ADHD, Neurodiversity, and Social Utility

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent, most discussed, and most controversial psychological diagnoses of our age.  The condition has been known by many names historically, such as attention deficit disorder or hyperkinesis.  Awareness of the correlated behavioral symptoms belonging to ADHD dates back to the late eighteenth century, when it was known simply as “mental restlessness.”  Until recently, the causes and exact nature of the condition have remained a puzzle to mental health professionals and educators.  Recent developments in evolutionary psychology have suggested a socially-driven evolutionary purpose for ADHD that was hitherto completely unexpected.  Present understandings of the condition characterize it as a psycho-behavioral disorder, and so any concept of a social utility associated with the condition will necessarily challenge the whole paradigm surrounding ADHD.

For one such as I, having received both childhood and adult diagnoses for ADHD, the implications of this sort of research necessarily extend beyond the scholarly, objective, and scientific.  An understanding of the social significance and potential benefit of ADHD is inexorable from my sense of place within society, and so this project could not be conducted without my facing as many personal questions and insights as I did academic ones.  These implications that make this sort of research all the more crucial, allowing those afflicted with the ADHD condition to find social roles that are informed by the evolutionary role it has historically played.

For some time, ADHD was believed to be a purely modern phenomenon: an aberrant symptom of particular individuals’ dissonance with structured, centralized, agricultural society.  Breakthroughs in genetics have shed doubt on this theory.  Evidence of statistically significant relationships between ADHD and the seven-repeat allele of the gene dopamine receptor D4, as well as other genes, suggest not only a genetic origin (or heterogeneous family of genetic origins), but a role of positive evolutionary significance.  What prior concepts have characterized as symptoms of disorder, such as dangerous behavior, unpredictability, and lack of focus, this research casts in a more neutral light as novelty-seeking, behavioral variability, and adaptability.

The evolutionary significance of ADHD can be summarized as the phenomenon in which “unpredictable behaviour by a minority optimizes results for the group,” as stated in the abstract of the primary basis of this research, “the Evolution of Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Cognitive Diversity” (Williams et al).  The social function of ADHD is to provide a society with a minority of members driven to exploration and risk.  Social experiments born of the study of evolutionary altruism have confirmed the measurable benefit that minority risk-taking confers upon the whole of the group.  These benefits are most pronounced in activities such as combat, exploration, and discovery and dissemination of new information.  The behavioral nature of these traits and ethno-geographic distribution of associated genes suggest that they evolved early in human history, facilitating and influencing hunter-gatherer societies and migrations for thousands of years before the advent of technological society, dispensing with theories of a modern origin of the disorder.

Further understanding of the distribution of the aforementioned gene DRD4-R7 lends a special credibility to its significance for social groups for which migration is vital.  The trait is much higher in prevalence among such groups.  In the Americas, for example, where populations have migrated the furthest distance of any such group, indigenous DNA contains DRD4-7R at rates more than double the global mean (48.3% for Americas, compared to 20.6% globally).  If one assumes that this gene is even partially responsible for geographic exploration and migration (as the data suggests), then a natural selection among continuously-migrating populations would result in just such a distribution of the gene among American natives.

Equipped with such an understanding, persons with such neurological differences such as I have are afforded the opportunity to consider our own roles in modern society in such a light.  Entrepreneurship, prospecting, and journalism are examples of fields where a tendency to take risks, push beyond established practices and paradigms, and utilize and disseminate new information are key.  Such callings are highly effective at making positive use of common ADHD traits that might otherwise present themselves as nuisances or obstacles in other fields.

Among these maverick social utilities offered to groups by such individuals, one stands above the rest as vital to the survival of the group: the impetus for migration.  The drive and ability to seek new locales with potentially greater resources and opportunities has doubtless accounted for the survival of human groups, as well as the human species as a whole.  It is likely that ADHD-related minority risk-taking has been the social mechanism for such movements throughout the course of history.  

Unfortunately, human expansion is quickly approaching its upward limit in the habitable areas of 21st century Earth, as well as the ability of its natural resources to support the exponentially-expanding human population.  Traditional opportunities for exploration and expansion are no longer afforded in a world without a frontier of its own.  The talents of thus inclined individuals ought then be applied to frontiers of an economic, ideological, or technological nature.  Otherwise, they may find themselves useful on the emerging frontier of outer space as it opens in coming years.

Due to the dual objective-subjective nature of this inquiry, my conclusion is similarly two-fold.  Based on the evidence of evolutionary selection for ADHD traits and the established utility of its behaviors for social groups, I conclude that their typification as indicative of “disorder” is a misnomer, warranting a total revision of the associated psychological paradigm and an effort on the part of society as a whole to understand and embrace the benefits and usefulness of such behavior.  As to the more personal implications of this inquiry, I have concluded that my own ADHD will serve me immensely well in my own chosen field of extraterrestrial settlement and space entrepreneurship.  A tendency to take risks, seek novelty, and function outside established social convention is both beneficial and necessary to the creation of further opportunities for human progress along the frontiers of place and thought.

Works Cited

Chang, F. M. "The World-wide Distribution of Allele Frequencies at the Human Dopamine D4 Receptor Locus." Human Genetics 98.1 (1996): 91-101. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web.

Palmer, Erica D., and Stanley Finger. "An Early Description of ADHD (Inattentive Subtype): Dr Alexander Crichton and ‘Mental Restlessness’ (1798)." Child Psychology and Psychiatry Review 6.2 (2001): 66-73. Cambridge Journals Online. Web.

Williams, Jonathan, and Eric Taylor. "The Evolution of Hyperactivity, Impulsivity and Cognitive Diversity." Journal of the Royal Society 3.8 (2005): 399-413. The National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web.