What is ADHD?
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a relatively common condition that affects almost 5% of people – one in 20 – across the world. Its main symptoms can include struggling to stay focused, continual movement or fidgeting, and a tendency to act impulsively.
Although now frequently diagnosed in children, many adults may also have ADHD, sometimes without realising. For those with the condition, having trouble concentrating or listening to instructions can make traditional work life difficult – a factor that can lead to stress and depression.
Managing symptoms
Prescription drugs are one way to treat ADHD, but this approach is not suitable for everyone and can lead to side effects – with long term impacts that are poorly understood. However, support is growing for non-medical interventions, like cognitive behavioural therapy, that might also provide an effective treatment for some people.
Among these approaches, natural environments have emerged as an exciting way to help manage ADHD. The evidence is still relatively nascent, but early studies on children have shown that playing in nature or simply walking through a city park can reduce symptoms.
Nature is particularly good at helping our brains recover focus and maintain attention, a process that has been repeatedly and robustly demonstrated in both children and adults. The working theory is that the same mechanism might be just as effective, or perhaps even more so, for those with ADHD. At least one study backs up this idea, showing that children with the condition scored higher on a concentration test when they were in the woods, rather than an urban setting.
Find Your Focus
Feedback from our community suggests the same principle could also apply for adults. We’ve heard from people with ADHD who use Portal to focus, find a state of flow, and relax. Their experiences are perhaps best summed up by this quote from Dave in Australia, who uses ambient sounds to unlock his ‘superpower’:
Thanks to the Portal app’s amazing selection of calming ambient sounds, I am able to gently wrangle my thoughts together enough to activate the ADD/ADHD superpower called “hyper focus”. Normally that’s only possible when I am working on something I’m personally interested in or passionate about.
Thanks to Portal I can pretty much activate it whenever I need it. So not only does it help me achieve goals at work or school, but it also helps me in my personal life. I use it when I need to do the boring things in life: the laundry, the dishes, cleaning the floors, grocery shopping and life admin tasks.
Another equally important use I have for Portal is calming my racing mind when I am over stimulated. For me personally it doesn’t happen often when it does it can be overwhelming. I know that other people with ADD/ADHD and even autism, can struggle a lot with over stimulation. Portal is a fantastic way to shut out the outside world for a short while to give yourself the time you need to calm down before getting back to it.
Along with other insights we’ve received from the Portal community, Dave’s experiences demonstrate the remarkable impact that nature - and digital experiences of nature in particular - can have on our minds. So if you’re having trouble concentrating, try one of these portals curated by our ADHD community – it might just help you unlock your own superpower.
