Scottish man diagnosed with chronic lateness

It sounds like the best excuse for tardiness ever, but for one man, this condition is very real.

Jim Dunbar of Angus, Scotland, has been diagnosed with chronic lateness.

After being late for, well, everything for his entire life, doctors have determined that the 57-year-old man has genuine medical issues.

Doctors believe the condition affects the same part of the brain as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) does. Some psychologists believe the chronic lateness could be the symptom of depression or another underlying mood disorder.

Even if Dunbar gives himself an hours-long head start to make it to an appointment, he will be late. He is incapable of gauging how long things to take to complete or how much time is passing when he's engaged in activities.

He recently gave himself an entire day to get ready to see a 7 p.m. movie. He was still late.

"I got up at 8:15am to go to a David Bowie film that started at seven o'clock. That gave me 11 hours to get ready. I knew I was going there — and I was 20 minutes late," he tells the Evening Telegraph.

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"I get down about it and it's disturbing for other folk when you arrive late."

Wearing a watch doesn't help him. Nor does setting his clocks ahead.

And even though he's been late since kindergarten — he vividly remembers being late for school as a 5-year-old boy — he hopes his new diagnosis will finally help his family and friends understand that he isn't just making poor excuses for his inability to be punctual.

"The reason I want it out in the open is that there has got to be other folk out there with it and they don't realize that it's not their fault," Dunbar says.

"I blamed it on myself and thought 'Why can't I be on time?' I lost a lot of jobs. I can understand people's reaction and why they don't believe me."

But some experts aren't convinced by the diagnosis.

"The condition isn't in the DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) so I'm not sure you can really call it a condition," says Dr. Sheri Jacobson, psychotherapist and director of Harley Therapy Clinic in London.

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"Repeated lateness is usually a symptom of an underlying condition such as ADHD or depression but it can also just be habit. I think making everyday human behaviour into a medical condition is unwise."

Andrea Bilbow, chief executive of ADDISS, England's national Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service, considers chronic lateness to be a consequence of an underlying condition, not a symptom of one.

"Chronic lateness is a consequence, not a symptom, of an underlying condition, possibly ADHD or an executive function deficit," she tells The Scotsman. "These conditions may affect a person’s time management."

"They can’t organize time or they have trouble understanding the passage of time or actually don’t feel the passage of time. A phone conversation which has lasted two hours may feel like just 15 minutes to them."

Even if chronic lateness does point to an underlying disorder, for Dunbar, the diagnosis is a helpful one.

"It's depressing sometimes. I can't overstate how much it helped to say it's a condition," he says.