It's true, and I alluded to this more in depth in a comment in this chain.
Growing up in the semi-rural South East, USA, where kids didn't get diagnosed with ADHD. (Fun fact -- I had 5 boys who were my childhood friends that grew up with. We all lived within 3 miles of each other, and all of us have ADHD -- something in the water maybe?)
I didn't know I had ADHD until I was in a dark dark place in my early 20s after 4 years of college (only took me 6 years lol).
I swear I have some kind of CPTSD from growing up with it. I developed all kinds of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms and a lot of anger and negative self-talk that I struggle with still to this day.
I mean, I was chewed up and spit out by the public education system, little league sports, other children's parents, my peers, and even my own parents from time to time. Constantly, day in and day out, being punished, ridiculed, and humiliated for something I could not control. I didn't want to be that way, and I still don't want to be that way, but I am what I am.
I would not consider myself to be anything but average intelligence, maybe even below average, but if it weren't for sheer luck and a determination to prove everyone wrong, then I do not think I would have survived.
There is a reason alcoholism (and drug addiction) and ADHD strongly correlate. Coping and self medication are a big deal when it feels there is no other tools available or the negative externalities just get to be too severe. Add in addictive personality traits common to ADHD folks and it is quite a thing to overcome for more significant ADHD sufferers.
Did the ADHD cause CPTSD or the CPTSD that you might already have from childhood neglect/trauma that you're not aware of/dismiss/paint as "not too bad" manifests itself as ADHD?
Distraction from pain is one of the most common ways we deal with pain when it's not possible to escape it (which is the case for children that suffer emotional abuse/neglect).
I should probably have said that I am self-diagnosed with (C)PTSD, and have never consulted a professional about it, then again I truly believe we will one day look at psychologist of today like they look at Freud and psychiatrist like blood-letters of the past.
This may sound wild and woo-woo snake-oil, but using cannabis products coupled with mindfulness/deep-thought, I am sometimes able to fire up my "mental debugger" and access parts of my subconsciousness that I cannot tap during normal sobriety. I can pull out memories that I had subconsciously blocked, but I am able to process them in a healthy, compassionate, and understandable manner.
> Distraction from pain is one of the most common ways we deal with pain when it's not possible to escape it
Probably explains my compulsive levels of video games and screen time as a youth, then again... I grew up on a small horse farm on the outskirts of society, so it's not like I had anything else to do lol.
I do sincerely believe that anyone that ever wronged me (especially my family) ever did anything intentionally. Parents aren't given a "Parenting an ADHD Child 101" course or anything. Hell, both my parents probably have it themselves, and my parents swear on their life that the school system never told them anything.
I do think my ADHD manifested first though, for a variety of reasons. A lot of signs and stories seemed to point that I was even symptomatic from infancy. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if it were environmental. All my male childhood school friends that grew up in a <small distance> radius of me all received the same diagnosis at one time or another.
So, while I do think you are on to something, I do not think it applies to me directly.
RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is a factor in many cases. Overreaction to external stimuli makes rejection hit harder. So it doesn't need to be constant or even more negative feedback - the same will be worse even if you are coping and getting things done.
IMO, this hypothesis doesn't pass the smell test. One of the defining qualities of clinical depression is that personal success in life does not obviate the symptoms; there are many widely know examples of beloved and successful people being unable to overcome the burden of crushing depression.
Being beloved and successful does not negate negative feedback. In fact, rhetoric such as this is invalidating the experience of those who must thereby insist that, contrary to the signs you're seeing, they're actually feeling down, else they must further internalize the negative feedback which nevertheless exists in plethora. The notion that anyone could claim precisely what reasonably should bring another stranger happiness or resolve their depression is pure hubris. The defining qualities of this situation are all internal, and the externalities used in your measurement are correllative and either irrellevant or after-the-fact.
A "smell test" one might consider is of empathy: if your mind ran quickly through various things which caught its attention, yet couldn't follow through with focus until resolution, negative feedback surely just recurs and piles up - it is neither sufficiently affected nor undone by positive feedback.
OP's hypothesis smells true to me, but I choose to sniff the roots rather than the flower when we're looking for a cause more than an effect.
Well, first of all, I didn't say it was the only cause for depression; it's a condition that comes in lots of different flavors and this is only one.
Second, to elaborate a bit more, having to constantly manage your brain in order to get it to do what you need can be exhausting. Any success you achieve feels like it's extremely tenuous, and I'd say most AD(H)D people have had an experience of doing well for a while and then everything falling apart. So nothing ever feels safe. The negative feedback you get will tend to reverberate much more loudly in that environment than the positives.
I understand this, lol. But you can also take heart that you don't struggle alone. You might be surprised at how many places you can be open about this stuff and have positive things result.
Another complicating factor is that it is assumed that there are a few different subtypes of depression. For example with and without psychotic features. Another subtypes is the "atypical depression", which actually has, in contrast to classical major depression, "reactive mood" and a high degree of "rejection sensisitivity": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990566/
Growing up in the semi-rural South East, USA, where kids didn't get diagnosed with ADHD. (Fun fact -- I had 5 boys who were my childhood friends that grew up with. We all lived within 3 miles of each other, and all of us have ADHD -- something in the water maybe?)
I didn't know I had ADHD until I was in a dark dark place in my early 20s after 4 years of college (only took me 6 years lol).
I swear I have some kind of CPTSD from growing up with it. I developed all kinds of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms and a lot of anger and negative self-talk that I struggle with still to this day.
I mean, I was chewed up and spit out by the public education system, little league sports, other children's parents, my peers, and even my own parents from time to time. Constantly, day in and day out, being punished, ridiculed, and humiliated for something I could not control. I didn't want to be that way, and I still don't want to be that way, but I am what I am.
I would not consider myself to be anything but average intelligence, maybe even below average, but if it weren't for sheer luck and a determination to prove everyone wrong, then I do not think I would have survived.