Larry Mullen Jr., iconic drummer and co-founder of the band U2, recently revealed that he suffers from dyscalculia. What is it about?
The diagnosis was late but he can finally put words to the difficulties that have always affected him. Larry Mullen Jr., the 63-year-old drummer of U2, recently revealed in an interview with Times Radio that he had been diagnosed with dyscalculia.
“I always knew something was wrong with the way I handled numbers,” he told the site. “I have difficulty with numbers. And I recently realized that I have dyscalculia, a subversion of dyslexia. So I don’t know how to count (and) I don’t know how to add,” he confided.
The musician explained that this is why fans noticed that he sometimes looked “in pain” when playing the drums. “I try to count measurements,” he said, noting that with dyscalculia, “counting measurements is like climbing Everest.”
A learning disorder
Dyscalculia is a learning disorder affecting a person’s ability to understand information based on numbers and mathematics. While it can be distinguished from dyslexia (a disorder that makes reading difficult), just like dysorthographia or dysphasia, dyscalculia shares some similarities with them as a “specific learning disorder”, and a person can present several of these associated disorders.
It is estimated that between 5 and 7% of school-aged children present a “dys” disorder (including 1 to 2% severe forms), according to figures from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research ( Inserm).
As the French Federation of Dys explains, people with dyscalculia particularly experience difficulty counting, counting, representing a quantity, carrying out calculations or even solving problems.
Symptoms of this disorder usually appear during childhood, especially when children are learning to do basic calculations, and make learning math very laborious.
Adults suffer from it without knowing it
The exact causes of dyscalculia still remain mysterious. The speech therapist plays an essential role in the early detection, diagnosis and multidisciplinary management of dyscalculia.
Young people and adults with this disorder can be affected to varying degrees and often present symptoms that are very different from each other.
But, as the Cleveland Clinic reports to Usa Today, many adults suffer from dyscalculia without knowing it, and these people often face mental health issues when they have to do calculations, “such as anxiety, depression and other difficult feelings.”
According to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, affected adults may encounter daily difficulties, particularly in managing finances, understanding instructions and the notions of durations, distances, quantities, etc. They may also make mistakes when of “copying and remembering telephone numbers, identifiers and dates”.
Dyscalculia should not be confused with acalculia, which is a disorder caused by brain damage and which is characterized by the inability to calculate and recognize numbers.
