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Very relatable
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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ADHD Women
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Girls are significantly less likely to be diagnosed than boys and are more likely to get diagnosed later in life.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10173330/
Edit: Underdiagnosis in female-presenting children will continue to be a problem until it is recognized and corrected. When this sort of silent type of ADHD is codified, the minority of boys with this type should also benefit as a result. It's a women's issue because it predominantly affects women. It's really gross to come into a women's space and essentially say "forget the many women; let's talk about the few men."
I think your point needs to be highlighted here. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 17 . I was the quiet kid in class. I hardly participated but i came off as shy. The primary reason was that I never bounced off the walls like my son literally does without his medicine. My ex wife was diagnosed at 5, but it was because she presented with hyperactivity you usually see in boys.
With ADHD in general, if we improve diagnosis in girls, it will drastically improve it across the board.
For real. It sucks so hard that not having the classic disruptive hyperactivity is pretty much an express ticket to going undiagnosed. That's what caused me to go undiagnosed until like 27.
Luckily my daughter isn't going to have to go through the same thing. Between having an established family history, having that more classic hyperactivity you usually see in the boys, and the fact that we've known she's had it since my wife was pregnant with her and she'd take a nap while her twin brother got all hopped up on the caffeine my wife would use to help her migraines. Only reason she doesn't already have a diagnosis is because she's too young to officially diagnose. Everybody from her pediatrician, to the people at the clinic that diagnosed her autism, to her preschool program agrees she has it.
It was hilarious. One time, she stole an entire large iced capp while we were in the checkout line at Sam's Club. They were doing inventory at the nearby tables and one of the workers had sat it on the register. We didn't see it because they were in the cart on the other side of the checkout lane until we're get the cart back to leave and we just see this little thing HUGGING THE DAMN COFFEE to hide it and greedily chugging it. It was apparently full when she got it and she had drank pretty much the entire thing. The look of horror on that poor employee's face as my wife finally wrestles the cup away from her and it's got maybe 2oz left in it. She immediately fell asleep in the car and had what I can only assume was the best nap of her little life because she didn't wake up for like 4 hours. Even when I picked her up out of her seat.
Yup,I hear ya. It took till I was 34 to get a diagnosis of severe ADHD. It’s hard not to be angry when I think of all the ways it could have been so much easier and better for me, but it’s wasted energy to do that, honestly. Just gotta move forward, you know?
It so is. For me it's especially hard when I think of how much I struggled in college and how that spiraled into a full on anxiety disorder that took me like 7 years to get back to a place I feel good about being mentally.
Luckily my daughter has an established family history now and very well documented, very noticeable, and recognizable symptoms and shouldn't have any trouble getting diagnosed once she's actually old enough to officially diagnose. She's already got an IEP in place for her preschool program.
So? It's not like there arent also a statistically significant population of guys who are diagnosed later in life, and they often verge on burnout exactly as described in the post...
So? This is a women's community.
Fair, though a) she originally posted this to the world on Twitter, so in the original context it's a little odd to be needlessly gendering it, and b) I still correct my dad when he needlessly genders stories even if there are no other women around, it's still a bad habit that leads him to tell stories that sound exclusionary and mysoginistic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10173330/
It's not needlessly gendered to talk about issues that predominantly affect women.
I mean, 75% of adults suffering from ADHD are diagnosed in adulthood:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/217065
If 2/3 of those are women, that means that 25% of adults with ADHD were diagnosed as children, 50% are women diagnosed as adults, and 25% are men diagnosed as adults, which is still a statistically significant proportion of the population.
That's a 20 year old paper. Diagnosis rates have risen a lot since then, and more recent studies suggest that boys still get diagnosed about 3 times more often than girls. I don't see the point of pretending like this isn't a gendered issue. We're talking about an issue that predominantly affects women. No one is saying that men aren't suffering. From an awareness standpoint, it makes more sense to draw attention to the larger population of sufferers to press the urgency of the issue. Once this silent type of ADHD that is more common in girls is codified, the boys with this type should benefit as well.
I wouldn't argue that it's not a gendered issue, or an issue impacted by gender, but I would argue that the test for whether or not you should gender something isn't whether or not it predominantly effects one gender, but whether or not you can replace the gender specific term with a gender neutral one and still get the same point across.
In this specific context, feeling constantly on the verge of being overwhelmed because you have undiagnosed ADHD is something that everyone with undiagnosed ADHD suffers through, whether they're men, women, or identify differently.
Or conversely, the majority of construction workers may identify as male, but it's still problematic to talk about construction jobs or problems with the construction industry as if it's a gendered issue that only men suffer with. If they were to talk about specific examples of say, male : male peer pressure, and male gender norm expectations that they were facing then it would make sense, but if they were just talking about something that every construction worker goes through then it would be a little odd and exclusionary to say something like "as a man, waking up for a 5am shift sucks".