just saw a post complaining about how hard it is to find adhd resources for adults and one of the comments said “tiktok has a lot of adhd tips” as if telling someone with adhd to enter the algorithmic quicksand of perpetual dopamine hits isn’t the most insane thing you could suggest for someone with adhd
As a person diagnosed with ADHD as an adult who had to put an app timer on Facebook allow me to suggest:
ADDitude (additudemag.com): Lots and lots of articles and blogs from ADHD experts and people with ADHD. Also great for families with multiple gens of people with ADHD, pretty good for women with ADHD, and makes an effort to address people of color with ADHD. You do have to give them your email for the more involved content like strategy guides and webinars but I think it’s worth it. I actually like their emails and find something short worth reading every other week or so.
Hacking Your ADHD (podcast by William Curb): A strategy podcast mostly. The episodes on planning were revelationary for me. Episodes are well researched and he has experts on all the time. Not really intersectional but a kind and gentle space.
A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD (book by Sari Solden and Michelle Frank): This workbook was one hell of a journey. It takes you through the process of radical self-acceptance step by step, starting with separating the negative messages you’ve received throughout your life from your sense of self, all the way to dreaming and actualizing those dreams in practical doable ways. Solden has ADHD and the book feels like a friend holding your hand through a scary but ultimately rewarding journey. Definitely works to be intersectional, but probably room for growth.
Queen of Distraction (book by Terry Matlin): The very first book I read after I first realized that I had ADHD, before I was formally diagnosed. This is first and foremost a strategy book. There’s a wryness to it (which I’m honestly beginning to wonder if that’s an ADHD thing too). I think most important thing I got from this book was that it was OK to focus on what worked for me rather than how things “should” be or what was “best.”
Tiny Habits (book by BJ Fogg): Not an ADHD specific book BUT given how difficult it is for people with ADHD, including me, to form habits – it was really helpful to get a detailed breakdown of how habits are formed and how to build habits in the tiniest most bite-sized way possible. I also really hooked onto the idea that I could design my environment to work for me, rather than changing myself to function in the environment. No longer do I search for matching dress shoes in the morning…. they’re all in my car. I buy pre-made salads for lunch and V8 rather than try to make salads and snack on veggies. I don’t sleep with my phone by the bed and yes, I put timers on apps that I know can be black holes.
And not to be basic but Brene Brown is also great, because unfortunately, shame tends to be fundamental to the ADHD experience.
The New York Times recently had a story called "Pain in children is often ignored. For children of color, it's even worse." That story mentioned "an often-cited study published in 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" on pain treatment recommendations. It turns out that I blogged about that article a few years ago. When I checked, I found that it had 1404 citations in Google Scholar. Articles in medicine and public health tend to be cited at high rates, but that's still a lot. However, that's not what this post is about, it's just how I got started.
I read one of the articles that cited the PNAS paper and found a reference to a study of trends in killings by police between 1960 and 2010. There are several recent data sets on police killings, but I didn't know that there was any historical data at the national level, and assumed that there wasn't any (see this post for some data on New York City). The study used data from death certificates, which include a category for "legal intervention" (formerly "injury by intervention of police"). They just considered men aged 15-34, so I went back to the original data. The 1968-2016 data are available from the National Center for Health Statistics, which has a convenient online tool, and the older data are in annual issues of Vital Statistics of the United States. The basic figures:
For example, in 1960 125 white people and 119 non-whites were recorded as dying from "injury by intervention of police." There were about 175 million whites and 17 million blacks, giving about 0.7 deaths per million among whites and 5.4 million among blacks. The black rate is slightly overestimated, since some of the non-whites were not black, but the effect is probably small (in 1968, they shifted to black, white, and "other race," and there were only 3 in "other race").
The rate of deaths among blacks rose in the 1960s, but then declined and has remained about the same in the 21st century. The original study just reported data with minimal interpretation, but the paper that cited it (published in the New England Journal of Medicine and cited 478 times since its publication in 2021) said "the late 1960s also saw a massive spike in police killings of Black men," and didn't mention the decline after 1970.
The rate among whites looks like it has increased pretty steadily--in order to see it more clearly, here's the same graph with a log scale:
If you look at the ratio of black to white death rates, it shows a long-term decline, from more than 8:1 in the 1960s to less than 2:1 in the latest years for which data are available (2014-16).
Methodological appendix: The death certificate data shows only about 500 deaths from "legal intervention" in the mid-2010s. The data on deaths from police, which start at about that time, show at least 1,000. My guess is that death certificates sometimes just give the physical cause of death--e. g., say that a person died from a gunshot wound and don't mention who fired the shot. The rate of incomplete reporting could change over time and differ among races, and the racial differences could change over time. So clearly these data aren't definitive, but they have potential. Someone should do a more thorough analysis.
Marie Henein is a lawyer and senior partner with Henein Hutchison.
As debate rages about whether it was fair to fire Google employee James Damore for the now-infamous Google manifesto that explored women's so-called limitations, I can't help but think, why can't everyone just leave my gender alone? Once again, we are being filleted, dissected, and discussed as though we barely exist. Yet another round of public debate began about how our under-representation in various fields and in leadership roles has nothing to do with hundreds of years of inequality but rather is attributable to insurmountable biological limitations. Writers in article after article actually went out of their way to justify Mr. Damore's view of women. Was this seriously still happening?
A recent column explained that our biological differences, among other things, makes female lawyers better negotiators but worse litigators. Just as I was about to switch jobs, the author kindly pointed out that I was an outlier. I didn't know whether to be flattered that I am some sort of unicorn, concerned that I am considered more male in my disposition (a comment I have been the recipient of since elementary school) or disappointed that I now had to break it to countless talented female litigators that they should probably give it up and limit themselves to negotiation or more gentle, womanly professions. I look forward to more enlightenment on what our biology allows us to do. Given that technology, science, leadership roles, or any jobs requiring assertiveness are clearly out, we better hurry up as scores of young girls are being grossly misled into thinking they can actually do what they wish.
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Damore, in the course of his unscientific stream of consciousness, unequivocally makes the following point: "The distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." (Note: the italics are mine; the asinine quote is his.) He then goes on to mansplain – which was nice given the female biological aversion to ideas – that it is highly unlikely we are going to resolve the problem ourselves. He points out that females do not succeed because they are more inclined toward feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women in general, he argues, have a stronger interest in people rather than things; our extroversion is expressed as gregariousness instead of assertiveness; we are agreeable, neurotic, and have a low stress tolerance. I get it. We feel more and think less. We are an emotional, under-thinking, overstressed gender. But it's not all bad news: we have a hell of a lot of empathy and mushy feelings.
Golly gee, if only I could overcome my natural biological disposition toward feelings rather than ideas, maybe I could understand Mr. Damore's point. Or just maybe his biological disposition skews toward feelings rather than well-articulated, grounded, scientific ideas. Who knows? Maybe I can find a man to explain it all to me.
Look, if you want to debate the pros and cons of diversity policies, knock yourself out. If you want to dispute a company that extends certain benefits or opportunities differentially, go right ahead. There are ways to meaningfully challenge an employer's policies. But a manifesto explaining to a substantial portion of your colleagues that they are underperforming because they were made that way – that has very little to do with meaningful discussion.
Let me be clear, you can say whatever you wish. I am a staunch believer in freedom of speech and the expression of opinions, even offensive ones. Fragility of mind when faced with opposing thought and shouting people down does not in any way advance our pressing democratic goals. And there is no crime in being stupid, but if you are an employee you are fireable. Mr. Damore should have thought of that, but perhaps his biological male assertiveness got in the way.
So I have a proposal for the James Damores of the world: why don't you focus on your own biological inadequacies, and stop thinking about ours. After all, you know them best. He and his compatriots can feel free to write as many manifestos explaining male deficiencies, of which my feeling, female self – with aggressive male undertones – is convinced there are many. This exercise would consume both time and thousands of pages, but please, please leave my gender alone. We do not need you to explain what you perceive to be our limitations, thank you very much. We do not need to be told that we will fail and not lead because we are "more compassionate" or our brains are wired differently. We've got this. Focus on yourself. If only Mr. Damore had spent 8 of his 10 pages setting out the flaws in his personality, he probably would still have a job. The only inferiority that Mr. Damore definitively demonstrated is his own.
Finally, a word of advice: Girls, do not bother to read the manifesto. It isn't worth your time. Read about Marie Curie instead who said: "We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."
She was a scientist, by the way. Mr. Damore didn't mention her.
Log in
