It's the level of hoops an ADHD person needs to jump through to get any treatment, let alone adequate treatment. Forms, calling for appointments, more forms, tracking stuff, nagging your doctor to full prescriptions, and so on. Every step of which is another wall to climb for an ADHD person.

Everything about the process to get both diagnosed and treated involves tasks that are not compatible with the ADHD brain.

As someone with a family who absolutely doesn't give a single shit about the difficulty of living with ADHD and just tells me to "get over it and stop being so lazy"... yes, they most likely didn't have anyone willing to lend a hand and help them in the way they needed help because regular people don't tend to think of the things we struggle with as being challenging enough to warrant needing assistance with.

Having a supportive community is a privilege that so many take for granted.

I’ve been diagnosed with adhd. I’ve had multiple doctors completely ignore it. Just nothing. It’s still untreated. This is mental health is America.

As someone with ADHD, finding the energy to ask someone for help can be just as difficult as sucking it up and just filling out the form. That's the problem with ADHD: your brain physically stops your body from getting up and doing the things it needs to do.

Personally I need to be high as fuck on stimulants to accomplish anything, which sucks ass cause I really hate how they make me feel. But I can't accomplish shit unless I'm absolutely tweaking off my ass on Adderall like a fucking meth addict.

You're assuming they have someone supportive in their life.

I had a friend trying to get disability for a laundry list of problems that left her unable to do much, and the judge ruled against her with an example job of folding sheets and towels at a hotel. No hotel we could find employed a person to do that job alone, nor am I convinced she or anyone could do that job for 8 hours at a time, but still it was enough to get her case dismissed.

However, it did start a paper trail that helped her win disability several years later in a more progressive district. She now lives in a 6 person polycule, 5 of whom are disabled.

Went through diag with husband last year. The paperwork they got me to fill out out was pretty basic, but detailed, and if he had the familial network to recognise and support his condition, he wouldn't have gotten diagnosed in his 40's.

In the context of a trillion dollar annual military budget with things like $10,000 screws, the idea that entitlements must be means tested to ensure nobody "undeserving" actually gets them demonstrates what this country actually values: the public coffers exist to line the pockets of capitalists at the expense of the public

Could Katie really not ask a family member or close friend for help with this?

If she gets to it or even knows about it.

No, seriously, that's a real problem with mental dysfunctional disorders. There are lot's of institutions/help groups (at least here) that are happy to help. But you don't know what you should know.

I think reinforced digital isolation is a big part of the problem. This is something that could be solved by calling the service phone number or asking at the library or a help group, a doctor's office etc... It might be extra hoops to jump through but there's not any physical or communication barrier completely blocking her. Instead she clicks a button and gets a form and automatically feels completely helpless.

A 20 page form should take like ~30-45 minutes with help, it's not a huge ask and doesn't require as strong of a support network as some people in this thread are claiming. She's got a phone and can read and talk, the only thing that could lower this hurdle further is support information being stapled to the front of the form.

Now it's a different issue once the bureaucracy requires multiple followups, workday visits, transportation for evaluation, etc...