What if the missing piece is that ADHD is emotional? Dr. Sasha Hamdani, author of Too Sensitive, makes this point.
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ADHD diagnoses are on the rise in the United States, but what if professionals are missing a key part of the disorder? In the 1970s, some clinicians recognized that many of their ADHD patients had problems with emotional regulation. But since it was easier to measure behavior than emotions, these criteria ended up disappearing from the radar. Today, in the United States, emotional dysregulation is not part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Dr. Sasha Hamdani thinks this needs to change. In today’s episode she talks about her book Too sensitiveand explains what happens in the brains of people with rejection-sensitive dysphoria.
Interested in more mental health science? Send us your question to shortwaves@npr.org.
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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones fact-checked. The sound engineer was Jimmy Keeley.
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