LadyHD
On the (real or imaginary?) ADHD epidemic in adult women
LadyHD: On the (real or imaginary?) ADHD epidemic in adult women
One day in my late 20s I came home from an afternoon of shopping and couldn’t find a dress I had just bought. I looked everywhere—the car, under the furniture, in the trash—and became convinced I must have left it at the store. There was nowhere else it could possibly be. I told myself I’d go back tot he mall the next day and ask the beleaguered salespeople at H&M if they happened to remember me or happened to find a NWT dress in a shopping bag lying somewhere between the cash register and the exit.
Then I popped open the fridge to dig for leftovers and found an H&M shopping bag sitting on the top shelf, appearing to shiver under the light wind gust of the cooling mechanism. This was the first time I googled “ADHD symptoms in women.” It wouldn’t be the last.
The common refrain is that ADHD has been historically under-diagnosed in women, likely because women are better at masking their symptoms, since being a women is mostly masking of one kid or another. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the popularity of ADHD and other content on neurodiversity in its other forms on TikTok led to a rise in self-diagnosis among women. I was one of them. But in order to seek treatment, I had to get that diagnosis confirmed by a professional.
When I scheduled my initial appointment with a psychiatrist, the intake form asked if I suspected I might have ADHD, before I even got to the reason for my visit. Clearly, they’d seen the effects of the so-called TikTok trend in real life. At the appointment, the doctor quizzed me on a few questions about my ability to focus and function—the same questions you’ve probably encountered on any number of self-diagnosis questionnaires you’ll find on line when you search “ADHD symptoms in women,” and told me I scored pretty high, so she would set up an actual, scientific test for me the next week.
The next Tuesday I sat down in front of my laptop and joined an online testing software that instructed me to wear headphones for the duration of the test. The test turned out to be just a series of beeps in either my left or right ear, and my task was to press the corresponding arrow button for each sound. A few seconds in I considered that they might have booked me for the wrong test. What does beeping have to do with remembering not to put my clothes in the fridge?
I completed the test, and too well apparently, because at my next appointment the doctor told me I didn’t have ADHD, and then prescribed me some anti-depressants. She apparently didn’t require a beep test to diagnose THAT.
So apparently I was just another depressed woman on TikTok who had become convinced she had a real medical problem with the way her brain worked. And now it was confirmed that I didn’t. Well—except for the depression and epilepsy, but those couldn’t explain why I couldn’t manage my time or concentrate on a task long enough to finish it. I had to accept that these might not be symptoms after all—they were just character flaws.
Some of the Goodreads reviews of Emily Farris’ I’ll be Just Five More Minutes suggest the same of the author’s symptoms of actual, diagnosed and medicated ADHD. One calls the book “an annoying rambling of someone who can't stay committed to anything, can't bring herself to care about the consequences of her actions on others, and can't even seem to understand the amount of stress and chaos she's brought to everyone and everything around her. There's a lot of rudeness mistaken for the symptoms.”
“An ADHD diagnosis is not a get out of jail free card when it comes to repeatedly making poor financial decisions that affect your entire family,” another says. But what if it could be? part of me wonders.
The real reviews by actual book critics are more even-handed than what you’ll find on Jeff Bezos’ internet, and they, like me, also found the author charming and relatable in parts, though ultimately a bit repetitive and thin on the self-reflection and personal growth one looks for in a memoir. But I was also a bit jealous that she could pin her flaws on something out of her control. And here I was, just a disorganized and unfocused person with no excuse.
Not having an actual medical condition, I had to take the problem to my therapist, and she told me something that has stuck with me: “It doesn’t matter where the symptoms come from, you have symptoms you have to deal with.” Which is true of a lot of things. We’ve talked about this before, like when I wondered if I was on the autism spectrum or if members of my family were on the autism spectrum, or if being raised in a high control religion that forces followers to deny their human feelings and operate under a complex set of social rules produces a personality that’s similar to that of someone on the spectrum. It’s impossible to know for sure, since I can’t submit my family for testing. But I can accept that this is just how I am, and how people in my life are, and move forward not expecting anyone to suddenly transform into someone they never have been. That experience was as out of my control as ADHD would have been.
Maybe the rise in self-diagnosis among women is a similar phenomenon. There are plenty of aspects of being a woman in Western society that might produce ADHD-like symptoms. (Here I’m talking mostly about other women, who are stretched more thinly than I currently am. I’ve been, if anything, under-stretched lately.) You can understand why a woman working full time and raising kids and still doing the majority of the housework and still under the pressure to be fit and thin and well-dressed and almost professionally fluent in the science of skincare might have trouble focusing. Might be struggling to manage her time. Might be putting her clothes in the fridge.
These are symptoms to manage. The only difference is that without a diagnosis, there’s no medication to help do the managing. At the time, I wanted to go back and tell my doctor, why don’t we just put me on Adderall for a little bit and see if it helps? but that’s not how the healthcare system works. The doctor has to decide they want to test something out on you, not the other way around. And now I understand why people do coke.
Recommendations
Apple TV’s The New Look, about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel during and shortly after the second World War is an underrated gem—and a lot more violent than you might expect from a show about fashion. This is high stakes fashion.
Illinoise, Justin Peck’s ballet/musical based on Sufjan Stevens’ album Illinois, now headed to Broadway. At first I was worried the framing device would get tired, but it ends up working so well.
Pilates socks. These are my secret for living in an old building with sloping wood floors and not having a slip and fall accident at least once a week.
Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland, a touching novel about an alien living among us.
I still believe the Oscar for production design should have gone to Barbie, but I do LOVE the interiors in Poor Things. Where can I get some renter-friendly quilted wallfabric?
For a woman's take on multiple [mis-]diagnoses, read the memoir Pathological by the brilliant Sarah Fay (also a Substack guru, Writers at Work). She doesn't pay me--I'm just a huge fan and applaud her takedown of the DSM.
"And now I understand why people do coke." LOL'd.
Thank you for writing this. I RELATE SO HARD. But also, I think you should get a second opinion. Once I finally got diagnosed, and on the right treatment (Vyvanse - same as Emily Farris, I think) it CHANGED MY LIFE. Like, yes, I'm still unfocused but so much noise is gone.