New and needing help

Hello,

I have joined this forum because I have recently made friends with a young man who has been struggling with severe ADHD and no social support for pretty much his whole life. He is now facing his first criminal charge as an adult for B&E after impulsively walking into his a high school portable at night and getting caught by the police. He needs legal assistance, social assistance and psychiatric help and cannot get around to getting any of them because he has no real friends or family helping him out and can't deal with all the organisational aspects of pulling these things together.

While growing up he was pushed around between foster parents and group homes, and missed out on most of his public education because of this. So essentially his reading/writing skills are abysmal, as is his ability to follow conversations or remember things.

I cannot tell how much of his cognitive deficiencies are a) related to his ADHD and b) treatable. He has huge memory lapses, trips over his words and says that even looking at a page full of text causes a kind of 'thought overload' in his head so he just avoids reading in general. I suspect there must be some kind of learning disability behind this, too, but what do I know.

When he was young he went through the psychiatric wringer and says he's been put on every kind of medication under the sun (though he's never had any psychotherapy or counselling. He says all the advice he got was "take meds or hopefully you'll just grow out of it".) He has never dealt with psychiatrists, only pediatricians. So now he's extremely anti-drug, but I am just watching him slip farther down as he just lives avoiding everything that he can't handle.

Help! Is there hope for him? Is really severe ADHD always treatable? What does he need? He wants help and he trusts me, but I don't know what the best first step is. Considering he is so poor, waitlists for pro bono therapists and good treatment could take forever.

I realise this is a crazy first message to post, but anything uplifting or optimistic would be so helpful.

Thank you,

M

Well I am sorry to say that I do not have a whole lot of experience with this. But if he did get into legal trouble and he is in the united states, the state will grant him an attorney if he cant afford one. if he can somehow tell his attorney all that you have just told us then they can order a mental evaluation to see that he really is sick. then that will somehow play into what he is charged with in court and he will probably be forced by the governement to seek the help, and they will most likely set that up for him. Sorry i cannot be of more help!!

Good Luck x
Blue Eyes

Hi Friend:
You're good to seek help for him like this, but the fact is that if he is resistant to counselling and meds, coupled with avoidant tendancies, then he is (IMO) likely to remain stuck.

I recently found an ADD/ADHD coach for my husband, who also tends to avoid dealing with his issues head-on. She isn't free, but she is much more affordable than a psychologist and some social workers. He seems to like her a lot. Of course, several years ago there was no way he would have considered coaching, counselling or meds, but now does all three. The meds needed to come first, in his case, to wipe away the apathy that prevented him from seeing potential for the other two to be effective.

Good luck,
LMo

thanks for the responses, I was stressing quite a bit before.

I just saw him recently djing for a show and he seems very grateful that I actually am taking an interest in helping him with his condition (unlike his other 'friends', who he meets through the nightclub he works in, who don't seem to know what being a good friend entails.)

I myself have had to go through treatment for a bout of mental illness back in the day, so he does seem to really appreciate the fact that I understand how frustrating treatment can be and how hard mental illness is on your self-esteem. He recognises that he needs help. How long it will be before he'd be willing to try meds again is a whole other story, however.

But if his case goes to court, and his disorder is recognised, they'll probably make him take meds anyway. I just really hope it's not coercive this time around, as opposed to when he was too young to understand what all the meds were about. Nothing ruins compliance more than when doctors prescribe things and then don't listen to how the patient is reacting, or adjust dosages accordingly.

Does anyone have any advice for how to get someone to open up to meds, and or how to reduce side effects? He says that stuff like Ritalin and Cylert made him feel so twitchy and 'cracked out'...

M

Well definitely help him check out Strattera, if he doesn't like the twitchiness of Ritalin or the other stimulants. My husband hasn't had ANY side effects with his current dose, but he did have trouble with sleeplessness at his prescribed dose.

For us, my husband wouldn't consider meds until he heard it from a psych. nurse. Neither his school counselor, our therapist (at the time, a social worker) nor I could talk him into it. The psych. nurse at the clinic explained it in scientific rather than psychological terms, and he seemed to buy into it more readily that way. Thank the stars, I might add.

I am glad you came to PC! You sound like a kind person and a great sorce of support for members with ADHD/ADD.