Identity-first language and adhd

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I've heard that most people on the spectrum prefer to be called an "autistic person" as opposed to a "person with autism", because autism is so linked to one's personality/identity that it doesn't make sense to refer to it as a separate thing you "have" (unlike for example, a person with allergies or a person with cancer).

I agree with this and also prefer this terminology for myself, but it's made me wonder- why isn't it the same case with adhd? We pretty much always say someone "has adhd". Is it just because we don't have a good adjective form for the word, or is there something different about it that makes it better suited to "person-first" language?

(For reference I don't have adhd and I'm not implying that this difference in terminology is a bad thing, im just confused by it)

I am tired of all this Political Correctness.  Identity first or identity last makes no difference.  An Autistic is an Autistic is an Autistic -- always has been and always will be -- and brainwashing people into using 'correct' euphemisms will never change that, because changing labels does not change the person.

We are not our labels.

So, essentially, how would one rewrite "a person with ADHD" to have the ADHD first?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disordered person? ADHDer person?

Why don't we do this for ADHD? It's a bit bloated feeling. And, with Autism, the -ism to -ic is just a part of how those endings work in modern English (from Greek, iirc).

Hm.

ADHD is an acronym.
Autism is a 'description'.

ADHD sounds like a symptom.
Autism is more like an attribute.



But sure.
I heard there's "ADHD'ers"... Yet I don't hear or read it often.

ADHD can be separated from a person's allistic essence.
ADHD has a story -- origins not limited to neurology, but also psychology due to it's direct associations with executive dysfunction.

Autism is still a mystery. It is not associated with executive dysfunction like how ADHD does.

Separating ADHD from executive dysfunction gives you what seem to look like an NT.
Heck, one can separate the executive dysfunction from the autistic person and still able see how autism would still looked like.

Lastly...
Unlike the autism community, ADHD community is different.
In the ADHD community, anyone can accept and understand the hate towards their ADHD -- there's no polarity there like how it is with autism.

While ADHD is not as taken seriously, it's also not associated with some condemnation either.

ADHD is not fighting associations with intellectual disability, psychopathy, crime and violence -- associations with learning disabilities however, fits their bill.

Instead, they're likely fighting for pharmaceutical treatments due to their treatments (medications) are considered to be of those 'illegal nootropics'.

You don't see autism fighting for getting medications being tampered, wouldn't?


To make it long story short;
ADHD community priorities are different.

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ADHD is a noun: Deficit.

Autistic is an adjective.
We can't say we are a deficit. We can only have a deficit.

Maybe if they changed the name of ADHD it could be identity-first.
Otherwise it just sounds grammatically incorrect, not to mention too wordy.

What you said in the original post. There is no handy adjective for it.

Except maybe "hyperactive".

Or the rare "ADHD...er" that someone above attests to having heard.

Like Down's Syndrome. For "persons with Downs syndrome" you cant say "ret*d" anymore, and you cant call them "downers"

Maybe you can coin your own term for "folks with adhd". Call yourself an "adhadder" (rhymes with 'mad hatter').

Or reference that British TV series and call yourself a "black adder" (cause it just sounds bad-ass).

And see if it catches on.

To me Asperger's is only something I have (unfortunately) got, not something that I am. So to me it's the same as my hay fever - I'm a person with hay fever but it does not define me. I can easily imagine myself without Asperger's just like I can easily imagine myself without hay fever (yes I get hay fever all year round, it can be a chronic ailment for some people, like asthma but in the sinuses instead of the lungs).

So whenever I say that my parents wished I didn't have Asperger's I hate when people say "oh but that means your parents wish they didn't have you, as Asperger's is who you are, they are bad, bad parents!" because it's not like that (and it's very insulting for anyone to badmouth my parents like that). They loved me but hated the fact that I had Asperger's.

Asperger's is not who I am. I don't want to be known by it. I want to be known by me, Joe90 (um, well, actually not Joe90, as my WP self is a racist, trolling narcissist, so I mean my real name which obviously I won't reveal here).

Intriguing discussion here; I'd like to weigh in, even though I don't have ADHD.

I'm a content creator and have written about ADHD. I find it cumbersome to keep saying in my articles, "Those with ADHD," "Someone with ADHD," "People with ADHD."

I believe there've been a few times, though, where I wrote, "an ADHD'er."

ADHD is actually a term (acronym) that summarizes a collection of symptoms. So instead of saying, "She has attention deficit, impaired executive function, impulsitivity, is easily distracted and fidgets a lot," we shorten it to, "She has ADHD."

ADHD means a group of symptoms, so while it makes sense to say, "She has ADHD" or "Kids with ADHD," it becomes cumbersome when one writes an article about ADHD'ers.

By the way, untreated sleep apnea causes symptoms that significantly overlap ADHD. So if anyone here has been diagnosed with ADHD, even if you're thin (thin people can have sleep apnea), you may want to consider having a sleep study done.

The ADHD in some kids has been resolved once they were diagnosed with sleep apnea and treated for that (e.g., removal of large adenoids that were obstructing the airway during sleep).

Of course, many ADHD'ers don't have sleep apnea.

My boyfriend has sleep apnea but has no ADHD-like symptoms.

I wish there was a word for ADHD instead of being abbreviated, then it'd be quicker to say. All they need to do is take the core symptom, translate it into Greek or Latin, and add -ism on the end.