ADD and ADHD – Is there a difference? The answer to this question is a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance. The reason for this is twofold. ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder is, in the scientific community, the old medical term for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. ADD is also, however, the term used by some laymen to describe people with ADHD who are not hyperactive. In the scientific community, the terms are interchangeable. In the lay community, the terms can describe two very different problems.
ADD is the oldest scientific term used by doctors and researchers for the condition now known as ADHD. Doctors and researchers no longer use the term ADD at all. In the 1980s, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM, was updated. The new DSM IV labeled the disorder, formerly ADD, ADHD to reflect the fact that most people with ADHD are hyperactive. The DSM IV described three subtypes of ADHD. The hyperactive/impulsive subtype was called ADHD-HI, the predominantly inattentive subtype was called ADHD-PI, and the combined type was called ADHD-C.
The laity, not surprisingly, did not know how to read DSM IV. Sometimes they use the term ADD to refer to anyone with ADHD and they also sometimes use the term ADD to refer to people who are inattentive but who are not hyperactive or impulsive.
Although some people use these two terms interchangeably, there is a big difference between ADHD hyperactive/impulsive (ADHD-HI) or ADHD of the combined type (ADHD-C) and ADHD-PI. Some psychiatrists believe that ADHD-PI is so different from the other ADHD subtypes that the American Psychiatric Association is considering removing the predominantly inattentive subtype from the DSM category shared by the other ADHD subtypes and assigning it a new category when it publishes the new DSM V in 2013.
Russell Barkley, PhD, an ADHD expert, has said that predominantly inattentive ADHD is the ‘true’ ADD. He has studied the inattentive subtype and has found that its main symptom is attention deficit. They are usually not hyperactive or impulsive and respond differently to treatment. They also have different comorbidities and different long-term problems.
ADD is the old medical term for ADHD; it’s also the term many people use to refer to what doctors now call predominantly inattentive ADHD. When the scientific and medical community changed the terminology from ADD to ADHD, it was proposed that these terms be used interchangeably. However, part of the lay community has adopted the term ADD to describe patients with inattention without hyperactivity.
There is a difference between what Russell Barkley calls ‘true’ ADD and ADHD. When people use the term ADD to describe people with ADHD, they should be asked if they mean that the person has the most common types of ADHD or if what they really mean is that the person has predominantly inattentive ADHD. . ADHD-PI is quite different from the other ADHD subtypes and it is important to understand the intended meaning of these two terms.