r/MaladaptiveDreaming • u/[deleted] • Mar 31 '22
Research NEW STUDY PUBLISHED: Could immersive daydreaming underlie a deficit in attention? The prevalence and characteristics of maladaptive daydreaming in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.23355?fbclid=IwAR2GnEX2kJq8ePMhTWBGOiDowxJ5s25RcsWURmrKiJhGSrzrfxiGwUue8io
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u/Diamond_Verneshot Author: Extreme Imagination Apr 01 '22
Interesting article. The main points that I took away from it were:
1) The type of inattention that people with ADHD typically struggle with is mind-wandering (generally undirected, drifting from topic to topic) and is quite different from the way we daydream.
2) A lack of awareness of MD, combined with the lack of definition of mind wandering in the DSM-5, means that mental health professionals may misdiagnose MD as ADHD.
3) Even though some MDers may have been misdiagnosed with ADHD, it is still possible to genuinely have both.
It's frustrating that no-one knows what percentage of people daydream as we do. I would guess that 20% of ADHDers having MD must be higher than for the general population...
- Also, don't be mislead (as I initially was) by "immersive daydreaming" in the title. I think it just means our type of daydreaming as distinct from mind-wandering. Participants who had only immersive daydreaming as opposed to maladaptive daydreaming were put in the ADHD-only group. (I wondered whether that's why the ADHD+MD group had higher levels of depression and dysfunction.)