ADHD memes

Wouldn't matter if you filled it out you still be denied. You have to pay an attorney to be approved.

What a great example of a catch-22

Anyone who has been through the process of applying for, and succrssfully recieving SSDI, knows that every single step and element of the process is at least one, if not multiple Catch 22s.

Hey uh, here's a real basic one:

Oh, are you homeless?

No permanent address?

You basically cannot apply for anything, anywhere, any kind of food assistance like SNAP, TANF, actual SSDI, Section 8...

You literally cannot even do step one if you're already fucked out of a home.

This is why you really luck out if you can get into a shelter that lets you use them as an address, and also the staff isn't stealing/opening the mail, or just maybe they lose half of it, or say you can't have it now because your crippling injury meant you got back to the shelter 3 minutes after curfew, try next week, after it needs to already be sent back out again with a response, or you can't apply again for 6 months.

Simultaneously, there are basically zero emergency housing resources for those who are not yet homeless, but going to become homeless soon.

Oh you're not homeless yet? You don't qualify.

Try again after your life has been ruined, no, we don't try to stop lives from being ruined, we shuffle them around afterward.

Has to be the funniest novel I've ever read. So many moments that literally made me lol

It's the level of hoops an ADHD person needs to jump through to get any treatment, let alone adequate treatment. Forms, calling for appointments, more forms, tracking stuff, nagging your doctor to full prescriptions, and so on. Every step of which is another wall to climb for an ADHD person.

Everything about the process to get both diagnosed and treated involves tasks that are not compatible with the ADHD brain.

As someone with a family who absolutely doesn't give a single shit about the difficulty of living with ADHD and just tells me to "get over it and stop being so lazy"... yes, they most likely didn't have anyone willing to lend a hand and help them in the way they needed help because regular people don't tend to think of the things we struggle with as being challenging enough to warrant needing assistance with.

Having a supportive community is a privilege that so many take for granted.

As someone with ADHD, finding the energy to ask someone for help can be just as difficult as sucking it up and just filling out the form. That's the problem with ADHD: your brain physically stops your body from getting up and doing the things it needs to do.

Personally I need to be high as fuck on stimulants to accomplish anything, which sucks ass cause I really hate how they make me feel. But I can't accomplish shit unless I'm absolutely tweaking off my ass on Adderall like a fucking meth addict.

I’ve been diagnosed with adhd. I’ve had multiple doctors completely ignore it. Just nothing. It’s still untreated. This is mental health is America.

I think reinforced digital isolation is a big part of the problem. This is something that could be solved by calling the service phone number or asking at the library or a help group, a doctor's office etc... It might be extra hoops to jump through but there's not any physical or communication barrier completely blocking her. Instead she clicks a button and gets a form and automatically feels completely helpless.

A 20 page form should take like ~30-45 minutes with help, it's not a huge ask and doesn't require as strong of a support network as some people in this thread are claiming. She's got a phone and can read and talk, the only thing that could lower this hurdle further is support information being stapled to the front of the form.

Now it's a different issue once the bureaucracy requires multiple followups, workday visits, transportation for evaluation, etc...

You're assuming they have someone supportive in their life.

Went through diag with husband last year. The paperwork they got me to fill out out was pretty basic, but detailed, and if he had the familial network to recognise and support his condition, he wouldn't have gotten diagnosed in his 40's.

Could Katie really not ask a family member or close friend for help with this?

If she gets to it or even knows about it.

No, seriously, that's a real problem with mental dysfunctional disorders. There are lot's of institutions/help groups (at least here) that are happy to help. But you don't know what you should know.

Bold of you to assume I've got that kind of support structure and the ability to explain to other people what I need

Please really do watch out with the weed. Especially for people with ADHD it's an insanely slippery slope. I know empty words are hard to get motivated over and it might seem like the only way you can function for now, but I had to go through all that; It's gonna get to a point where you consistently break the rules you set for yourself so you can be perpetually high while the effect subsides more and more and then all you have left is to quit cold turkey.

I sympathize. Weed is bad for focusing, but good for helping me sleep when the Shame thoughts come. And at its peak I was drinking around 1000mg of caffeine via coffee a day and I still was barely functional. It took me at least three years to find a company that would take my insurance and also do the testing. Now that I have my brain drugs I don't think I can go back. And it's giving me mental space to work through the old traumas, which means less weed to sleep and less often. My goal is to not be reliant on cannabis or antidepressants, hopefully by the end of 2026. But I definitely need the medicine now so that I have the mental capacity to do the therapy work

"you can get these bionic legs to replace the ones that were amputated but you have to run up the 10,000 step path without assistance first. Also, you're being timed and if it's not fast enough, you won't get them. We won't tell you what time you have to make."

Cool!

We all know all mentally disordered people have strong support networks, the ability to schedule things, manage stress, move around a town or city, etc etc.

Not everybody has a partner, a friend, family to fall back on, lots of people are mentally disordered and in crisis because they got fucked over by those people.

The system is broken, and its on purpose.

I used to work for a nonprofit, we helped these people best we could, but the way the government makes you do things is a laughable joke, its broken.

But hey, that was at least back when any of this shit still had any funding and was still kind of working.

Now?

Now?!

Yeah, my guess would be if you started say an SSDI application today, handed it in finished perfectly... 1 to 2 years before you get your first pass/fail result back.

Imagine how much better the economy would be if people weren't forced to prop up absolutely shitty companies they don't believe in just to pay their bills. Like, we might actually have improving products and experiences instead of a constantly diminishing race to the bottom.

They gave you disability support for adhd alone?