Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective: Mel C

Mel C: They would always put my clinical skills in the morning cuz that's when I perform better. So I work with the and I say, Look, this is my problem. This is when I focus best. I struggle to learn at the best of times, but I am very capable as you know. Can you please do this to maximize my learning? If you give me this clinical skills class, that is really important for my learning.

If you put me in the afternoon, I'm just gonna sit there and be a good, go and be quiet. But I'm not gonna take anything in.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hello? Hello. Welcome to Beyond ADHD, a Physician's Perspective. I am Dr. Deanna Mecado Mage. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my adhd, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as the person I was always meant to be, both in my work and in my personal life in the past.

Two years, I've come to realize that unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits, I'm excited to share all these skills.

Well, hello. Hello. I am so excited today to have a very cool guest on our podcast and uh, her name is Melissa Carlin and she is from first Australia. She's actually a third year medical student, so it's so cool for us to correlate our time zone differences. Likely she figured it out for me. That's not my sort of genius.

I would show up at the wrong time , but I am so happy that she's here and I'm gonna let her tell us a little bit about herself and, uh, how we met. Mel C: Hi Diana. Thanks so much for having me on here. This is really interesting. It's really cool. Um, yeah, so where did we meet? We met, I made a, a Facebook group, um, for doctors and medical students with adhd.

Um, and we met on there. Um, I noticed you'd post some, uh, A couple of posts that were quite interesting about some courses and things that you do. Um, and then you, you got in touch with me and that was really cool. So, um, yeah, so I made that group just, uh, I noticed there was a lot of, uh, medical students and doctors with adhd, but they don't tell anybody about it.

They, same with their depression and anxiety. They keep it a big secret. Especially, I don't know what it's like anywhere else in the world, but especially here in Australia, uh, there's still a lot of stigma.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes. You know, that's so important that you created a safe. Place for people to come and join in a community that like-minded people could correlate and relate with each other because like you said, unfortunately there's still a lot of stigma and this is why I do this podcast and this is why now I'm like talking to anybody who would hear me about like changing the way that ADHD is perceived cause like we forget that.

What we're thinking really influences how we show up in, in the world, right? Like, if we're thinking this is the worst thing ever, or we're thinking, Oh, this is fascinating, I wonder like what, what it could help me in or whatever, right? Like it could just make a difference on how you then show up. Um, you know, in 2016, they.

Did a research or they did like a survey of medical students and they asked them, in the us they asked them like, how many had di uh, diagnosis of adhd and like, interestingly enough, like one third of the class had it. Yeah. So like, and, and so I'm pretty sure it's. Under, like reported and under. Absolutely.

And probably likely undertreated, you know, And so

Mel C: we've done this thing in Australia, so wa I think worldwide, uh, at Perth where I am for some reason, it's got the highest rate of a ADHD diagnosis and treatment, highest rate of Dexamphetamine prescription and. I literally saw a post on Facebook yesterday saying that it had risen by 20,000 prescriptions this year, uh, since five years ago.

But they always report it as a bad thing. Yeah. And they always report it, and then you'll see in the comments like, Oh, it's over prescribed all these addicts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Nobody's reporting how much the cholesterol prescriptions have gone up this year. Why do you care about add, Why do you need to post that?

And, and, and, um, rev everybody up in the public who has no idea. But yeah, back, back to what I was saying before, um, Uh, when I started med school. So I've had it since childhood and uh, always got my accommodations and I sat my first exam in first year medical school in, uh, the special accommodations room where I have my isolated exams cuz I'm well aware of my accommodations.

So I sat there, there was one other student, I don't know if they had add. Um, but yeah, so I was there on my own and, and then, That was his first semester. And then at the very end of the year when we sat the last lot of exams, all of a sudden there was 10 extra people there. They all, um, all had d ADHD all their life.

And they finally, I think med school finally had very su...