Young adults with ADHD anxiety and learning disabilities often experience varying degrees of impairment, so it can sometimes be difficult to diagnose. For girls, ADHD usually translates to internalized anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. For boys, ADHD is displayed more outwardly, through aggression, obstinacy or disruptive behavior. Perhaps this is why it appears that boys are three times more likely to be diagnosed as special needs adults, as it’s more difficult to hide.

A 2005 study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders found that young adults with ADHD had a more difficult time adjusting to college academically, socially and emotionally, when compared to their non-ADHD peers. Researchers found that nearly all the students with ADHD anxiety had never been previously diagnosed or received any prior treatment. They also concluded that universities need better support services like specialized counseling programs and labs for reading difficulties to help these students. Despite the difficulties students faced, researchers added that the potential to succeed was there.

Ricki Linksman, Director of the National Reading Diagnostics Institute in Illinois, says that young adults diagnosed with ADHD anxiety are not completely incurable. She explains, “Once they are given the opportunity to learn through the proper methods, their ADHD-like behavior often disappears.” Most people with ADHD have a kinesthetic learning style. This means that they absorb information through more direct, active methods. It may seem agonizing to take notes or sit through a long lecture, but they grasp new information quickly and easily through field trips, skits, experiments, songs, model building and group work.

Some young adults are misdiagnosed with ADHD, when in reality they suffer from dyslexia. In fact, many perfectly intelligent, successful adults have been diagnosed with dyslexia, such as Albert Einstein, Tom Cruise, Whoopie Goldberg, Thomas Edison and Orlando Bloom, to name just a few of the working adults with some degree of dyslexia. Common symptoms include reading slowly, mixing up the order of letters, skipping over small words, difficulty understanding rhymes, better at listening and understanding than reading and understanding, making many spelling errors, avoiding writing by hand, making careless math errors and excelling at oral testing rather than written tests. To improve in school and in the workplace, individuals must learn all they can about facing the challenges that dyslexia throws their way.

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