“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can seriously help another without helping himself.” – Charles Dudley Warner
Katherine Jahnke has a son with ADD and decided to start a CHADD support group in Bravos, Texas. One reason was to break down the myths and stereotypes of children and adults with ADD.
“It’s OK for people to talk about other illnesses, but if it deals with the brain, they don’t want to talk about it for some reason,” Jahnke said. “They need to realize that the brain is an organ, and it gets ill like anything else.”
This is true, it’s almost like people in North America devalue the brain as something that’s either not important or that they’re afraid to talk about. You don’t hear people saying things like “well I’m not putting my son on heart medication or insulin”. But the make the same comments about ADD medications. One reason people with ADD don’t get diagnosed and treated is because of the ignorance and stigma of others.
Can you imagine going up to a person with diabetes and saying “there’s no such thing as diabetes, it’s a conspiracy of the insulin companies, you just need to stay away from sugar and think happy thoughts.” You might get punched out. Yet people do the equivalent to ADDers and expect not to get beat up. Here’s a way to explain it as an alternative to violence.
“I was one of those people who didn’t mind saying my son had ADHD,” said Jahnke, who added she also used to suffer from ADD as a child. “I knew he wouldn’t get the help he needed in school and other places if I didn’t say anything. Once I started to talk about it, lots of other parents would start asking me questions.”
Instead of repeating herself continually, Jahnke said it would be easier to just get a group of people together to discuss the challenges… “At our first meeting, someone would say something, and you’d see the rest of the room nod their heads because they were going through the same thing.”
As someone who leads The Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group, the adult group of CHADD Vancouver and who sits on the board of CHADD Vancouver, I know that ADD support groups can be tremendously useful and valuable to ADDers.
One constant comment I hear from group members is that they’re grateful to be able to talk to others with ADD and that they can feel comfortable doing so, and they “get” ADD. A place where an ADDer can go and know they’re not the only one in the room with ADD problems. It can be very rewarding to facilitate an ADD support group, and ADDers are rarely boring:)
Here’s some websites that list ADD support groups:
List of 35 Canadian ADD support Groups
List of International ADD support Groups
List of US ADD support Groups
ADDA. See the finding help section
ADD Resources. See their directory
If there’s no ADD support group in your area, why not start one? I did. Here’s a link to a section on my website on how to start, run and promote Support groups. I have links to 27 articles and Ebooks on the topic. You don’t have to read them all:)