Getting to know ADHD
ADHD.
According to the GP, psychologist, and psychiatrist, I have it.
This will come as no surprise if you are one of my former teachers. I think it was gently raised in every parent/teacher meeting from the age of 5. Even at the graduation ceremony of my undergrad degree, a lecturer brought it up.
Around 10 years ago my partner said I should get tested because she was tired of me starting sentences and getting distracted half way through, burning out through hyperfocus/obsession, etc.
I procrastinated on that request for those 10 years 🙂
When we started CT, my partner took over the administrative responsibilities of this request. This is because she is an absolute legend and knew that I would never prioritise it over the responsibilities I have to our family, not because I am completely useless and reliant on her for the most basic functioning tasks (please do not seek a quote from her on this). She also recognised the toll starting a new business was taking on my mental health, and wanted to help. She’s a star.
Six months later and I have a little pot of pills that, I am delighted to say, are helping me maintain focus and concentration to levels I’ve never experienced before (to be clear, I do all the other things one is supposed to do to maintain positive mental health and try to stay organised).
But I still don’t really know much about ADHD. I have tried to read and watch videos, but I get distracted by videos about fish tanks and the greatest rugby hits of all time. Last time, I even ended up learning about the history of Godzilla. I don’t even really like Godzilla…
So I thought to myself - what would CT do? We’d go through the orientation process… I do not get distracted during that process because it’s so interesting. So here we are, analysing 5 years of textual conversation about ADHD (from those with it or in suspicion that they might have it) so that I can learn more about this affliction.
Everything you are seeing here is done through our custom built processes and software, making the process very quick. Pace is imperative in the current commercial world, and we prioritise it without compromising on quality.
The first thing we do is organise the text into themes. Here we’re working with a corpus of 100,000 pieces of text - anywhere between 20 and a couple of hundred words each. We have a proprietary process for doing this, and it works well. The world is not black and white, so these aren’t 100% discrete (which we’ll see shortly) but the process does a great job of telling us roughly how people orient themselves around a category or culture. Once the thematic build process is done, we use LLMs to give them a name. We look at this overall and over time.
Overall, it’s relatively consistent. I can see an obvious growth in treatment, which we will explore in due course.
I also want to see how close these themes are to one another. As mentioned, the world is grey. Clear lines between people, topics, and beliefs do not exist. To do this, we create a network graph of all the themes that enable cross-over between their key components.
This helps us build a bit of a mind map of the category. For ADHD, at the centre we have the difficulties that people with ADHD go through with their brain. At first glance, I can see this broadly branches out to help-seeking behaviour (top left), managing mental health (bottom left - bottom), and managing day-to-day life (top - right - bottom).
At this point, we start asking deliberate questions. This is a major benefit of our processes compared to desk research or just Googling stuff. We are not led purely by our own biases, we are led by the truth of the category or culture.
The first thing that comes to mind is ‘how do other people experience this?’ When I’m really struggling with wrangling my brain, I describe it as feeling like my brain is full of flies. Bouncing around in there, difficult to pinpoint, and when you go to get one, it gets clear before you’ve hit it.
But how do other people describe what’s going on in there? To do that, we’ll delve into one of the topics; mental clarity.
Mental clarity is made up of myriad components but, most commonly, it’s about how people are feeling. They are describing their emotional state. This can be in response to treatment or the affliction itself. We can understand this by looking at some of the most common and important components in a wordcloud - this is a bit of a snapshot into what our models see.
I want to understand just how important some of these components are and how they’re trending, which we can do in a few ways. Firstly, I can isolate some of the most important word-pairs.
We can see a rather worrying rise in people referencing intrusive thoughts.
This is interesting to me. I might be oversharing, but I’ve always had these. Ridiculous ‘what ifs’ that jump into my brain and buzz around for a while, stopping me from focusing on whatever it is that I should be focusing on. Or, on occasion, I accidentally say them out loud and receive strange looks.
Is this a trait commonly associated with ADHD? Let’s ask chatGPT. We have it built into our tools, as well as Share Of Search.
Is ADHD commonly associated with an increased propensity for intrusive thoughts?
“ADHD is often associated with an increased propensity for intrusive thoughts. Individuals with ADHD commonly experience difficulties in regulating attention and impulse control, which may lead to frequent distractions and wandering thoughts. These intrusive thoughts tend to arise spontaneously and interfere with their ability to focus on tasks or engage in effective decision-making.”
Great. Thanks robot.
Is that translating to search behaviour?
Yes, alongside ADHD. These obviously aren’t directly linked, but it’s interesting to see the trend. For reference, this is Australian data.
Both ADHD and intrusive thoughts are at the peak of their popularity relative to their history.
All of these feelings and fears within the theme, I can relate to. The ‘constant thoughts’, ‘intrusive thoughts’, ‘brain fog’, and feeling just tired by virtue of the flies (as I like to call them) has been part and parcel of my life for… well, as long as I can remember.
Let’s move on to something more specific. What drugs is everyone taking? This is well represented in the theme of ‘ADHD treatment’.
I don’t really know all the drugs. The doctor told me but I forgot - I just took the ones they recommended. So we’ll ask chatGPT.
What are the most common drugs taken for ADHD?
“The most common drugs taken for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are stimulant medications, which work by increasing levels of certain chemicals in the brain that help with focus and impulse control. The two main types of stimulants used are methylphenidate and amphetamines. Methylphenidate-based medications like Ritalin and Concerta are commonly prescribed, and they come in different forms such as immediate-release and extended-release versions. Amphetamines include medications like Adderall and Vyvanse. These drugs have been found to effectively manage ADHD symptoms in many individuals by improving attention span, reducing impulsiveness, and reducing hyperactivity.”
So, two types; methylphenidate and amphetamines. For the former, it’s Ritalin and Concerta. For the latter, it’s Adderall and Vyvanse.
This graph demonstrates the Share Of Conversation each drug has within our dataset.
It would appear that the amphetamines are currently winning.
It’s worth noting that this trend directly correlates with the increased share of overall conversation the ADHD treatment theme has. Effectively, since 2021, discussion of these medicines has drastically increased. Overall search interest in ADHD also picked up at this exact same time.
If we look at these brands in Share Of Search…
We can see that Vyvanse has recently taken the number one spot in Australia. After a quick Google, it transpires that we don’t have Adderall in Australia. So, there you go.
The popularity of all these drugs is rocketing, but Vyvanse is taking share across the board at a dramatic rate. The strength of its trajectory for the search index is so strong that it extends beyond the graph limits. Meanwhile, its Share Of Search is forecasted to increase by >5% over the next 12 months (we employ various time-series forecasting methods - this one is TBATS)
So… what is this drug actually doing to my brain?
Good old robot friend comes into play here.
According to robot, it’s about dopamine regulation. Methylphenidates increase the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Amphetamines increase the release and block the reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Amphetamines can be taken less regularly as a result. Once a day versus two or three.
So, ultimately it’s about increasing the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine that’s swimming around in there and help me absorb it. Good to know.
This is already a lot of words so, rather than exposing you to any more of my direct lines of questioning, we’ve built a summary of the findings in an infographic. You can download or view a higher res version of the below image here.
I also want to ‘thank’ my ADHD. There are benefits to occasionally having a head full of flies. When I am focused on something, I am really focused on it. When something is interesting to me, I will retain a lot of information about that thing and master it. So, thank you, brain - there’s two sides to every coin.
Hope you’re all having a great day with a good amount of dopamine and norepinephrine.
