Cases of ADHD in women are far more likely to be missed, or misdiagnosed, than in men. Read on to find out why this damaging mental health disorder continues to hide in plain sight
How about discovering that you’ve got over 40 000 unread emails? If these were boxes, 45-year-old Michelle Beckett could tick every one. She was diagnosed with anxiety as a student, bipolar disorder in her twenties and depression in her thirties. But the condition behind her poor mental health was in fact none of these. Michelle is one of many women living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Exactly how many women, even the experts don’t know. And therein lies a problem.
It’s not surprising that at the mention of ADHD, scenes of schoolboys bouncing off classroom walls spring to mind. That this stereotype is so hard to shake is why cases of ADHD are constantly misdiagnosed. And those most at risk? Women.
So says the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which updated its guidelines on the disorder in March last year in a bid to encourage GPs to think again before diagnosing more common mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, in women presenting with ADHD symptoms. It’s a sentiment echoed in South Africa, with new guidelines for treating adults with ADHD developed by the South African Society of Psychiatrists’ Special Interest Group (SIG). And yet, many women will spend their entire lives thinking they’re just ‘scatterbrained’. Why are we all missing the problem that’s staring us in the face?
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