ADHD As A Difference In Cognition, Not A Disorder: Stephen Tonti

Saw this on my Facebook page and i had to watch it because im ADHD.

Stephen is a Senior Directing major at Carnegie Mellon. He is also the current President of Carnegie Mellon's Film Club. He recently completed his Thesis Project within the School of Drama: a production of Mac Wellman's "A Murder of Crows." He is currently working on creating a collective of Film Enthusiasts across Carnegie's Campus as well as other colleges and universities around Pittsburgh. You can find out more about Stephen and his talk on his website: www.stephentonti.com or follow his blog "Caffeine, Nicotine, and ADHD: a guide to maintaining sanity."

He goes a little bit into his life story and how he was diagnosed with ADHD. He says we are attention different, not deficit. He says we sedate the symptoms of ADHD, which makes sense with the medication (amphetamines). Honestly the medication is disgusting and shouldnt be given to children, i know from personnel experience. He goes on to tell the people in the audience we need a healthier understanding with people who ADHD which i completely agree with. Having ADHD my whole life i understand what he means because ADHD has benefit me in a lot of ways execept for when it comes to school. I find i am more intelligent (or aware) then most others around me, i work harder at work, i can multitask better, i learn faster, better memory, i am more athletic then a lot of others around me.

He then goes on to say schools need to take a better attitude towards students with ADHD and the school system needs to have more autonomy to accommodate a wider variety of students. He then says we should teach kids to teach them selves and society needs to embrace cognitive diversity. AWSOME! Man i agree with that, why do we suppress cognitive diversity, isn't that what makes the world go round?

Anyway enjoy...

Carnegie Melon

Thats a link to the school he goes to.

Wiki..

The university began as the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900. In 1912, the school became Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University. The university's 140-acre (0.57 km2) main campus is 3 miles (4.8 km) from Downtown Pittsburgh and abuts the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Schenley Park, and the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in the city's Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods, partially extending into Shadyside.

I find i am more intelligent (or aware) then most others around me, i work harder at work, i can multitask better, i learn faster, better memory, i am more athletic then a lot of others around me.

GOOD GOD!!
They cant have people running loose who can think for themselves!!

Take your drugs and be like everyone else!

reply to post by VoidHawk


Thats what they did to me when i was kid until i was 13 then i started to refuse their treatment. I never liked what it did to me.

reply to post by onequestion


I think there are a FEW people who may be a little different (not sick) and in a normal human society thats the way it should be.
I'm good at this..
Your good at that...
etc...

But!
They want us to all be the same, because we're easier to manage like that, we become predictable and controllable.

Theres a Sir Ken Robinson vid that discusses this, I'll go look for it.

Here it is. The map shows how the incidents of ADHD is interestingly spread!

Learning IMHO is not something everyone does in exactly the same fashion and that's the failure of the "One size fits all' education system. I'm an aspy with ADD and teaching me is very hard in the traditional educational sense. You can talk at me till you're blue in the face and chances are I won't learn a thing. However, if I find something interesting and desire to know more just get out of my way because I'm on a mission. At the end of the day, I will understand completely what I set out to learn. I really think the "One size fits all" system is very valuable if you only want to churn out masses of compliant sheep. Now off to watch the video

reply to post by minkmouse

Im also like that in ways. If i take a class i wont learn #. Lets take computer programming for example.... i took a class with a teacher who would answer my questions and spend time with me and kind of allowed me to do what i wanted with the language rather then what i was suppose to learn. I was scripting off the top of my head and creating functional programs in days. Then when i took classes with teachers who were more restrictive i wasnt learning anything.

What gets me is when people self diagnose themselves. My sister swears up and down she has it yet she can sit and read a book half the day or play her WoW for hours on end amongst other things.

Maybe I just don't get it or have it wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if TV with its commercials fragments thinking and does not allow a brain to keep a thought going for more than anfew minutes conditioning people into ADHD and OCD symptoms.

But I am no doctor and really have to claim ignorance.

Originally posted by minkmouse
Learning IMHO is not something everyone does in exactly the same fashion and that's the failure of the "One size fits all' education system. I'm an aspy with ADD and teaching me is very hard in the traditional educational sense. You can talk at me till you're blue in the face and chances are I won't learn a thing. However, if I find something interesting and desire to know more just get out of my way because I'm on a mission. At the end of the day, I will understand completely what I set out to learn. I really think the "One size fits all" system is very valuable if you only want to churn out masses of compliant sheep. Now off to watch the video

edit on 20-4-2013 by minkmouse because: (no reason given)

I'm much the same. Taught myself to program computers, taught myself about electronics, taught myself about mechanics.
I can write programs, repair a tv, and repair my car. At school I learnt NOTHING! All I saw was a persons mouth opening and closing and a lot of hot air. Had they said to me - Heres the problem, can you find a solution? I think I could've coped, but all I got was "NOT LIKE THAT, DO IT LIKE THIS" and that made no sense to me whatsoever.

Originally posted by Terminal1
What gets me is when people self diagnose themselves. My sister swears up and down she has it yet she can sit and read a book half the day or play her WoW for hours on end amongst other things.

Maybe I just don't get it or have it wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if TV with its commercials fragments thinking and does not allow a brain to keep a thought going for more than anfew minutes conditioning people into ADHD and OCD symptoms.

But I am no doctor and really have to claim ignorance.

If you'd lived my childhood I assure you you would know I'm not self diagnosed. I began attending Littlegreen boarding school in England when I was 7. I can't stand many sounds, boiling water being one of many. Boiling water makes me want to find the nearest sledge hammer and drive the pot straight to the core of the earth. What stands out in my mind though is how most of the negative effects began to dissipate after I quit school in grade nine and left home to join the British army. Over time, it has become a tolerable condition (I still keep boiling water and sledgehammers out of my life) By the age of 45 I decided to get a diploma and am now a company director of the services the company I work for provides. If, years ago, someone had told my parents where I'd eventually end up, they would probably have died earlier than they did of hysterical laughter

reply to post by VoidHawk

I can write programs, repair a tv, and repair my car. At school I learnt NOTHING! All I saw was a persons mouth opening and closing and a lot of hot air. Had they said to me - Heres the problem, can you find a solution? I think I could've coped, but all I got was "NOT LIKE THAT, DO IT LIKE THIS" and that made no sense to me whatsoever.

I can identify with what your saying. I was never able to learn math by how they taught it in class.

Now i can solve algorithms or create them if i want. Now i almost do it intuitively but thats because i learned all of this problem solving on my own.

reply to post by onequestion


I agree with this man.

I was on ADHD medication until I was 14. Luckily my dad noticed that I could hyper focus on things I was interested in and backed me up in refusing medication.

I'm sure I'll regret this post, but I don't think medication is a bad option if it is kept at as low a dose as possible, is only continued because it's helping, and is only given when there is a valid reason for it. I fought against meds for one of my kiddos for years because I didn't want him drugged up all the time. Finally gave in to see if it would make a difference, and it did. His grades improved, he wasn't constantly in trouble at school for not paying attention and wandering around the room when he wasn't supposed to, and he was happier. It made a world of difference. If used appropriately, it can be beneficial. The problem, as I see it, is that too many parents want their kids to be completely compliant instead of accepting that they're going to do things you tell them not to because they're children. Our doc made certain to keep the dose low, and it was just enough to help my son focus when he needed to but still allowed him to run and bounce off the walls when focusing on something wasn't necessary.

I really don't need anyone to reinforce my belief that most of the kids on ADHD do not need drugs. I understand the disease and know that 90 percent of the diagnoses are wrong. Foods are powerful drugs if they are utilized in the right way. They have told us that some good foods that help with attention are bad for us, leading to problems with ADHD. Sometimes I think that this is purposely being done, but I find it is just because a real lot of people are dumb and greedy. The government needs to come clean and say they listened to the wrong people. The government needs to look at their food additives. If they can't figure it out, they can call me. The only problem is that by telling people the truth, our fragile unreal economy may go bust.

reply to post by rickymouse


Almost our entire economy is built on curroption if really take a look at it. Its kind of scary and saddening at the same time. It really is a house of cards, its almost as if, if someone really does tell the truth, this whole world will collapse.








- Cheesefacehologram

reply to post by onequestion


The purpose of ADHD and ADD is to identify children who are creative, and not obedient to authority, and to collectively weed them out of the social circle, and effectively the gene pool by dosing them with neurotoxins and psychiatric medication.

Check out the list of "Symptoms" of ADD and ADHD:

Inattention may not become apparent until a child enters the challenging environment of school. In adults, symptoms of inattention may manifest in work or in social situations.
* Difficulty paying attention to details and tendency to make careless mistakes in school or other activities; producing work that is often messy and careless
* Easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli and frequently interrupting ongoing tasks to attend to trivial noises or events that are usually ignored by others
* Inability to sustain attention on tasks or activities
* Difficulty finishing schoolwork or paperwork or performing tasks that require concentration
* Frequent shifts from one uncompleted activity to another
* Procrastination
* Disorganized work habits
* Forgetfulness in daily activities (for example, missing appointments, forgetting to bring lunch)
* Failure to complete tasks such as homework or chores
* Frequent shifts in conversation, not listening to others, not keeping one's mind on conversations, and not following details or rules of activities in social situations

Hyperactivity symptoms may be apparent in very young preschoolers and are nearly always present before the age of seven. Symptoms include:

* Fidgeting, squirming when seated
* Getting up frequently to walk or run around
* Running or climbing excessively when it's inappropriate (in teens this may appear as restlessness)
* Having difficulty playing quietly or engaging in quiet leisure activities
* Always being 'on the go'
* Often talking excessively

why do we suppress cognitive diversity

Because it's easier to control the population through mass media manipulation if they all think the same way.


Oh, and here is a good one for you to peruse...

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a diagnosis described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as an ongoing pattern of anger-guided disobedience, hostilely defiant behavior toward authority figures which goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior.
en.wikipedia.org...

I'd just like to point out that ADHD is a spectrum disorder. There are some who are more hyper, though their attention spans seem fine, while there are others who have absolutely no or little attention.

Since the former are more prevalent - I myself am unusually hyper, though my attention span is perfectly fine - than the latter, I accept the difference in cognition interpretation. However, those with actual lagging attention spans, really are suffering from a serious attentional disorder that affects their lives in myriad ways.

If you've ever met someone with serious ADHD, you would have no choice but to conclude that it is a serious cognitive disorder.

At the same time, as the Arrowsmith program shows, such a disorder is hardly permanent. ADHD is reversible in the majority of cases. The area which appears to be under-exercized is the orbitofrontal cortex - where attention is mostly localized. All you need to do is work on subjects that exercise this neurological area of the brain.

It's amazing what sustained and regular attention can do to the brain. Tourettes syndrome, OCD, depression, PTSD, and a host of other comorbidities can be either controlled, or reversed, through regular exercise of the will. Some researchers have even gone further into claiming that Bipolar and Schizophrenia could potentially be reversed through will power.

Research has shown that the thought disorders concomitant with Schizophrenia can be eliminated by exercising circuitry that demands long-term attention. Thought disorder results from the inertia schizophrenics become inured to due to the strong activity of non-volitional stimuli. They in short, become passive. When they decide to become active, such as in reading or learning a language, engaging in logic games, etc, the thought disorder diminishes, and attention span increases. The voices of course are still there, but they are far easier to handle when you can think clearly.

We'll be discussing this topic on tonights ATS Live! Radio show. Join us!

Details here - www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by neformore


Hey Nef, thanks! I'm interested to see what everyone thinks about this subjec as its had a major impact on my life.