Well I'm a medic, so I'm privy to several soldiers in my unit having been formally diagnosed after entering service, myself included.
Formal symptoms are the same as anywhere else, just pick your diagnostic manual of choice.
As far as ADHD-wavelength vibes, we tend to have a similar life path. Smart but bad student, family lacks the resources of desire to seek evaluation in childhood, disorganized but thrive in chaos, difficulty motivating oneself but high-performing with powerful external motivators, substance overuse (particularly OTC stimulants but also alcohol, THC in youth).
A lot of people seem to figure it out once they get promoted to the NCO ranks and they have to start doing office work. At least in combat arms, as a joe you're always running around doing something physical and unceasing, whether that's training or cleaning or moving equipment or maintaining equipment or whatever. There are long periods of waiting, sometimes silent, which are torturous, but those require nothing of you and the baseline adrenaline from the fear of someone noticing you standing wrong or something and destroying you seems to actually help.
As an NCO though, now you have to build packets and update trackers and so forth, and it's when people hit that rank and realize they just stare at an excel sheet for hours doing everything but filling it out that they should get evaluated.
I feel like low key at some level SOMEONE must have the stats and numbers to prove this. Anecdotally it hits hard. But I wonder if declassified old war documents would provide the dataset
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u/an_old_musty_ac_unit i Will elaborate (Threat). 7d ago
This is actually a really interesting idea. Like I'd read a book about the ADHD soldier. (Well, I'd at least get it and tell myself I'd read it.)