Is ADHD a root cause, or a collection of symptoms grouped together? I believe the latter to be the case, with trauma being the root cause instead. A chaotic childhood environment can often cause the development of chronic awareness, where the child develops a toolkit for survival. The problem with this toolkit is it is built for survival, not living the life we want to live. Rather than trying to manage symptoms, it is important we are doing both, managing our symptoms and working on the root cause itself.