Half of all women with ADHD receive a misdiagnosis or an incomplete diagnosis before finally identifying and treating their attention deficit disorder.
This staggering statistic, revealed in a recent ADDitude survey of 2,760 women, confirms the anecdotal reports we hear often of medical gaslighting, distrust of self, unnecessary suffering, delayed treatment — and the grave consequences of each.“I was misdiagnosed and received treatment that did not help me,” wrote one survey respondent misdiagnosed with depression and anxiety. “This led to me never getting better and ending up having a mental breakdown before I got my proper ADHD diagnosis 10 years later.”“I believe if, instead of being diagnosed with bipolar 2 (cyclothymia), anxiety, and depression, I had been appropriately diagnosed with ADHD and given coping skills and treatment for that, my life would be completely different,” wrote another ADDitude reader.“Antidepressants worked for a while, but my anger and frustration flare-ups were still an issue,” wrote a woman diagnosed with ADHD in her 50s. “Eventually, the antidepressants didn’t work anymore and I hit bottom… By the time I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was on long-term disability and felt I had no control over my life.”The reasons for incomplete or inaccurate diagnosis range from outdated ADHD and gender stereotypes to low self-esteem and self-trust, seeded by years of criticism for unrecognized and untreated symptoms of ADHD, according to ADDitude‘s Women’s Health Month survey.
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