United States: Sarah Hayden narrates finding out about her Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at the age of 48 as a cathartic experience.
The mum-of-five, social worker, author, and equine-assisted psychotherapist had constructed a life she adored, a hodgepodge of titles that seemed to ooze out of her frenetic brain to suit her multiple-irons-in-the-fire mentality.
However, the discovery of ADHD made her know herself better and more clearly comprehend how she had never felt herself a part of the neurotypical world and its rules.
Sarah, who is now 51, recalls, “As a kid, I was intelligent and capable, but I struggled with everything,” womensweekly.com.au reported.
“I’d walk into class and the teacher would say ‘ready for today’s exam?’ and I’d be like ‘what exam’? I didn’t have friends – I bounced between groups, nothing was consistent,” she added.
Why Are So Many More Women Being Diagnosed With ADHD?
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Experts once thought ADHD was something only boys experienced. The research is finally starting to catch up with realityhttps://t.co/0CCHrWWVLG
She recalls young boys in her class who probably had ADHD to be noisy, fiddle like crazy, and constantly distract, and she would spend time drawing work pictures in her maths book, poetry, or dreaming.
Even as an adult, though being enthusiastic and inquisitive, she found it difficult to concentrate on a single field.
“For years I flipped between jobs,” she noted.
“I prefer to be unemployed and have no money than be bored. I’ve started and dropped out of so many diplomas and degrees – my HECS debt is enormous. I’ve also signed up for short courses on a moment’s inspiration, paid upfront, then forgotten about it until textbooks for a yoga teaching course show up in the mail. That hasn’t happened once; it’s happened multiple times,” as she continued.
Previously regarded as an ailment mostly common among naughty little boys, ADHD among girls who tend to appear distracted, forgetful, or quietly in a daydream did not receive sufficient attention, and as such, girls had to battle out their troubles on their own.
“Our [traditional] understanding of ADHD has been that stereotypical, wiggly little boy calling out in class,” as per University of Queensland researcher Dr Kate Witteveen, who has led a study into the impact of ADHD diagnosis on women, womensweekly.com.au reported.
How does ADHD look like in women?
According to Dr Witteveen, there are three varieties of ADHD, namely: hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and a combination type which combines both the characteristics of inattention and hyperactivity.
But unlike when the first research and diagnostic criteria were formulated, and it was almost exclusively based on boys, Dr Witteveen says that currently, it is accepted that it can come out completely differently in women.
An activist called Sarah, a neurodivergent person, explains that to cope with their symptoms, women usually develop skillful defense mechanisms involving tiresome coping techniques.
“We’ve found that girls and women tend to be more likely to experience the inattentive type, which means those outward behaviours – wiggling, fidgeting, interrupting – are not as evident. Because of this, they are often missed as their experience is much more internal,” she added.
Inattentive symptoms lie in the circle, which feature inability to pay attention, inability to begin and to complete the operations, frequent distractibility or daydreaming, poor memory, and difficulties in organising the activities or time or following instructions, frequent losses, and careless errors, as reported by womensweekly.com.au.
“Those things can also look like anxiety or other conditions,” as Dr. Witteveen says.
“In our study, over 70 per cent of participants had received a diagnosis of anxiety in childhood or adolescence, and then went on to be diagnosed with ADHD as adults,” the expert noted.