AP2-Disease

 I have made a simulation of a school day through the eyes of someone who has ADD. It shows everything that goes on in the person's head and what makes it so hard to focus. What’s effective about the project is that the camera makes you look through the student’s eyes as the class is going on; you get to follow what the student is doing and how easily it is for the student to immediately start thinking on a topic completely different from what is being shown. It makes you instead of listening to what’s being taught makes you follow what the student is thinking instead.

Attention Deficit Disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that highly focuses on lack of attention and impulsivity. Associated with irregular low levels of neurotransmitters between the prefrontal cortical area of the brain and the basal ganglia resulting in very low levels of Dopamine. This makes the person seek out a feeling of reward through different means because all other dopamine is being used to regulate mood. ADD is almost always diagnosed when a person is younger. Many symptoms may be concerns for a child to be checked out such as hyperactivity, mood swings, irritability, and short attention span. Taking a closer look into the official DSM-V text we see that you need six or more symptoms from Inattention and impulsivity with ages up to sixteen, any age above sixteen would need five or more symptoms from Inattention and Impulsivity to be diagnosed.

A symptom such as having trouble holding attention or completing simple tasks means someone can sit in class for hours not knowing what's being taught because at the start of the class they looked out the window and saw a bird and is now so fixated on all thoughts having to do with the scenery and the feeling of what it must be like to be a bird that the student now can't recall anything from the class that day after they sat in their chair. Other symptoms like often fidgeting with hands or feet or feeling restless could also hinder attentiveness in someone because they are so focused on how their body is feeling in that moment that they don't catch on to what others are saying. The strong feeling of being driven feeling like you always  ¨on the go¨ is something I´ve struggled with. I sometimes feel like I have to speed through everything to give me free time to do things later and most of the time I have no clue what those tasks are. While researchers still don’t know what causes ADD, they do think that it has something to do with the development of the central nervous system. Some risk factors we do know of, however, are maternal drug use, a premature birth, or blood relatives with ADD who might’ve passed the genes down. ADD can last from a couple of years to someone’s whole life. The number of cases a year coming to around three million as it is a very common disorder.

 While some treatments do prove to be effective, there has been no clear cure for ADD you can although take medication to take control of cognitive functions and stimulants. There are also forms of therapy you can take like family therapy or anger management. One of the main reasons ADD can be such a struggle is that on top of your ability to not focus too well, there is also a strong feeling of apathy towards any form of work that seems interesting. That’s why for young kids with the disorder, it is challenging for them to complete tasks such as classwork, homework, or answer questions because they might not have been listening or paying attention to what the teacher was saying. Losing things and forgetfulness is also a very common symptom of ADD, so even then if the student is struggling with work there’s no motivation to fix the grades or find the papers required to make those grades go higher. There are a lot of misconceptions that people with ADD are just lazy and unmotivated or phrases like ¨theyre a daydreamer¨ or ¨he focuses for hours on his video games. No way he has ADD¨, and yes it may look like a priotization of fun and not work but its actually putting first that which the child finds easy to do. Their work is just unstimulating because the lack of positive feeling, visuals, and sound surrounding it. Kids will always prioritize work that they find fufilling.

There are however resources to help those with ADD along with medication and therapy there are also tutors to help students in school. An association called CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder) works with children and adults with ADD/ADHD to give them an education. Harvey Parker (the founder of CHADD) sharing his thoughts in a PBS interview saying ¨I think there's a lot of skepticism about ADHD. It's one of the areas of psychology and psychiatry that we know a great deal about, yet it's one of the most controversial diagnoses in the area of mental health. ADHD children have been around for as long as there have been, people. We've always seen people who were hyperactive, inattentive, or who had difficulty concentrating or organizing themselves. But more so, we've paid attention to these behaviors and labeled them differently.¨

To get a better understanding of what it's like to live life through the eyes of someone who has ADHD I made a simulation. This simulation takes the form of a video that you will have to watch and then complete a five-minute quiz on what you learned using this form. Below the form you can find the video you are to watch.

I hope the quiz wasn't too challenging for you. Now that you've experienced the simulation first hand the next step is to put the different kinds of brainwaves that were being felt throughout the experience and make them a graph to turn into a piecewise function.

The list below is covering what kinds of brain waves you feel throughout the simulation:

0 sec. listening to a teacher- Beta

30 sec. The voice in head talks shows photo -Alpha

1 min. The voice in head talks shows photo- Alpha

1 min 30 sec. listening to a teacher- Beta

2 min. The voice in head talks shows photo -Alpha

2 min 30 sec. listening to a teacher- Beta

3 min. The teacher assigns a quiz -Gamma

Now that the brainwaves have been graphed, I started to make a piecewise function out of the coordinates that the different brainwaves fell on.

With all of the y statements solved for now to put them into if statements.

Now that we've solved for Y in each color we can turn them into if statements.

Along with understanding people with ADD on a scientific level, its good to also try to respect and understand them on a personal level to.

There are a lot of things you can do to make sure that youre interacting with someone who has ADD effectively. If they didn't hear what you said or it looks like they didn't understand the first time you said it ask them if they'd like you to repeat it. In a situation where they're stressed out or sad allow them to fidget and make sure they know that youre there for them. (given by the A.D.D. Resource Center)