You’re not crazy. You’re not lazy. You’re not selfish. Or broken. Or stupid. Or overly sensitive.
You have ADHD.
For women learning for the first time that they have the condition known as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, these words can be life-changing. Redemptive, even.
Finally, they understand why they’ve always felt they had to work so much harder than others just to be ‘normal’. Why their lives feel so chaotic, their emotions so overwhelming, and their energy reserves so easily spent. Yet women are far more likely than men to receive a diagnosis later in life, to be misdiagnosed, or never to be diagnosed at all.
Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls in childhood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which until recently led researchers to believe the condition was more prevalent in boys. (This *sarcastic voice* may possibly have something to do with the fact that early research focused on boys only.) And yet case numbers of ADHD have since been shown to be roughly similar for men and women in adulthood – which reveals a massive diagnosis gap since this is not ‘late onset’ but a lifelong condition that is present from birth.
A recent study by two independent teams found that the rate of ADHD diagnosis nearly doubled from 2020 to 2022 for women between the ages of 23–29 and 30–49. Women tend to be older than men when diagnosed with ADHD, and the prevalence of ADHD medication use is lower in girls and women than in boys and men. Which begs the question, why?
Chaos theory
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think ‘ADHD’? Most likely, a disruptive, naughty little boy, or the word ‘hyperactive’. It’s right
