[Simmy22]

I am a uni student , i want to study but i can;t, i m getting more and more frustrated and am having suicidal thoughts. I was diagnosed with depression at age 19, however i started noticing that I get depressed when exams are nearby, because i can;t study. my psychiatrist doesn t want to give me an add diagnosis yet, but i know i have it. Don't know what to do. My finals are in 2 months. pls help

[Travelinglady]

What does your psychiatrist say? From what little information you said, I can't respond to whether you might have ADD/ADHD.

How about seeing a therapist, to see if he/she can help? Does your uni have a counselor available? I suggest you check into that.

You are not "hopeless"! Hang in here!

[Maus5321]

Are you always depressed or does your depression start only when exams come around or does your normal level of depression go up as exams get closer?

Did you struggle as a child studying or doing school work? Did you always have to be prompted or reminded to stay on task by a teacher or to work quietly and alone during times of self study? Did you have trouble staying in your seat as a child. Were you quite forgetful? Did you have a hard time remembering instructions or do exactly as you were instructed?

Maybe try taking one of the ADHD quizzes on here and let us know the score. They are not perfect will give an idea though. Also more information would be helpful so we can give you our thoughts. Best of luck to you.
Also remember this is not the end of the road. Things will get better. Just have to stay persistent and slowly but surely things will get better.

[Simmy22]

My psychiatrist says that it is unlikely ADD since I arrived till 5th yr Uni, however when I do these online tests I do get a high score for ADD. I ve had therapists, but since I had been diagnosed with depression before, they just stop there, and I want to know why. I am usually ok and only feel depressed when I don't manage to concentrate on my books. I get so frustrated that I spend hours looking at the same page, that then I get tired and just fall asleep. It has been like this since I remeber. I usually do crash courses a day, or mostly a week before exams and get good marks still. But for the final exams I can't do a crash course as I have to study the whole 5 years!

[Maus5321]

Ok it seems like there could be a possibility. Does your PDOC have a specialty in ADD? If not I would try to find one who does. The doctors who do not like handing out the diagnosis. There has been great strides made in the Area's of ADD for quite some time now but doctors still do not like to diagnose it. So it is better to try and find one who has a specialty in it or to talk to a therapist because typically they deal with and see more ADD patients then PDOCS do. Also to help the doctor see you may have ADD is to get all your old transcripts out starting in kindergarten and checking and reading all the teacher comments. Looking for things such as: Talks excessively, difficulty working alone, Leaving others alone to do there work, Does not follow instructions, Trouble waiting turn etc. If things like this are present in your school transcripts throughout your life it really helps the doctor to make the diagnoses as this shows a pattern through out your lifetime that did not just pop up in thew last year or two. Or at least give them something go off of. When I finally found my PDOC through various searches online. I went to my first appointment and we talked for a little over two hours. She asked me why I was there I said lets start with this handed her my transcripts and that is where we went from. WE talked she asked me questions I talked. After it was all said and done and she had taken her history of me. She told me she did not even have to do the history to know I had ADD. Sometimes it is just that visible. But sometimes it is not and it takes longer to find out.

Back to your studying and staring at a page, when you are doing this are you staring and your brain is thinking about other things and or wandering, rather then studying the page you are looking at? DO you ever read a whole page forget what it said and have to reread it? Do your thoughts become so intrusive sometimes that you have to just walk away or sit there and stare trying to get it under control?

It is also harder to diagnose now because we have what Dr. Hallowell in a book of his I read calls pseudo ADD. The society we live in now is so technologically advance that we are almost all being trained to have ADD to a degree. Smart phones, computers, TV, All fast data entry into are brains, So when we do things we expect fast and immediate results. Xboxes Playstations, anything that gives us pleasure at a fast pace, basically sensory overload that our brain struggles to filter thus giving the person or people a shorter attention span to be able to keep up and filter the info. Which in turn also trains the brain to be have a shorter time where focus can be maintained and does not like any sustained mental effort. So this also presents and issue to some doctors in trying to pick out the differences between the two. But like I said earlier, If you bring transcripts and show the pattern has been going on your whole life and not in just recent years it will help a specialty doctor of ADD make the diagnosis easier.

I was one of the unfortunate People who slipped through the cracks. I was not particularly hyper in school, Also at the time I was in elementary school. Add was coming on stronger and gaining momentum through out the 80's and 90's but it was not widely accepted everywhere and teachers and staff didn't always see it has ADD they would just see a kid who cannot behave. But they did not know the signs of it then. But now in even more recent years teachers are starting to be able to see the signs and tell something else is going on and they usually make the first observations and alert the parent. So it is being more widely accepted now and the proper help is getting in place far earlier now.

Well hope this helps a little more, Also ADD'ers tend to ramble Adderall had not kicked in yet while I was writing this

[Simmy22]

Yes it-s exactly like that, I start to read and then think about a million other things rather then what I was reading. I can stare at the same page for hours. But then in the last week, before exams I manage somehow. I don-t remember my childhood well, I-m only 23, but had a very difficult childhood, as I had to be the parent of both my parents, so I managed to eliminate most of my memories. The fact is that I had a high IQ, so since I did well in school, I don-t think anyone noticed anything, plus I think my depression had already set in from age 8.
Is it normal to go for work, 8 hrs, and then be so tired, that you have to sleep till the following morning? I can manage to focus quite well for approx 3 hours at school, then I get so tired, that I feel like someone is sitting on my eyes, and I get migraines. I never managed to study after school, or work, even if I take a nap. The only way I studied for an exam last year, was by watching you tube videos on the subject. I am always tired..

[-jimi-]

You can get diagnosed at any point in life. I was in my 4th decade when I got diagnosed. But then again there were just two categories of kids when I was little, normals and retards. Autism, ADHD and dyslexia was seen as either being retarded or lazy, I was in the latter category.