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How Does ADHD Resemble Diabetes?
Physical and mental health conditions share more similarities than is commonly assumed.
Lots of people struggle with mental health conditions. An even greater number of people struggle with the concept of mental health conditions.
To many, mental health conditions seem completely different than problems with our physical health.
One way to try to understand something is to compare it to another thing that we think we already comprehend. People often contrast mental health conditions to physical ailments, or what doctors call “somatic” conditions after the Greek word “soma,” meaning body. Many people find it easier to conceptualize somatic conditions because they can often see a body part that looks injured or defective — a broken leg, or ulcers on the leg of a person with diabetes.
But the assumptions that people make about differences between somatic and mental health conditions are often inaccurate or even flat out wrong. In a recent New York Times Magazine article about ADHD, the author, Paul Tough, frequently contrasts how ADHD differs from the medical condition of diabetes, with a strong implication that ADHD isn’t as real as diabetes. He points out differences between the two conditions that on first take might seem large and substantive, yet most…
