Anxiety

[swmom]

I've been wondering since Tuesday when we had our
review with the psychologist for some testing he did with our daughter, if somehow we could be suffering from several anxiety INSTEAD of ADHD. He said she had both but sometimes the ADHD diagnosis doesn't make sense to me. Her teachers love her. She has never been a behavior problem, at least at school. She saves it all for us, at home! She doesn't seem to have the academic problems either. She's getting all As. She clearly has the anxiety, no question there. He said on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, she's an 8 on a daily basis. She has an expressive/receptive language problem, an auditory processing problem and an visual processing problem. Could all these things combined cause ADHD-like symptoms? I know they could cause the anxiety and they have.

What do you all think? She takes Strattera and it has helped her. Maybe that's my answer right there but could it be helping all the other things somehow?

[AnneM]

Hmmm ... I have certainly read that "other" things can mimic adhd/add ... so I would say "never say never" ... depression can certainly mimic adhd/add (although is also often found with it) and so I wouldn't be surprised if anxiety can often mimic it as well ... I would definitely say it is worth bringing up your thoughts with your doctor and see what he/she thinks ....

[shelli]

We have similar circumstances. We have no behavior problems at school but at home she has them. She is hyper at home and just wiggly at school. The teacher said she often day dreams and is just in her own world. Not at home. She also has anxiety. We saw alot of her symptoms improve with meds. especilally the hyperactivity and she can focus at school now. She is very clingy at home because of the anxiety, also clings to the teacher and does not talk a lot at school. The teacher said she is pretty quiet. Weird Huh? But the meds have helped and I do not care what they call it as long as she is better. We are still working on the anxiety.
shelli

[lisle]

Have you ever read about nonverbal learning disability?
It looks very similar to adhd and has anxiety automatically with it. I thought about it reading your post (my son has it), as you mentioned visual processing. How much is attention and how much is processing is always confusing to me too. Look up NLD on the web and see if it helps out. There are some good sites. If she had I.Q. testing, nld would show up as a bigger than 10 pt. split between performance and verbal, with verbal being much higher. My son has nearly 40 points difference.
lisle

[StrugglingAgain]

lisle, what does that point spread tell you specifically? My son was tested a couple of months ago or so. His points were 92, verbal; and 114, performance. There's a large spread there, but I'm not sure what that means?

[swmom]

lisle -

The first time we had our daughter tested(Spring of '02), there was a 25-pt. spread with verbal being higher so it looked like NVLD. We had her tested again a few weeks ago. According to the psychologist, that spread disappeared! Verbal is still higher but just by
4 points now. I'm not sure how valid those most recent test scores are, however. She was very anxious during the testing which I think really skewed the results. Some of those scores just don't make sense. One score - fluid reasoning was 95%, awesome. But the rest of her scores were significantly lower. That makes no sense. The psychologist did not think, however, that she has a NVLD.

[lisle]

Hi,
Sorry I didn't see these replies before. Our son was tested twice and had the same result. I have heard that some kids with mood instability test this way. I also have read that when the performance is higher it isn't nld. What did the dr. say about that difference? Both scores are pretty high, struggling. The new I.Q. is completely different, so I wonder how that will turn out.
lisle