Hi! I'm Dr. Robb Mapou, and this is the beginning of my blog on learning disabilities, with a focus on adults. A lot of folks have suggested that I do this, but not being of the computer generation, I kind of said, "Who, me? I don't know how to blog!" On the other hand, I have always been a writer: I published a newspaper in my fourth grade class, worked on my junior high and high school newspapers, won an award for a paper in college, have published a book and, most important, have to write two long reports on my clients every week.

Plus I have some electronic and computer geek credentials: I am a ham radio operator, I received a calculator as my high school graduation present and wore it proudly on my belt, I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, and I did computer programming for many years. In fact, the first professional conference papers that I presented and scientific journal articles that I published were on the use of computers in psychology, way back in the early 1980s. But, since leaving programming behind in 1984, I have seem to have lost my skill with electronics and computers - I don't text and only recently got on Facebook, at my niece's urging.

However, I digress. In graduate school, I began specializing in clinical neuropsychology. Unlike clinical psychology, which focuses on evaluating and treating mental health problems like anxiety and depression, clinical neuropsychology focuses on evaluating and treating people with brain disorders, such as traumatic brain injuries, strokes, epilepsy, brain tumors, and Alzheimer's disease. The field really appealed to me, because of my engineering background. Neuropsychologists also work with people with learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but when I was in graduate school, our knowledge of these two disorders was limited to children. Everyone thought that they would go away when you grow up! Obviously, they were wrong.

I took the traditional training route and, preferring to work with adults, spent time learning and working with people with neurological disorders. However, in 1993, I began working in a private practice that specialized in children with learning disabilities and ADHD. I was asked to join the practice, because more adults were coming in for evaluation. Some, after participating in the feedback session after their child's evaluation, had the "Aha!" moment of recognizing that they had had similar problems in school and continued to struggle with reading, writing, math, attention, or organization. Others knew that something was wrong and, with the popular press turning to the issue of ADHD in adults (Hallowell and Ratey's landmark book on adult ADHD, Driven to Distraction was published in 1994), sought out evaluation.

I remember, for example, one of my first clients, who was a doctor. He had made it through medical school, but at the bottom of his class, and in his practice, typically worked later than his colleagues, because he was slow when writing out his case notes. Yet, he was a successful physician.