I have noticed that you have mentioned a few times in your posts that you headcanon Adachi as having ADHD. I haven’t seen this headcanon anywhere else, and I would be especially curious to see your reasoning for it due to your strong understanding of Persona 4 as a whole. Would you be okay with explaining why in detail? If this is already a write-up in progress/you don’t feel comfortable writing about it, no pressure to respond! Either way, I think your analysis posts are wonderful, and I am looking forward to seeing how you analyze the text next!
Yeah, sure! I've been considering making this post for a while, but was afraid I was overstepping my bounds by doing this, since I don't believe the authors actually intended for Adachi to have ADHD, like I firmly believe they intended for him to be clinically depressed. But if I'm invited, no point in holding back! I want to give a disclaimer that I personally neither am a psychiatrist nor do I have ADHD to my knowledge, so I am in part operating off of observations from people who do have it and what I know from them, and what I know of official criteria and how it impacts the lives of people who have it.
I can’t say for certain because symptoms have to be present by age 12 and we never get an image of his behavior before his late teens. But here goes nothing.
So, I have this PDF of the DSM-5 entry for ADHD here: [Source] For people age 17 or older, five out of nine symptoms are needed to meet the minimum requirements for ADHD, since symptoms can fade out with age. Adachi is 27. Of course, I would like to start with Inattentive-type, or Type 1. I actually think it’s a little harder to make a case for him to have Inattentive-type since we see more of his impulsive side, but I do think he has it.
1a. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities (e.g., overlooks or misses details, work is inaccurate).
We don't get a lot of what Adachi does at work in game, but in the audio CDs scripts, he admits to frequently misremembering kanji in his native language, often mixing up homophones or forgetting strokes in his kanji. He completely screws up someone's name.
Dojima: First of all, you need to be good at Japanese literature. Adachi, you made a mistake with the victim's name the other time. Adachi: D-Dojima-san! You don't have to say that here! L-Look! Once you use a computer too often, you tend to forget your kanji... Dojima: Then why did you make that mistake on the computer? Geography's important too, but this guy can't read a map for nuts. He got lost with the patrol car for 30 minutes!
[Sourced from a pretty good translation from LiveJournal by Aatash.]
I don’t think the “getting lost on a map” has anything to do with ADHD symptoms, personally. But I think the part with his work is pretty cut and dry, especially with Dojima’s implication that he just does things like this on the regular.
1b. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities (e.g., has difficulty remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or lengthy reading)
Adachi strongly implies that he struggles with bare minimum the lengthy reading part, since in his Rank 5 he gives Nanako advice on how to avoid reading and reporting on the whole book so that the work done is easier. He explicitly says she doesn’t have to even read the whole book she’s reading in order to report on it, a sign that he found a way around something he personally found difficult.
This actually also rolls into the 1F symptom later on, since 1B and 1F are basically cause and effect.
1e. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet deadlines)
Adachi is stated to dislike cleaning his room in his Club Book entry. He is also generally portrayed to be disorganized, considering his previously shown struggles with his work I asserted in 1A, where he just totally misremembered the name of one of the victims of a crime, and his tendency to run off at work. He also straight up is stated within the club book to hate organizing, implied to be because he struggles with doing so, judging by the kanji mistake in 1A.
Dislikes: Organizing documents/paperwork, cleaning up his room
[Source on Page 80 of the club book]
Furthermore, his tendency to avoid work by heading to Junes. He offhand mentions how he thinks it's the perfect place if he wants to evade his job. Adachi is strongly implied to be a generally disorganized person.
1f. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (e.g., schoolwork or homework; for older adolescents and adults, preparing reports, completing forms, reviewing lengthy papers).
Again, the Club Book states he absolutely hates doing paperwork, which is something that can be really tedious to do, as someone who's had to file it myself. Not to mention Junes, since he's heavily implied to be there in order to avoid doing things such as paperwork. Furthermore, as seen above in 1B, his advice to Nanako in Rank 5 is based on his struggles to keep up with tasks such as this--he simply tells her to evade doing the work and just summarize the notes given already. He even explicitly confirms that he himself does this as an evasion of his duties, so that he doesn't have to do too much.
1h. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli (for older adolescents and adults, this may be unrelated thoughts).
Oh boy, does he fit this one. We see it the first time Yu properly meets Adachi, where he, supposed to give Dojima his coffee, starts rambling about Yukiko. This is in part him desperately trying to get himself off the scent of being the Midnight Channel Killer, but he has no way to know that these kids are capable of stopping him or Namatame yet--it's implied he only figures this out after Kanji's dungeon, so he just starts talking to these random kids about the case impulsively thinking “oh no, what if they suspect me?”
Also, on April 30, he bounces around thoughts pretty consistently as he reacts to the Junes food court. Initially he mutters to himself about the Midnight Channel Killings, then gets excited about the menu update, then notices the Investigation Team and just starts chatting them up, all in under a minute. I’ll discuss more of this scene later, because it covers more signs of his.
Furthermore, during his Rank 2, he just starts talking about his type in girls after being offered to be cooked dinner by Yu, since he states he struggles with doing so himself due to fatigue. People with ADHD do actually have a tendency to go on random tangents because it's just them being distracted by their thoughts.
The results of the present study are consistent with Shaw and Giambra’s(1993) finding that spontaneous, but not deliberate, mind wandering is associated with ADHD symptoms. Critically, given that (1) our results replicated across two very large samples, (2) similar results were observed irrespective of which scoring system was used for the ASRS (see supplementary materials), and (3) results were consistent across clinical and non-clinical populations, the present study clearly demonstrates the robustness of this important theoretical relation, and in doing so circumvents recent concerns regarding the reliability of psychological research (e.g., Pashler & Wagenmakers, 2012). In addition, our results extend Shaw and Giambra’s workproviding evidence that: (1) the observed relation of spontaneous mind wandering and ADHD symptoms holds when examining spontaneous mind wandering as reported for everyday settings (i.e., at the trait level), (2) this remains the case when statistically controlling for levels of deliberate mind wandering, and (3) the relation of spontaneous mind wandering and ADHD symptoms is strikingly linear, suggesting that indexing ADHD symptoms along a continuum, rather than as a dichotomous split, might provide a more sensitive measure of the associates of ADHD, as has been recently proposed (Overbey, et al., 2011).
[Source]
Different from the psychological signal, human speech conveys not only verbal (linguistic) content like words but also non-verbal (paralinguistic) information, such as speech tone, which is responsive to subtle shifts in the speaker’s physiological condition and mental state [23]. For example, adults with ADHD have subtle differences in speech production, increased speech rate, and alternating and sequential motion rates compared to non-ADHD control participants. Moreover, as suggested in DSM-V [7], ADHD patients have speech symptoms such as speaking loud and fast and talking excessively and tangentially.
[Source]
And in his Rank 3, after mentioning he didn’t know anything about cooking in high school, he goes on a ramble about his past and present life and how dissatisfied he is with it, before jumping back and remembering that he was supposed to be talking about food with a slight "oh," implying he had genuinely forgotten for a second what the convo was meant to be about and his mind had went somewhere else without him noticing, which, encouraged by Yu, probably didn’t help.
I believe that should be enough to assert that he has Inattentive-type ADHD (though with complicating factors that I will cover later), but funnily enough, he actually also fits a decent number of the criteria for the Hyperactive side. There’s quite a few symptoms on the DSM-V that I think wouldn’t be out of character for Adachi to have, but aren’t ever explicitly shown by any content involving him. I actually think it’s easier to make a case for him on Hyperactive, as he has a bunch of fairly obvious symptoms here.
2a. Often fidgets or squirms in seat.
If Adachi has something in his hand, no matter what it is, he is in fact fidgeting with it. The strongest depiction we see is actually within the arcanum reveal where he's playing with the Nambu, bobbing his hand and the revolver with it up and down. He’s focused on Yu, so he’s not really paying attention to his own actions with the gun. I really do not know how to record this so it’s not covered with the dialogue box, but if you watch the scene, you will see what I am talking about.
2c. Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is inappropriate. (Note: In adolescents or adults, may be limited to feeling restless.)
Adachi of course likely had his more energetic side tempered with age, but he consistently complains of feeling caged and restless in Inaba, even before his Social Link starts. But he really gets into it for the first time in his Rank 1, complaining explicitly that he doesn’t feel like he has enough to do.
Furthermore, post-reveal that he is the Midnight Channel Killer, he adds even more emphasis on how bored he felt within Inaba, feeling like he was unable to do anything. It's strongly implied he's an outright adrenaline junkie as an adult.
I previously argued his consistent boredom was a sign of depression, but here it can strongly be argued to be both, as though Adachi struggles with feeling pleasure as shown in his Rank 4, he asserts in his Rank 1 and in his pre-battle rant that his boredom stems from feeling like he has nothing to do, which is a sign of restlessness. He's anhedonic, but he's more than that. He's caged and understimulated. Especially since risk-taking behavior, stemming from said restlessness, is a way this symptom manifests.
As expected, ADHD patients did choose the risky alternatives significantly more often than the Control Group. These results were obtained in a single trial. In Drechsler et al’s. (2008) study adolescents showed riskier decision making behaviour only if playing the GDT a second time. Therefore, our study sustains the assumption that risky decision making behaviour in ADHD individuals becomes even more pronounced in adulthood. This finding is in line with known executive-function deficits found in ADHD individuals concerning strategic planning (Willcutt et al., 2005). It indicates difficulties regarding strategy application. With concern to feedback processing, the ADHD group was shown to utilize feedback more disadvantageously than CG. Specifically, compared to the CG, ADHD patients have an increased preference for risky decisions after negative feedback on a risky decision and avoid staying with a safe decision after positive feedback on a safe decision. This cannot be attributed to differences in overall intellectual capacity, as shown by the MWT scores. Hence, ADHD patients most likely possess the capacity to identify the probabilities for gains and losses during the GDT. But contrary to “cold” cognitive evaluations they do not use feedback to maximize gains. Instead, they seem to be more attracted by the rewarding properties of risk. Bechara stressed the role of emotions in decision making (Bechara, 2004). Brand proposed that advantageous decision making under risk conditions is driven by strategies as well as emotional feedback processing (Brand et al., 2006). Therefore, it maybe assumed that ADHD individuals chose the risky alternatives in our study for emotional reasons, i.e. for the fun and reward of risk rather than to gain money by weighing the probabilities of gain and loss. As such, the risk-taking behaviour exerted by the adults suffering from ADHD may be a means to experience a pleasurable state worth losing a significant amount of fictive money.
[Source]
This group above did two separate studies, with two separate groups, that showed different results. They then proceeded to point out in their first summary (whose discussion I quote here) that they should have checked for boredom in the previous study, so I will show it with a different one here.
Sensation seeking is described as a tendency to pursue intense novel and complex experience, despite the risk of suffering physical and nonphysical damages (Zuckerman, 2008). Sensation seeking induces continuous engagement in a variety of risky behaviors that would bring about satisfying rewards (Zuckerman, 2007). Sensation seeking was found to mediate ADHD-associated risk-taking (Graziano et al., 2015) and to predict weighing the benefits of risk as higher than their costs (Maslowsky et al., 2011). Sensation seeking is a prominent motive in ADHD (Graziano et al., 2014) and could thus impact the perceptions of benefits. The display of greater sensation-seeking in ADHD populations has been attributed to a state of continuous under-arousal or disproportional boredom-evasion. In both instances, activities that induce positive arousal could be perceived as more rewarding. Notably, the preference for immediate rewards and sensation seeking are more highly correlated with the hyperactivity dimension than with the inattention dimension of ADHD (Lopez et al., 2015; Scheres et al., 2010). These observations are in accord with our findings that hyperactivity symptoms is correlated with the perceived benefit of risky behavior.
[Source]
I want to single out that risk-taking behavior can also be manifested in financial risks taken.
Financial risk-taking behavior [RTB] is understudied in relationship to ADHD. However, among college students, an effect was found of ADHD symptoms on compulsive buying and credit-card misuse (although this was included in a factor that also contained risky driving) [26•]. A prospective study showed that, although hyperactive children as young adults did not differ from controls regarding debts and loans, they did report more problems saving money [21]. In adults, especially hyperactive-impulsive symptoms of ADHD were associated with financial RTB like delayed credit-card payments, carrying credit-card balances, and having more debts [27]
[Source]
So, why do I bring this up? Because we see Adachi casually pull this. Take for example the widely-memed throwaway gag where Adachi proceeds to buy a bunch of cabbages at Junes because they were on sale. This is a case of a financial risk, even if the sale masks it. He may have taken them because they were on sale, but he's implied to have bought an unusually large amount. In Japan, in 2011, a cabbage cost 168 yen. [Source], and the woman nearby panicking over the cabbages being out states that the ones in Junes are expensive, especially in comparison to the local ones.
Furthermore, the more obvious thing that partly sparked the whole plot of the game--the Midnight Channel Killings. Although they started as an impulsive, jealous act of revenge against Namatame, they shifted into what became the only sense of stimulation he had, and he liked it because of the danger he was in. Quite ironic for a control freak to be an adrenaline junkie!
2d. Unable to engage in leisure activities quietly.
Adachi has a penchant for talking and muttering to himself. We see this as early as April 30, right after Yukiko recovers from the TV World. He talks to himself out loud while perusing Junes' food court.
This is consistent throughout the game to the end. In the Kubo arc, as mentioned earlier, he's also seen talking to himself before he notices Yu and jumps in surprise out of embarrassment that Yu heard him muttering to himself about avoiding his job, not to mention him just ranting to himself in Yamano’s dungeon. Adachi just talks to himself constantly, which rolls right into the next symptom he has.
2f. Often talks excessively.
What the hell does Dojima keep admonishing him for if not this exactly? Adachi is quite the chatterbox, often changing topics on the fly and even leaking details about cases that he's working on to random people. Adachi frequently has to stop himself from just rambling about his job to these random teenagers so he doesn’t leak confidential information and therefore get in trouble. He just genuinely doesn’t know when to stop, and he doesn’t normally do it with ulterior motives. Actually this tendency to talk too much gets him caught because he blurts out a statement that unveils himself by mistake. During his Social Link, he just does it on accident multiple times, like him stating Nanako’s going to have a hard time getting a partner as an adult as he complains about the idea of getting married. In post-August dialogue after you max him and can’t link him at night, he complains about his job and how much of a hassle Kubo’s giving him, especially since there’s no way he can frame Namatame now, even as he’s struggling to make the charges stick—his bosses are just desperate to close the case. And then he remembers he really shouldn’t be talking about that.
There is also dialogue he has that I could not find on any of my saves where he explicitly comments that he talks too much.
2i. Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations, games, or activities; may start using other peoples things without asking or receiving permission; for adolescents and adults, may intrude into or take over what others are doing).
Adachi is prone to joining in conversations out of nowhere, whether he's speaking with the Investigation Team or with Dojima. We see him just casually join conversations he’s not involved in on both April 30 and June 8, the former of which he wasn’t actually involved in until he saw Yu and just started talking to him in the middle of the convo, since it’s shown that the IT was talking. The second, he was close by and just hopped in, and advocated for Yu to get a scooter license due to his own grievances with transportation in Inaba in a surprisingly sweet moment from him. This conversation wasn’t meant to involve him, but it did purely because he decided to chime in. I think this is the bar-none nicest way it ever shows.
Now that the specifics are over with, let’s get the reasons it wouldn’t be anything else out of the way! I'm gonna knock B, C, and D out of the way in one fell swoop here. We can’t prove anything for B, since we simply don’t know enough, but C is fairly obvious since it impacts him at work and when he’s just interacting with people, even when he’s not really doing anything, and D is out of the way since it’s explicit he struggles with his job.
B. Several inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were present prior to age 12 years. C. Several inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms are present in two or more settings (e.g., at home, school, or work; with friends or relatives; in other activities). D. There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, academic, or occupational functioning.
For Criterion E, this is more complex, as Adachi does in fact have a mood disorder, namely, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), but we can prove that Adachi’s behavior can’t be entirely explained by his clinical depression. One study on adults with ADHD and MDD together shows that it can be difficult to tell whether a person with Inattentive ADHD symptoms develops them from depression or not, since clinically depressed people are often impaired in similar ways due to their lack of motivation.
We compared the results of ADHD patients with and without comorbid depression, MDD patients, and healthy controls (HC). As expected, both ADHD groups showed significantly higher scores in all subscales and also the global score compared to healthy controls. With respect to MDD patients, both ADHD groups scored higher in the hyperactivity, impulsivity, and global scales, These findings are partially in line with an earlier study by Stewart and Liljequist (2015) revealing that the CAARS subscale for impulsivity was one of the scales that best predicted the distinction between ADHD and other Axis I disorders (Stewart & Liljequist, 2015). As hyperactivity scores were comparable between MDD patients and HC, but ADHD patients had significantly higher scores compared with MDD, hyperactivity could be one distinguishing feature between ADHD and MDD patients. Interestingly, in our sample, the comparison of ADHD and MDD varied noticeably in two subscales between the comorbidity groups of ADHD. Namely, ADHD patients with, but not without, comorbid depression, had higher sub scores in the inattention scale than MDD patients; while only ADHD patients without depression had lower self concept subscores than MDD patients. Looking at the mean values for inattention chronologically, ADHD+ (note: + here means with depression) scored highest, followed by MDD patients and ADHD– (- here means without depression), with all the groups being significantly more impaired than healthy controls. One possible explanation might be that not only ADHD, but also depressive patients suffer from attention deficits, which might cause a potentiation of the symptom severity when both diseases occur as comorbidities (see also Larochette et al., 2011 for cognitive impairment associated with comorbidity).
[Source]
And I do notice that for the most part, I cannot parse between where his depression ends and his ADHD would begin in his Inattentive symptoms, as they are likely interacting with his fatigue and decreased motivation. However, like what was shown in the study above, Adachi’s Hyperactive criteria aren’t as easily explained by his depression, since MDD does not cover symptoms like his tendency to talk to himself, while ADHD does explicitly cover these aspects of him as shown in 2D, 2F and 2I. I believe I did a good job differentiating his anhedonia with his restlessness when discussing criterion 2C, but I'm going to go further and grab the DSM-V criteria for depression.
[Source here]
If you read it, (which, if you did, good for you!), you'll notice that there is a criterion for influence on psychomotor effects, but Adachi seems to move normally, if excessively. It doesn't cover his absentminded fidgeting, as shown in 2A, or the earlier mentioned tendency to speak to himself or go on long-winded rambles that either go off topic or go somewhere that should be confidential. To me, this is absolutely enough to say that Adachi in fact has both disorders.
I also want to say I believe Adachi having ADHD is pretty thematically appropriate, which is why I really like this headcanon. With this, I want to speak about the struggles of people with ADHD, and how this can impact their lives. It's fairly common in both the United States and Japan for neurodevelopmentally disabled kids to have their disabilities manifest in a way that makes them "academically gifted." Adachi states himself that he was supposed to be the "best of the best" before his mistake got him cast out to Inaba.
This often leads to these disabled people slipping through the cracks, as people just chalk up their symptoms as them just "working on a different level" than the abled kids around them, or the more obviously disabled kids that struggle academically. Take Yosuke, who is more commonly headcanoned with ADHD, an idea I concur with--he's not shown to be nearly as academically gifted, even though he is highly intelligent in his own right. Adachi, in contrast, is stated by Soejima to be a talented individual, and this talent is heavily implied to have been related to his academic prowess.
All of these traits were meant to make Taro a difficult character to grasp with few true talents, and I intended for them to portray him as the complete opposite of Adachi, who is naturally skilled and talented.
[Source on page 146]
This isn't all that uncommon a story, actually, for a talented student to have a neurodevelopmental disability such as ADHD. One study recounts the experiences of people with autism, a similar neurodevelopmental disability, and one person in particular, Hitomi, highlights how kids like Adachi can slip under the radar.
Hitomi had a particularly difficult time around the age of 15: ‘I was different from the people around me, and I didn’t know why’. However, her concern was dismissed by teachers and parents due to her good grades at school – ‘they thought it was a luxurious problem."
[Source]
Adachi states about his parents that they honestly let him do whatever so long as his grades were high up.
Noting his bitter mocking of the “ideal life” he was supposed to lead in Magatsu Inaba, he speaks as if he can’t let go of the idea he’s meant to be the best. And he implies from that rant after throwing Saki in that this sense of loss happened only recently, despite him being in his late twenties. Most people stumble across the realization they can’t do everything alone way earlier. To me, this has the trappings of a gifted child whose disability fell under the radar due to his talent, and his disability remained hidden as everyone wrote off his signs as "he's a genius, he's allowed to be eccentric."
Shigenori Soejima even outright stated he wanted Adachi to appear exactly this way in his design--an oddball.
Adachi used to be an elite detective, so he’s actually quite good at his job, but I find that many people who are genuinely talented tend to have their quirks or are lacking in other areas, and that’s something I tried to reflect in Adachi’s design. [He] almost always has bedhead and his tie is very crooked. These details reveal that he’s not very concerned with his fashion and appearance.
[Source on page 144] (I KNEW he didn’t brush his hair!!)
With that, I'd like to point out how geniuses are portrayed in media. They’re eccentric and a little socially awkward, implying their brains simply work on a different level. But it’s also based on people with neurodevelopmental disabilities, though usually autism. Take some of the behaviors of Sherlock Holmes, for example, the most famous detective in the West, who's even made it to the East. He keeps himself well-groomed, but his friend Watson complains of how many odd relics are found around their flat in one story, and Holmes early on (though he later takes an interest in this knowledge) doesn't know very much outside of what is relevant to his detective work. (I skip over one part where Watson comments on Holmes' temperament, but it only adds to the idea of the eccentric genius that might in fact be disabled in some way.)
If one takes a look at Doyle’s portrayal of Holmes’s domestic life, it soon becomes apparent that it is marked by the same singularity as his working life. In the story “The Musgrave Ritual”, Watson gives a detailed account of their different lifestyles: "Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than benefits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. (MSH 358)" In this respect, Holmes can certainly be called an unusual tenant for Mrs Hudson, the landlady, and a roommate that takes some getting used to. Even if Watson is not the most conservative or traditional person himself, he complains that their flat is “always full of chemicals and of criminal relics, which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish, or in even less desirable places” (ibid. 358). Aside from the humorous aspect, their often unconventional living conditions highlight Holmes’s eccentric nature and confirm the feature of a deviant domestic life. [...] Yet it would be too simplistic to label Holmes an untidy man because his degree of tidiness is in fact ‘compartmentalised’ according to different aspects of his life. While Watson describes Holmes’s method of thought as “the neatest and most methodical of mankind” and also observes “a certain quiet primness of dress” in the appearance of his friend, he calls him “one of the most untidy men” as far as his personal habits are concerned (MSH 358). These conflicting dispositions add even more variety to Watson’s descriptions of Holmes’s lifestyle which are sometimes contradictory, e.g. regarding his sleeping habits or sense of humour. [...]
Doyle was likely to be aware of the much debated link between genius and madness as his novels include references to, for example, the aforementioned Cesare Lombroso (cf. SS 43) who has amply discussed said connection. Today there are still scholars like Rollin who argue that Holmes’s obsessions also border on a mental disorder: “Indeed I would not shrink from going further and claiming that his obsessionalism is not a mere trait, but a symptom of frank neurosis. In support of this claim, I would emphasise that in his day-to-day work, Holmes showed an infinite capacity for detail” (Rollin 1988: 241). A good example of Holmes’s absorption of details is the way he seems to count everything: “I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed” (ASH 6). From today’s perspective, this almost sounds like somebody with an autism spectrum disorder who follows the repetitive ritual of counting. It is exactly due to these moods and behavioural patterns that Holmes is sometimes perceived as an odd or even other-worldly personality. There is an ironic moment in one of the stories when Holmes describes a neighbour and suspect with words that actually apply to himself: Murdoch was the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man, so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend. He seemed to live in some high, abstract region of surds and conic sections with little to connect him with ordinary life. He was looked upon as an oddity by the students. (CSH 221) The parallel between Holmes and Murdoch is apparent, but with the exception that he rather lives in a ‘region of solving crimes’. Holmes hardly takes an interest in anything outside his special fields of interest and Watson is often struck by the other-worldliness of his friend who claims to have no idea about contemporary literature, philosophy, politics or the Copernican Theory of the solar system. Therefore, Watson is stunned that his otherwise brilliant and knowledgeable friend does not know whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa (cf. SS 17) and makes a list about Holmes’s knowledge: 1 Knowledge of Literature: Nil. 2 Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil. 3 Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil. 4 Knowledge of Politics: Feeble. (ibid. 18) In Holmes’s exalted sphere, there seems to be no room for such dull topics. Yet in the course of the canon, these first notes are contradicted when Holmes actually quotes Shakespeare, starts to study philosophy in his retirement, shows some astronomical knowledge in “The Greek Interpreter” and recognises a foreign king in “A Scandal in Bohemia”. Hence, his interests are much more diverse than it seems once he sets his mind to it.
[Source, pages 69-73]
As a result of the popularity of fictional characters like himself, the image of the genius is influenced by these behaviors, and the comparison between the real-life individuals and the fictional character is drawn, which would lead to the real person being simply considered brilliant with not much more thought behind it.
Persona 4 covers media influence on people via the Midnight Channel, namely how it influences who we think about. Naoto’s dungeon in particular covers the effect fiction has on the way we think by criticizing how media representation of women is honestly subpar and we shouldn’t think of genres as “men’s” and “women’s,” no matter who we market to, since someone in the periphery will inevitably see it. Adachi being a case of someone failed by the media because the people around don’t process that his giftedness stems from disability is a perfect continuation of that. If a little funny considering Adachi HATES Naoto and wouldn’t want to be compared to her.
Society tends to stigmatize disability, usually seeing it as "excuses" rather than actual problems that harm the individual's quality of life. Furthermore, people seem to dislike it when you are openly disabled—whether you are mentally disabled and don’t or can’t hide it, whether you are physically disabled, doesn’t matter, people don’t like when you are clearly disabled, since stigma around it is so prevalent. So, Adachi would likely not want to believe he is in fact disabled, since it would spell trouble if he was.
Given stigmatization and the relatively mild nature of their children's disabilities, some parents described an initial reluctance to use disability labels and associated services. Some reasoned that their children look “normal,” and in most respect are no different from typically-developing children. Taku's mother observed: "One [reason parents do not allow their children to receive special education services] is [the label of] “disability”. If there is no pro blem intellectually, I've seen some mothers who really struggle with accepting [their children's] disabilities. For these parents, I think their [children's] IQs make a lot of difference. [Their children] can study and communicate well, and there are lots of things they can do. …They wonder if that [difficulty] is severe enough to be con sidered a disability. They may think, and want to believe, “Other children are also like [my child]”, instinctively. They may have a strong feeling that, “There is no problem with my child, [he/she] doesn't have a disability.” Similarly, Aki's mother articulated, “There is a sort of barrier to re source rooms. [Many parents] don't agree to send [their children] there probably because they don't like the [label] of ‘children with disabilities.’” Further, many parents expressed vulnerability to educators' and other parents' negative responses to their children. For example, Aki's mother described others' responses to her child's repeated misbehaviors. As is customary in Japanese elementary schools when children mis behave and are involved in incidents with their peers, she described apologizing to parents of those peers and educators: My child always tried to solve problems by hitting, kicking, or laying down [on the floor]. So, it was really hard for a long time. I kept apologizing [face-to-face] all the time, my head down, to everyone [including parents of children involved in such incidents] who said and laughed, “[Why doesn't she behave] like a girl?” Dai's mother also expressed frustration toward a societal expectation for individuals with disabilities to remain hidden, “I wonder why people with disabilities have to remain belittled [unnoticed, low in status]… We should be able to go out more openly [without worrying about others' responses].”
[Source]
Even for those who attempt to acknowledge the disabilities of their students and help kids with it, though they mean well, there just isn't a lot of information, so many teachers in Japan find themselves not knowing much despite their desires to help.
Previous researchers have mentioned a lack of knowledge about ADHD among educators (Brook et al., 2000; Ghanizadeh et al., 2006; Kos et al., 2004; Stormont & Stebbins, 2005; West et al., 2008); and the current study, which targets educators in Japan, also supported their findings. According to the results of the knowledge section of the current study, which contained IO items, a teacher's average score was 5.67 out of 10. Most educators in Japan knew the causes of ADHD; however, they showed a significant lack of knowledge about its characteristics, prevalence, and secondary risks, and about the side effects of medication among the ADHD population. Many educators who participated in the study answered several question by choosing I don't know. On some items of knowledge assessment, more than 40% of educators answered that they did not know. The statements to which they responded were: (1) Boys are in the majority in the ADHD population (40.1% responded/ don't know); (2) ADHD is considered a high-incidence disability (43.8%); (3) Stimulant medication often prescribed to the ADHD population has side effects or risks (41.4%); and (4) A higher risk of future drug abuse or delinquency exists among students with ADHD (53.7%) Surprisingly, only about 40% of teachers knew that ADHD is one of the high incidence disabilities in the current study. Moreover, about 45% of teachers did not know boys are more represented than girls in the ADHD population. Educators should know such information when they suspect their students of ADHD. Without knowing about such prevalence gaps and the reasons for the gap, educators increase their possibility of mistakenly placing their students into the ADHD category. Boys are over-represented in the ADHD category compared with girls because they usually show more aggressive and/or impulsive behaviors than girls and are easily suspected of ADHD. On the other hand, girls usually show less aggressive and/or impulsive behaviors, so educators tend not to recognize their ADHD characteristics. Without such information, educators in Japan increase the possibility of mistakenly placing boys into the ADHD category but not recognizing girls with ADHD who need special support. Moreover, without knowing that ADHD is one of the high-incidence disabilities, educators may not believe they have students with ADHD in their classrooms, even if they have such students.
[Source]
Adachi is a very self destructive individual, and his disability adds a layer of irony to Adachi's misguided determination to live and operate on his own, and his insecurity that he needs social connection in order to lead a fulfilling life. Disabilities, such as ADHD, often necessitate the disabled individual gets more support, whether their assistance is needed with learning how to focus, their executive functioning, getting medication, or how to just keep their symptoms in check. Adachi, a disabled man, is inherently in a worse position than most other men like him purely because of that ADHD. Not to mention his depression! He, more than most, needs some form of help in order to operate like his abled counterparts.
So, I doubt Adachi would ever want to get a diagnosis, let alone admit the possibility he is disabled--once again, he can't face himself, nor can he face the genuine struggles he goes through. We can see he couldn't face himself with his Persona--it's why he's in pain when he summons Magatsu-Izanagi. He keeps pretending that every single thing else is going against him when it's really his fault, and never once acknowledging the one factor that is well and truly out of his control, because it would require him acknowledging that he truly does need help and support, just like any other human. And he thinks having support makes him lesser, when it doesn't--he could never acknowledge he needs it.
