I've been on this forum for nearly 9 years and have separated myself from my spouse in many areas. We live together and do some things together but I no longer depend on him, fix his mistakes, or apologize for him. I've dealt with most of the issues others have posted about and will say that there is no fixing your spouse. They aren't going to clean, or take out trash, or pick up the kids on time. You must accept this if you intend to stay married. Stop wasting years while s/he half-asses therapy, makes empty promises, and blames everything on their condition. Becoming a functional spouse isn't going to happen unless they are committed to working on themselves and we all know how long anything difficult will last with an unwilling ADHD participant. You must take control of your life and your wants. You must take over whatever responsibilities that leave you exposed financially and socially in order to protect yourself from financial ruin and becoming friendless.
Married over 40 years now and lately I started to suspect there is something more going on with H. I did some research and found out that a person with ADHD is nearly 3 times more likely to develop dementia than those without ADHD, even when other risk factors are considered according to NIH and JAMA. The difficult part determining if there is an new issue is that many early signs (forgetful, lose thing, put things in wrong place, frustration, outbursts) are already in place w ADHD so it is easy to miss the early signs. Not sure how this will play out because broaching the subject will be WW3 no matter how gentle the approach is. I guess I will wait until something happens and he will have not choice but face reality. I have live one day at a time now and not worry about the future. Only God know what will be...
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my father-in-law
had dementia; I realise now that he also had ADHD. The link is visible- some ADHD behaviours are so close to dementia anyway. I feel for you. X
My mom had Alzeihmers...
which doesn't make me an expert on dementia by any means. Having ADHD, I do have concerns ( for myself ) and my sisters because it can run in the family.
As I read your post adhd32, I thought about the exact thing you brought up: ADHD symptoms themselves can look like dementia even when it's not the case. So how can you know?
I don't think another person can know, but I can run through my own thoughts about this as I do have this topic in the back of my mind. Here's what I believe is true for me:
I'm older, only 2 years to 70. I expect, due to the normal aging process, things like my memory, and some of the things you mentioned might appear for anyone, ADHD, dementia or not. So based on that one consideration, is my ADHD worse, the same, or better? Am I worried that I have dementia if some symptoms are worse?
I don't think so, as far as my ADHD or dementia. Some symptoms appear more at times...simply from ( what I'm calling ) a compounding effect. If I didn't have ADHD, I'd still have a worse memory or increased number of forgetful acts. With ADHD, the compounding effect appears worse. Worse, than a neurotypical person, but possibly, only slightly worse for myself ? I think this is true. I'm still functioning, riding my motorcycle, doing work on starting a business and doing normal everyday things without any noticeable difficulty. I'm more tired at times...my recovery is longer...I can't work as hard....but that can easily be chalked up to the aging process.
My experience with my mom, who I believe had ADHD....had some tell tale signs that had nothing to do with the usual ADHD symptoms mentioned. This had more to do with changes that were never there before. Things that stood out as "odd", even for my mom.
Having a conversations with her, became increasingly more difficult. She didn't make sense at times, and couldn' answer questions. Strange beliefs concerning ...people in her house started to emerge. She became obsessed with lights and kept lights on all the time. She completely stopped going to Church ( her main social outlet ) and showed no interest in things that use to engage her.
Basically, she started becoming a different person from the one I knew. It was subtle, but I began to notice. This of course, continued to get worse and the inevitable happened. Being forgetful is different, than forgetting who you are and being in touch with your own sense of self.
I don't feel that's happening with me so I'm not worried about it. I definitely think the compounding of aging and ADHD probably make the normal ADHD symptoms appear more often ( or more overtly ) at times, but I don't think that even means my ADHD is worse. In some ways, I thinks it's better due to my ability to manage it, and my own self awareness.
Anyway, if I had to tell you, how do you know? I'd use my experience with my mom as a guide. Noticing "new" odd behavior...not the ones you already know....that is, the usual suspects.