When Danielle Elliot finds herself among the many women diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic, she gets curious. Why women? And why now? This question takes her to northern Michigan, to meet a friend’s mom.More on this story: ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD)Older women and ADHD: How the lost generation got foundA day in the life with ADHDFor a transcript of this episode and more resources, visit the Climbing the Walls page on Understood. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give
Why are more women being diagnosed with ADHD?
And this is the mid 90s.
Mm hmm.
Emily stopped to do the math. She counted on her fingers, and we laughed because this is something I do too. Emily thinks she talked to her doctor when she was 30, so that would be 1987 or 88. They talked about her medical history, including the diagnosis in kindergarten and her silly pill. By then, doctors were starting to recognize that adults often have symptoms of ADHD.
But officially, it was still considered a condition of childhood. Emily was lucky to have a doctor who was up to date on the clinical findings.
So at 30, I was diagnosed with ADD. There's no mention of H. There's no H in there.
A revised edition of the DSM combined ADD and hyperactivity in 1987. now officially calling it ADHD. It was a controversial update, and one that didn't quite reach Emily at the time. She still thought of her childhood condition and her ADD as separate things. It would be a few more years before she connected them. Still, she had her diagnosis, and it helped.
It answered a lot of questions about my path to that point, and it did help me make a list in my day job and stick to the list, and to just use my time differently. There was impulsivity. It helped with that. Less interrupting. So it was about work. The goal was to be productive at work.
And it worked. Emily is my idea of the best-case scenario. Each time she recognized a challenge, she sought help, and she was diagnosed according to the most advanced scientific understanding of the time. Most women didn't have this sort of luck or privilege. Emily is quick to acknowledge that she comes from a highly educated, open-minded family.
She had access to great doctors, and they treated her appropriately. It helped that she had symptoms most commonly associated with boys. But still, her experience is rare. Ideally, the science would have moved faster. But it advanced quickly enough to meet most of her needs. There was still one complication of her ADHD that she couldn't quite figure out.
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