Sisters By Heart Education Series
It took me completely by surprise and hit me like a ton of bricks the day my son was diagnosed with ADHD, Inattentive Type. I was so confused. My son had incredible focus and he wasn’t hyper at all. Turns out, I had no idea what ADHD was. Actually, I take that back. I knew a LOT of things about ADHD, and they were all wrong. So, I didn’t start my journey of educating myself about ADHD from the bottom. I was below the bottom. I had to climb out of my hole of complete misunderstanding and even ignorance. What struck me the hardest was learning how closely it all ties in with Executive Functioning and how closely that ties in with anxiety and depression. My son, at the tender age of 8, was beginning to experience those effects as well. The more I learned, the more everything started making a lot of sense. The more I learned, the more I wished I had been better informed and prepared.
A recent study revealed that children with complex single ventricle CHD have 7 times higher odds of diagnosis or treatment for anxiety and/or depression. And further, it has been estimated that 50-75% of children with complex CHD are affected by Neurodevelopmental Disabilities – that’s a big fancy catchall word for ADHD, among others. I learned we aren’t alone.
In fact, several of us at Sisters by Heart with school aged children, have found ourselves among these numbers. As a result, we are both humbled and excited to launch the first of many continual educational programs featuring practitioner article series and webinars on key challenge areas faced by Single Ventricle patients and their families. We are grateful to the providers that have partnered with us so far to make this a reality.
We hope that our first series; “CHD and ADHD: What You Need to Know,” helps you as much as it has helped us.