Hannah-Louise Batt tweeted this insightful thread about why so few girls in comparison to boys are diagnosed with ADHD. Like we said in the ADHD in Women post, ADHD is often missed in women because it looks different. In women, ADHD has different symptoms and often includes anxiety or depression. Gender bias in medicine and misogynistic stereotypes are preventing girls from getting treatment. Here is the twitter thread:
Source: Hannah-Louise Batt
(via: Geek Girls)
Ladies with ADHD, was it hard to get diagnosed? Let us know your stories in the comments below!
In fairness to my family, I was never dismissed as dim. When I told my mom about my diagnosis, her answer was, “I am not am shocked at all.” She went on to defend herself with, “I had never met anyone as smart as you, so I didn’t have a basis of comparison and always just assumed all very very smart people were kind of spacy.”
So apparently it wasn’t “girls are dim” stereotypes biting me in the ass so much as “absent minded genius” stereotypes….
This is just my perception but… In my lifetime, I have see a lot of girls/women get diagnosed as ADD instead of ADHD. And, personally, I think that in that instance it’s actually ADHD.