ADHD In Women: Why It's So Hard To Get Diagnosed & How To Get Relief

Raise your virtual hand if you're currently procrastinating on a project. Or if your leg is tap, tap, tapping under your desk. Or if you can't seem to read through an entire paragraph without your eyes prematurely darting to the end. Or—and this is a big one—if you don't trust yourself to get tasks done by a deadline even though you know you have the skills and time to complete them.

These are just a few of the ways that ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) can manifest. This disorder, which is often associated with overly energetic and disruptive kiddos, is estimated to affect 2.5% of adults1. And it's getting a lot of attention lately in regard to the unexpected ways it can affect women, who are more likely to go undiagnosed as children because their symptoms often don't include the obvious hyperactivity and they may not have struggled academically. 

Thanks in part to Instagram and TikTok influencers educating the masses on ADHD symptoms (helping to de-stigmatize it in the process) and the emergence of startups that pair people with practitioners for ADHD evaluations, many women are finally realizing that their ongoing struggles with organization, productivity, forgetfulness, and self-doubt may not actually be due to laziness or personality flaws after all—and this can be a huge relief. 

Of course, not everyone who's highly distractible has ADHD—and not everyone with ADHD responds to the same treatment. For example, around 50% of adults2 with ADHD also have an anxiety disorder, so getting relief may involve some different strategies. That's why it's so important to educate yourself and seek out a qualified practitioner before you self-diagnose.

By definition, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder3 that develops in childhood or adolescence—but may not be diagnosed until adulthood—and people with ADHD show a persistent pattern of poor attention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with daily life. It's also highly heritable, meaning it often runs in families and you're much more likely to have it4 if a parent or sibling has also been diagnosed. 

Some prominent experts in the field including Russell Barkley, Ph.D., also consider ADHD to be an executive function deficit disorder. Meaning, many adults who have it tend to struggle with the cognitive processes that allow you to organize thoughts and activities, manage time, prioritize tasks, and make decisions. With poor executive functioning, things like focusing, meeting deadlines, following directions, and regulating emotions can be extremely difficult—and, unsurprisingly, this can take a real toll on self-esteem, especially when those around you appear to have no problem juggling equivalent responsibilities.

Inadequate and outdated diagnostic criteria can make it difficult for any adult to be diagnosed with ADHD—but particularly women, whose symptoms often manifest differently than men's, with many slipping through the cracks and evading a diagnosis until their late 30s or early 40s. 

"ADHD typically presents in women or girls5 as lower severity but more pervasive inattention and hyperactivity than in males, and tends to become more obvious with age," says Uma Naidoo, M.D., a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist and author of This Is Your Brain on Food. "This can often be recognized through disorganization, quickness to feeling overwhelmed, and a lack of effort or motivation."  

Additionally, women with ADHD tend to have the inattentive type, which is harder to diagnose at an early age in girls because it doesn't present as the disruptive, hyperactive stereotype common among boys, says Lidia Zylowska, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota Medical School and author of The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD. This can delay a diagnosis, sometimes until a stressful life event or change in a woman's life (e.g., changing jobs, having a baby, getting a divorce, living through a pandemic) exacerbates ADHD symptoms to a point that they are no longer manageable with existing coping mechanisms. Inattentive-type symptoms are also more likely to be misdiagnosed or incompletely diagnosed as anxiety, stress, or depression.

Women's ADHD symptoms tend to be more internalized than men's, too, including symptoms of low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. Even hyperactivity can be internalized. "Internal hyperactivity in females often leads to feelings of overwhelm, while external hyperactivity in males leads to excess energy or activity," says Naidoo. This internalization may be partly the result of biology, but some experts believe longstanding societal pressures for women to be nice, quiet, and polite play a role, too.

What exactly causes all this cognitive turmoil? There are a lot of factors at play (not all of which are fully understood), so we'll just scratch the surface here. 

"We do believe there's a biological difference in people with ADHD," says Zylowska. "If you study those with ADHD and those without, you do see brain differences in how information is being processed." For example, connections between the prefrontal cortex (the "thinking" brain) and the striatum (which deals with reward behaviors) may be disrupted in people with ADHD.

Neurotransmitters play a role, too—and in many people with ADHD, the dopamine and norepinephrine systems don't activate as robustly in certain settings compared to people without ADHD. This can affect focus and motivation and make it more difficult to power through a task when something is boring or overwhelming to you. In fact, one reason people with ADHD tend to procrastinate until the last minute may be because they experience a surge of activation in these neurotransmitter systems when faced with an imminent deadline—"this can make the person more alert, focused, and productive, which is helpful in the moment but exhausting and unsustainable in the long run," says Zylowska. "Of course, procrastination can backfire, too. If the stress of the deadline is too overwhelming, you can have more of a freeze response."

We also know ADHD runs in families, so there's a genetic component. However, there's not one single ADHD gene that you either have or don't—rather, a variety of genes likely influence whether someone has ADHD, and a person's particular "genetic loading" will place their symptoms anywhere from mild to severe on the ADHD spectrum, according to Zylowska. 

Some women may be genetically primed for ADHD, but their habits can significantly affect how much or how little their symptoms manifest, according to Zylowska. The good news: An increasing number of integrative and functional doctors are helping patients identify their main lifestyle contributors and address them at the root, as opposed to simply prescribing medication that only resolves some symptoms. 

The main type of medication used for ADHD patients is stimulant medications. This helps improve your attention and focus by boosting the availability of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, which can be beneficial because—as mentioned earlier—people with ADHD tend to have a less robust activation of these neurotransmitter systems. 

But these medicines aren't a magic bullet, and it's important to understand what they can and can't do. Medication is generally effective for improving focus, impulsivity, hyperactivity, and motivation, but these drugs don't specifically help with executive function challenges such as time management, organization, and prioritization, says Zylowska. So you'll need to deliberately work on things like implementing routines, creating detailed to-do lists, and practicing mindfulness if you want to reap the biggest mental rewards. 

If you've made it this far, you probably suspect you have ADHD. If that's the case, it's time to seek out a provider who can do an ADHD evaluation. ADHD in adults is often diagnosed by a primary care provider, a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. You can start by having a conversation with your primary care provider and see if they feel comfortable evaluating you or could recommend someone who can. Some startups, including Done, can hook you up with a practitioner for a virtual visit and ADHD evaluation. 

It's also important to seek out a practitioner who can help you manage your treatment in a way that aligns with your goals and values. If you're interested in working with someone who can help you identify and address the main lifestyle, environmental, and dietary contributors to your specific ADHD symptoms and, if needed, go the extra step of testing you for micronutrient deficiencies and various toxin exposures, consider searching for an integrative or functional medicine psychiatrist or physician with a focus on ADHD.