ADD often complain about. And so I think it’s useful to have something that’s got a little broader scope than that. But the other element is, after hearing from people about what they’ve noticed about themselves, and after doing those standardized measures for short-term memory and for the extended picture of what ADHD is, and then the DSM criteria – I also like to take some time to just try and explain to them in plain English what is ADHD.