Living with ADD in a third world country

There are several implications about healthcare just by living in a third world country like Colombia. Just to put a bit of context I'll speak about the social stratification. 

Social stratification is latin america in general is the way the goverment divides the people in the country acording to profit (or at least thats what they intend to do). Leaving in a low stratum (meassured in numbers like 0, 1 or 2) means you are poor or at least that you live at a poor neighborhood. Living in stratum 3 or 4 means that you are in the mid class. Anything beyond the level 5 means you're in a good spot in the country economy. Now speaking about numbers, stratum 0 or 1 families live with less than 200 dollars a month, 2 or 3 live with $200-$700, 4 and 5 arround $1000-2000 and so on. Lower stratum families pay less taxes than higher ones, 70% of the poblation is on stratum 3 or bellow.

Being divided by profit means you pay less for healthcare too, sadly also means your getting a worse service too. Getting a medical appointment with a psychiatrist is really hard, it could take from 3 to 6 months in the worst cases.

Another thing to have in account to get an idea of how problematic could be having ADD living in Colombia is that people in general pay less attention to mental illness. Even if you born is a house with parents that have gone through university you may not be categorized as someone witht learning problems, you just be looked at like you are some lazy person. 

Having a bad healthcare plus a low recognition of mentall illness could leave someone with ADD on its own. Event after getting an appointment with a psychiatrist, if you have bad luck you'll not recognized as someone with ADD if you are not having serious symptoms. My recomendation is to read and have an strong, solid knowledge about ADD before going to see the psychiatrist so you get a correct and fast examination in just one session, don't over exagerated the problems or you'll be diagnosed with another illness.

Lets say you overcome both of this problems and manage to get a prescription for your medicines. Then you have to buy it at full cost because the healthcare does not cover them. As in other countries ADD medicies are strong regulated so getting them by any other means is near impossible. 

My conclution after all this talk is that you my find yourself in a dificult spot getting treatmen in an a Latin american country you must be pacient and study a lot about ADD beffore getting to the see a professional. And if you're from other country and you are visiting Colombia you better bring your pills.

My next subjects will be:
- Pre-diagnosing ADD.
- A story about symptoms and how you could miss understand them.
- Is meditation really a cure?