About a year ago, Isandra Gonzalez could not stay seated or
focused for an entire class ““ her mind constantly wandered,
she could not take notes, her hands began jittering and she felt
anxious and wanted to move around.
“I just couldn’t stay in my class. I would leave
every 20 minutes,” Gonzalez said. “(I thought)
what’s going on? Why can’t I stay seated?”
After an English professor suggested she go see a doctor,
Gonzalez soon discovered she had Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disor
der (ADHD), a condition where a person has patterns of
inattention and hyperactivity not normal for people their age.
Harold Pruett, director of UCLA’s Student Psychological
Services (SPS), said ADHD is a common problem among students across
the country.
Between five and 10 percent of the patients that come to SPS
have some form of ADHD, Pruett said, adding that roughly nine
percent of UCLA’s total population uses SPS.
“Persons with ADHD find it very difficult to concentrate
and pay attention sometimes. So it’s a real struggle just to
focus your attention,” Pruett said.
Gonzalez, a 25-year-old transfer student from Miami Dade
Community College in Florida, came to UCLA to study English and
Italian last fall.
She said she came to New York illegally from the Dominican
Republic when she was 10 years old and moved to Miami when she was
13. Her mother had been an executive secretary in Santo Domingo,
but worked with her sisters at a hair salon in Miami. Gonzalez
added that she also worked various jobs to help support her
family.
Gonzalez moved west to Los Angeles in 1998 to try and begin her
own music promotion company, but was unsuccessful and moved back to
Miami in 2000 to begin college. Gonzalez plans to graduate this
year and she hopes to go to law school and become an entertainment
lawyer.
She speaks quickly, moves her hands anxiously when she talks and
constantly appears ready to jump out of her seat.
Gonzalez said she has been hyperactive since she was a child and
often wrote poetry or read in order to calm down. But when Gonzalez
came to UCLA, she said she was overwhelmed with information from
classes and was unable to cope.
“The information I was getting (in class) was so
much,” Gonzalez said. “You can have (ADHD) all your
life and just not notice it until you hit a wall.”
When Gonzalez hit her wall, she said she went to the Office for
Students with Disabilities (OSD) and to SPS for evaluations and
tests.
Gonzalez said she had previously been diagnosed with bipolar
disorder, a condition where a person fluctuates between depression
and elation, and was relieved to find out how to also deal with her
hyperactivity.
Dealing With The Disorders
Gonzalez has a cocktail every day.
It is not your normal cocktail filled with fruit or a mixed
alcoholic drink, but a combination of different medicines and pills
she takes to stay focused in class and level her bipolar
disorder.
At first she said she hated the idea of taking medicine. A
self-described control freak, Gonzalez said she had a hard time
letting go.
“I was totally averse to taking medication. … I’m
a firm believer in your own power of mind. It came to a point where
I could keep crying every day or I could try it.”
One of the things Gonzalez said she was afraid of was how people
would perceive her once she started taking medicine.
“I don’t want people thinking I’m crazy. But
who’s normal? And what is normal anyway?” Gonzalez
said. “I’m a control freak, but sometimes you just need
to let go a little.”
One part of the mixture of daily medicine she takes is for her
bipolar disorder, and another part is medicine she takes right
before class so she can focus.
But cocktails are not the only things Gonzalez and others with
similar disorders use for help.
Campus institutions for students with disabilities and
psychological assistance provide services for students who need
extra help in the classroom.
The disabilities office works with over 1,300 students each
year, providing different accommodations to help them at the
university, said the office director Kathy Molini.
Molini said services students receive are based on their
individual limitations to academic success and some students with
ADHD may be given extra time to take tests or a note taker may
assist them in the classroom.
Over-diagnosed?
Gonzalez said some people don’t believe her when she tells
them she has ADHD, telling her the disorder has been over-diagnosed
and that Ritalin, the drug used to calm a person’s
hyperactivity, has been over-prescribed.
Those statements can be hurtful to people actually in need of
help, Gonzalez said.
“It becomes a problem when you misjudge everyone
else,” Gonzalez said.
“When people read me like I’m one of those wrong
statistics. It’s not one of those things that I was like,
“˜Oh yeah, give it (medicine) to me.’ … I don’t
want it (ADHD). It’s not fun,” Gonzalez said.
Molini said the services provided to diagnosed students are not
frivolous, but are accommodations people need.
“Here at UCLA we have very stringent guidelines that we
follow to determine eligibility for services, and those must be
met. I think that the people that we serve are eligible and deserve
the academic support services that we provide,” Molini
said.
“We can look at the overall intention of society to
educate people and that includes people with disabilities. And the
services are designed to level the playing field and make the
educational program accessible to students with
disabilities,” Molini said.
“It’s really an attempt to have everyone be at the
starting line or gate at the same time,” she said.