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New research suggests symptoms of the disorder may be less severe in those with a demanding schedule.
In high school, Sophie Didier started falling behind. She found it difficult to concentrate on her schoolwork, felt restless in class and often got in trouble for talking too much.
“I had a teacher that used to give me suckers so that I would shut up,” she said.
At 15, a doctor diagnosed her with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Medication helped, but she discovered that having a demanding schedule was also important. In both high school and college, her grades improved when she was juggling lacrosse and other extracurricular activities with her classes. Being so busy forced her to stick to a routine.
“I felt more organized then,” recalled Ms. Didier, now 24 and living in Kansas City, Mo. “Like I had a better handle on things.”
Research has shown that A.D.H.D. symptoms can change over time, improving and then worsening again or vice versa. And according to a recently published study, having additional responsibilities and obligations is associated with periods of milder A.D.H.D. This might mean that staying busy had been beneficial, researchers said. It could also just mean that people with milder symptoms had been able to handle more demands, they added.
Oftentimes, people with A.D.H.D. “seem to do best when there’s an urgent deadline or when the stakes are high,” said Margaret Sibley, who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and who led the study.
The study, published online in October in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, tracked 483 patients in the United States and Canada who each had a combination of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive A.D.H.D. symptoms. The researchers followed the participants for 16 years, starting at an average age of 8. They found that about three-quarters of the patients experienced fluctuations in their symptoms, generally beginning around age 12, which included either a full or partial remission of symptoms.