Tim Denevi,
Your book Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD was an eye opening read for me as I grew up in Japan where ADHD is not a familiar disorder. About 3 million people have been already treated in the United States, the recognition and awareness of ADHD in school / home is still low in Japan. However, it is not that I had never heard of ADD or ADHD in Japan, but I never really bothered looking up the symptoms and what it was all about.
I liked how you mentioned the medical history and the evolution of treatment over time throughout identifying ADHD and overcoming the symptoms by fifteen years of treatment, but what I enjoyed the most in this book was your experiences of you wanting to be a “good child.” Reading the part of you recognizing the hyper symptoms and thinking you were “evil child” was so sad. The perspective and first-person narrative really gave me a sense of closeness, and I felt like I saw everything through your eyes. Your memoir reminded me of a girl diagnosed with ADHD when I was in elementary school. Only because she had hyperactive symptoms, she was separated from us in a different class…. I still do not know exactly what it is like to be diagnosed with ADHD growing up, but your struggles and my memory from elementary school made me heart broken.
I am currently majoring in Psychology, and my goal is to become a therapist, so I appreciated how your book especially how therapy was a large part of the treatment, made me want to become therapist even more.
The problem persists today in the world, but your memoir and the history of the diagnosis conveyed how much child or anyone with ADHD is suffering from the stigma of the society because of ignorance.
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