well hello friends in ADHD Russ sparkley here hey I just wanted to tell you about a very interesting interview that I just discovered over on Neil Brennan's YouTube channel it's related to his blocks podcast and it's an interview with Trevor Noah about his depression and ADHD and I just wanted to call your attention to it because I think the way Trevor describes ADHD its relationship to his depression what it feels like to have it how comes across to others is is a very useful description one of the better ones I've heard in a while from
somebody suffering with ADHD and also I surprised that uh Trevor confided in people about this but good for him for promoting awareness of ADHD so what I'm going to do is pull a few of the sound bites out of this interview just to illustrate what I'm talking about with this particular uh interview with Noah and here we go you've suffered from depression as an adult and have you tracked it down what do you think maybe there's a reason is a chemical I track it to ADHD that was the can I tell you man the most
frustrating thing look so there he says look I I had depression all the time and when I finally went and explored what this what was going on why this was happening to me he found that it was his ADHD and uh I think that's terrific because many times adults with ADHD as some of you know get misdiagnosed with depression dymia bipolar disorder borderline personality disorder when the root issue is ADHD ADHD has an earlier onset than any of these other disorders and as you know can Downstream lead to problems with depression and especially with anxiety
among others the longer ADHD goes untreated the greater the risk that anxiety and possibly depression will develop in conjunction with it so I thought that was a great point that he was making here now I want to move ahead up to this point and give you another quote that I thought was really cool something we understand and so in the same way people have started understanding autism and Asbergers and you know all all these I feel like 8hd was one of the weirdest ones and it's still one of the stranger ones where people think and
so did I when I was young that ADHD is ah yeah ah this kid can't pay attention ah when in fact what it means is you are unable to control what you pay attention to Kudos on that one that's a terrific comment because people with ADHD are attentive they're just attentive to the wrong things they're attentive to the now as opposed to what they're supposed to be doing what I call Future directed attention so generally when you have ADHD you are paying more attention than most people but to the wrong thing right to Super Mario
Brothers anything yeah yeah it can be like a I can be in a in a classroom let's say I'm in school I'm in a classroom and there's like a little bird on tapping at the window and the teacher's speaking I'm my brain is like that bird is you know what I mean most people are able to go the bird is not consequential to what's happening right now turn it off focus on the teacher my brain sometimes goes that bird man that bird that bird is ridiculous and I yeah that that is so classic I've even
used that example of birds flying by the window in the classroom and the ADHD child is the the one who responds to it everybody knew the bird went by the window or in this case everybody knows the bird is there at the window but Trevor diverts his attention over to it whereas other people ignore that fact because it's not relevant to what they're doing so I thought that was a really nice description there of the distractability that we see in ADHD now here's a uh another segment that talks about his comorbidity of his ADHD and
depression let's listen I think many comedians have ADHD excuse me I think this is the one where he talks about comedians having ADHD let's go I think many comedians become Comedians and are good comedians because they have ADHD because it's such a perfect environment for ADHD and that you have again gets rewarded yeah it's it's but it's also it's like comedy is very distracting there's a lot of people in an audience it's a tight rope you can never you can never turn off you can never get lazy you can never become complacent force is focus
it really does it really does but it forces Focus to the state of flow and it keeps you engaged and it pushes you that's a perfect environment for for a comedian and it's a perfect environment rather for for somebody with ADHD absolutely I think that is spoton because how many celebrities do we know in the Performing Arts in music in standup comedy how many do we know have ADHD a a lot of them I mean hoe Mandel for instance has talked about his ADHD over in music of course there's uh Adam Lavine and and Justin
Timberlake uh and of of course in athletics as we've talked about there are people like uh Simone bils for instance or Noah ly or um the other swimmers and athletes that have confided about their ADHD so uh it's it's out there but there are certain occupations certain niches that allow for ADHD and where ADHD might even be to some extent a bit helpful to them uh but there are other professions where it's not but I think Trevor Trevor hits the uh hits the nail on the head here about comedians now let's go forward here and
take a look at this is where Trevor talks about his depression and ADHD so in that I'm talking to J and I go like I I'm not saying it is or it isn't but it's just weird that no one's considered this yeah when you have the Hallmarks the guy stopped to get a hot dog and then missed his friend's wedding sounds a lot to me like ADHD which a lot of people can misinterpret as just being an by the way but it is executive dysfunction and so when I when I think of these things and
when I've learned what they mean for myself you know when I think of life and you talk about I go oh man it it's it's it's you think it's depression but then you realize that depression is often times a symptom of something else you know and I I hope we get to the point where we start understanding depression a little bit more cuz if we just keep saying to people you're depressed essentially what we're saying is your long-term sad so we need to make you happy like but it's like but what is making you depressed
I find is more interesting and actually gets to the core indeed and you get to that and you find depression I you and I used to talk about it all the time I was like man I suffer from depression people be like do you I was like I think I do I feel it all the time I and then when you understand ADHD you're like oh no I get so did you start so yeah there you go he he finally realizes that his depression is linked to his ADHD and that by Focus focusing more on
trying to manage his ADHD he can in fact help to if not remediate at least improve his depression now I'm going to skip ahead here up toward the end of the interview where he makes a few more comments about ADHD and uh let's let's see what he has to say here this is about the importance of his diagnosis to his understanding and owning who he is let's listen can I tell you the diagnosis is more important than most medications I would argue and I think this is the same for most things in life just knowing
is I would say 80% as effective as treating yeah because when you know you now understand you know what I'm saying yeah like it's you're not crazy there's a there's a big amount of relief to no you weren't imagining things you're not crazy and the people around you weren't imagining things so I've now learned that I I'll have to tell people in my life you know and I wish I knew this before in previous relationships I will tell people now you know my my siblings know my family knows my friends know so they know that
in a moment you may feel me switch in a way that doesn't seem it it sometimes people tell me it seems like I've tuned out M but I haven't to me I'm fully present to me but literally what's happened is my attention has shifted in a way that people can feel so in my head you may have said something that has just taken me to go like huh like what is uh yesterday what happened I I was chatting to friends and then one of them said yeah the shower head is covered in um it's covered
It's like got like a green scaly stuff I got to this is a great example of the distractability of his mind and his mind wandering while he's in a conversation with somebody else uh and just getting way way off task let's listen a little bit more that and the conversation carried on and then my brain went wait is the green if you get green does that mean you have hard water or soft water does La have hot water or does it have soft water I think it has hard water so it's got additional minerals in
it but I don't think the green cuz green isn't green copper that's that's like a huh that's a chemical process that happens when the Copper's in the pipe so what you're probably seeing is a manifestation of the copper in the pipes does vinegar help I think I've read something about vinegar I'm gone yeah classic ADHD in terms of his if you know me as Trevor you just be like hey some friends do that they just be like yeah come back yeah I I like that example where he has friends who cooperate and help him with
his mind wandering to bring him back on task other people may not understand that so okay that's enough of this video uh I've carved it up badly uh but nonetheless I hope it illustrates some excellent points that Trevor is making in this podcast with Neil Brennan about ADHD about its relationship to depression about the importance of the diagnosis of ADHD not to mention that many comedians might have it so so I hope you enjoyed this I put the link over to this particular uh YouTube video I've put it up in the description and uh I
recommend that you go have a listen to it if you've got the 11 minutes it takes to to get through the video so there you go everybody Trevor Noah on having a PhD wonderful interview thanks for joining me for this I thought you'd like to know about it uh I believe it was put up uh sometime in late May of this year but I only just discovered it so I'm passing it along to you all right take care everybody and be well
