Entrepreneurs. There are some well-known very high-achieving ADHD entrepreneurs including Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Walt Disney. Richard Branson had no interest in anything academic. Still, once he was able to harness his talents and imagination in his own way, he began to build a phenomenal business empire.
Indeed, 60 per cent of self-made millionaires have ADHD. This may make you think that we need these unique brains as a normal part of society.
Bill Gates. Bill Gates, born in 1955 is the founder of Microsoft, and has a net worth of $103.2 billion. He also chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable foundation which has so far donated $35.8 billion to charity. Bill Gates, is known to have ADHD.
An estimated 3.3 million U.S. children ages 12 to 17 years have been diagnosed with ADHD. Approximately 129 million children and adolescents worldwide between the ages of 5 to 19 years old have ADHD. More than 366 million adults worldwide have ADHD as of 2020.
Managing finances can be a challenge for people with ADHD. The symptoms of procrastination, disorganization, and impulsivity can create problems with finances.
You can have a successful life with ADHD; however, like anything else, it will present challenges. But there are positive aspects of ADHD. And when you can see these as benefits, resources, skills or strategies you can begin to use it to overcome many challenges.
Many ADHDers are high achievers. They get advanced degrees, build thriving careers, and launch successful businesses. However, they've likely worked twice as hard as their peers to achieve it due to their (often undiagnosed) ADHD.
The highest rates emerged from Africa (8.5%) and South America (11.8%). Corroboration comes from a dimensional ADHD scale used in 21 countries. Japanese and Finnish children scored lowest, Jamaican and Thai children scored highest, and American children scored about average (7).
Similar to the hyperactive symptoms, impulsive symptoms are typically seen by the time a child is four years old and increase during the next three to four years to peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age.
Rather, the rise seems to be due to an increase in access to healthcare; a decrease in stigmatization about receiving mental health care; and greater awareness of the symptoms of ADHD among clinicians, guardians, educators, and patients. In the past, ADHD was only diagnosed in children who were hyperactive.
For instance, among the 18 studies under scrutiny that did not explicitly state an IQ cut-off point the mean range of IQ among individuals with ADHD reported in the studies is from 102 to 110. Given that lower IQ is associated with ADHD this suggests that individuals with ADHD may be inaccurately represented.
There are many successful CEOs who have ADHD. Some of these individuals include Indra Nooyi from PepsiCo, Howard Schultz from Starbucks, and Alan Mulally from Ford.
Famous People with ADHD: Simone Biles, Emma Watson, Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum.
Bill Gates the co-founder of Microsoft is known to have ADHD and has admitted to struggling with ADHD symptoms. He's also one of the wealthiest people in the world.
At Work or School
Research has found that people with ADHD have more creativity and idea generation than people without the disorder. 3 This can lead to outside-the-box thinking that is so important for innovation. Hyper-focus: Many people with ADHD become hyper-focused on things that interest them.
If you have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), you are 300% more likely to start your own business. It makes sense — despite the often negative association with the neurodivergent condition — there are many characteristics of ADHD that are must haves in the startup and entrepreneurial world.
ADHD can reduce life expectancy by as much as 13 years, but its risk is reversible. Learn how to mitigate the risks in this video, with Russell Barkley, Ph. D.
Autism is very distinct from ADHD, but the core symptoms of ADHD-Combined type, i.e., attention deficit, impulsivity, and hyperactivity, would appear to also be features of autism. ASD and ADHD are neurobiological disorders characterized by similar underlying neuropsychological “deficits”.
A Question of Maturity
The maturation process is slower for young adults with ADHD and it's not linear, says Kathleen Nadeau, Ph. D., Director of Chesapeake Psychological Services of Maryland and co-author of Understanding Girls With ADHD. There's a lot of up and down, back and forth.
European attitudes about ADHD are changing significantly. European institutions now estimate that at least 3.3 million children (1 in 20) in the European Union have ADHD.
Researchers examined data on more than 17,000 children in the United States in another study, published in Pediatrics. They found that compared with white children, Black children were 36 percent less likely and Latino children were 56 percent less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
While the prevalence rates are increasingly similar by gender, the diagnosis rate among American men is nearly 69% higher than it is among American women (5.4% of men in the U.S. have an ADHD diagnosis vs. just 3.2% of women.1)
High IQ may “mask” the diagnosis of ADHD by compensating for deficits in executive functions in treatment-naïve adults with ADHD.
Look at this list of famous, successful people who were diagnosed with ADHD: Presidents John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
The ADHD world is curvilinear. Past, present, and future are never separate and distinct. Everything is now. People with ADHD live in a permanent present and have a hard time learning from the past or looking into the future to see the inescapable consequences of their actions.