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The following is a personal essay reflecting the opinions of the author.It began with an Adderall shortage in 2022. Today, prescriptions for many stimulant medications used as the first-line treatment of ADHD are consistently and frustratingly difficult to fill. So it’s unsurprising that ADHD features prominently in the majority of public comments submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by stakeholders impacted by long-term medication shortages involved in the treatment of many conditions, including cancer.

April 25, 2024Women with ADHD can continue using the stimulant medication dexamphetamine and the painkiller acetaminophen (brand name: Tylenol) during pregnancy, according to two recent studies that refute a long-standing medical consensus.An observational study published in the Archives of Women’s Health found that use of dexamphetamine (DEX), the main ingredient in brand-name ADHD medications such as Adderall, Dexedrine, Zenzedi, and ProCentra, does not put women or their babies at increased health risks. However, women who ceased using DEX during pregnancy were more than twice as likely to have a threatened abortion (mild to moderate bleeding during the first trimester) compared to those who continued DEX or who did not use the stimulant during pregnancy.1“This could indicate a possible association with DEX withdrawal,” the study’s authors wrote.

Not available May 21? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.Every month, about a week or two before menstruation, many women with ADHD experience what feels like premenstrual syndrome (PMS) — but on steroids.

Q: “What are the causes of postpartum depression? As an expectant parent with ADHD, what should I know about factors that increase risk for postpartum mood disorders? How can I protect myself after I have my baby?”The causes of postpartum depression (PPD) and postpartum mood disorders are complex and combine differing sources for different people. These sources are not always fully understood.

The first few months after a baby is born — sometimes called the “fourth trimester” — is a critical time for the emerging parent-infant relationship. You and your newborn are rapidly adjusting to a new way of life, a reality that is often complex and unexpected.These common factors — combined with dramatic hormonal fluctuations following childbirth — can increase risk for postpartum depression (PPD) during this critical stage.Characterized by persistent and acute feelings of sadness, guilt, irritability, anxiety, and lethargy — well beyond the baby blues — PPD is a condition that interferes with your wellbeing and how you bond with your baby.

by Phyllis Greenberger, M.S.W., with Kalia DonnerBiological sex impacts health. However obvious this may seem, gender disparities in health care persist — and women continue to pay the price.

April 19, 2024Adults and caregivers harmed by the ongoing ADHD medication shortage have contributed thousands of impassioned, irate impact statements to a joint Request for Information (RFI) issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeking public comment on drug prices and availability.

As an AuDHD woman (autistic with ADHD) who was diagnosed later in life, I know what it’s like to be discriminated against and exploited, especially in the workplace, for my differences. It was those demeaning experiences that inspired me to pursue a Ph.D.

April 20, 2024The diagnostic criteria for ADHD are largely based on studies of young white boys. The symptoms spelled out in the DSM-5 — i.e., Is often “on the go” acting as if “driven by a motor” — do not reflect the lived experiences of many adults with the condition.

Many parents experience sadness, anxiety, stress, and feelings of overwhelm after the birth of a child. When these emotions persist and significantly interfere with functioning and parent-newborn bonding, it may be indicative of a postpartum mood disorder.Also known as perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), these conditions affect about one in eight women or birthing parents, and as many as one in ten fathers or caregiving partners.

Not available May 13? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.When we fell in love with the YouTube viral video “Xmas Jammies” 10 years ago, we didn’t know that Penn Holderness had ADHD.

We know that ADHD symptoms respond best to a multimodal treatment plan that includes medication plus helpful interventions ranging from mindfulness meditation to exercise to brain training. These complementary supports can help curb symptoms and enhance well-being for many individuals with ADHD.

For more than 10 years, I ran trail ultramarathons of 35 to 100 miles. I was decent at it, and I loved running those distances. But I’ll tell it straight: Long runs are hard, even if you’re trained for them.Distance runners anticipate difficulties and know to support themselves in any way possible to get to the finish line.

ADHD symptoms in women and girls aren’t “hidden” or “easy to miss.” They are obvious, persistent, and often quite serious. Why, then, do we continue to disregard or misdiagnose ADHD in girls and women? And why do we more accurately diagnose boys, who get a head start of about four years on treatment?1The reason: ADHD is still viewed from a largely male-centric point of view.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your child is a strong understanding of their ADHD brain. The more your child understands about their brain wiring and systems for internal and external information, the greater their self-awareness, confidence, and self-advocacy skills.Use the examples below to help you explain ADHD to your child in easy-to-understand language that diminishes shame and accentuates strengths.Register for free to attend a live webinar with Penn and Kim Holderness, authors of ADHD is Awesome on May 13 at 1 pm ETOur brains are like busy airports with control towers that guide the airplanes of executive function — planning, prioritizing, organizing, managing time, and other skills that help us get through everyday life — to take off and land smoothly.Except the ADHD brain’s control tower isn’t always well-staffed.

Do you feel like you’re faking it through life – winging it more than others and barely hiding the chaos? Do you feel like you’ve tricked everyone into thinking that you’re a competent, intelligent person? Do you worry that you’ll be exposed someday? If so, you may be experiencing imposter syndrome.“Someone with imposter syndrome feels like a fraud or a phony,” writes Sharon Saline, Psy.D. “You doubt your abilities and successes, believing that your mistakes and moments of imperfection are proof that you’re not an intelligent person.”According to Saline, imposter syndrome, rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), social anxiety, and perfectionism – all common among individuals with ADHD – can be traced back to one thing: a core belief of deficiency.Answer these questions to see whether you show signs of imposter syndrome, and to what degree. Find more resources on imposter syndrome at the end of this self-test.The questions in this resource were informed, in part, from the ADDitude article titled “You Are Enough: How to Counteract Imposter Syndrome, Perfectionism, and RSD” by Sharon Saline, Psy.D., and from research literature on imposter syndrome. 12Time is Up! Time's upCan’t see the self-test questions above? Click here to open this test in a new window.1 Huecker MR, Shreffler J, McKeny PT, et al. Imposter Phenomenon. [Updated 2023 Jul 31]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585058/2 Chandra, S., Huebert, C. A., Crowley, E., & Das, A. M. (2019). Impostor Syndrome: Could It Be Holding You or Your Mentees Back?. Chest, 156(1), 26–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2019.02.325

Loneliness is a national epidemic, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Among people with ADHD, the experience of loneliness is especially prevalent.

Not available May 7? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.The increasing decriminalization of cannabis and cannabis-derived products has resulted in greater access to the drug and has reduced perceptions of harm related to frequent cannabis use.

Making friends during adolescence is akin to navigating a labyrinth filled with twists, turns — and the potential for profound connections. For individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the journey toward friendship often presents its own set of unique challenges and opportunities. Individuals with ASD possess intelligence, compassion, and a propensity to be misunderstood, often leading to experiences of bullying and social isolation.

What do fluctuating hormones across the menstrual cycle mean for my ADHD symptoms and treatment? What do I need to know, and what should I expect?For girls, women, and naturally cycling individuals with ADHD, fluctuating estrogen and progesterone across the menstrual cycle invariably impact ADHD symptoms, emotions, and functioning. We know this to be true, but there is almost no research validating this relationship.

April 5, 2024Treating ADHD with medication can lower overall risk of mortality and of hospitalizations, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric, according to two new Swedish studies.1, 2 These findings highlight the importance of ADHD medication use for long-term health and longevity, underscoring the urgent need to end the stimulant shortage that has prevented U.S. patients with ADHD from consistently accessing medication since the Fall of 2022.An observational study from Sweden, published in JAMA, followed nearly 150,000 adults and adolescents with a diagnosis of ADHD, tracking participants for two years following diagnosis.The researchers found that use of ADHD medication:While the authors of the study caution that these findings show correlation, not causation, the results are encouraging for patients and clinicians with reservations about ADHD medication use, especially later in life.A second Swedish study sought to investigate the effect of a variety of ADHD medications on rates of hospitalizations.

Not available May 1? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.Intensive parenting now extends from childhood into young adulthood as some individuals with ADHD take longer on their journey to independence than do their peers. Some parents assume the roles of financial and career advisor, emotional support cheerleader, and sounding board for their young adult children.

Q: “I heard that women with ADHD who take hormonal birth control are at greater risk for depression. Is this true? I’m exploring birth control options and want to make sure I understand the risks and possible side effects of hormonal birth control.”Yes, our research group found that women with ADHD were five times more likely to develop depression following use of combined hormonal oral contraceptives (i.e., pills that contain both estrogen and progesterone) than were women without ADHD who were not on these pills.1 We came to these findings after comparing Swedish national register data of roughly 30,000 girls and young women with ADHD to more than 760,000 neurotypical peers in a control group.More highlights from this study:[Get This Free Download: Hormones & ADHD in Women]What could explain the increased risk for depression among women with ADHD who take birth control? The way we see it, it’s probably not the hormones in oral contraceptives, per se, that place women with ADHD at greater risk.

“I struggle to fit in. I try so hard to act normal, but I feel like such a fraud.”“I feel dumb. My brain fails me all the time.

It was the first time the card table was used for its stated purpose.In our excitement playing cards, we got too noisy and woke up the toddler. There was laughter and arguing. There was winning and losing.I’d like to say my son, Ocean, was a gracious winner.

AuDHD — a combination of “autism” and “ADHD” — is a term that describes individuals who live with both neurotypes. While reporting varies substantially across studies, recent research estimates that 40% to 70% of autistic individuals also have ADHD.12 While the autism-ADHD link is recognized and increasingly studied today, this wasn’t always the case; until 2013, the DSM-5 did not allow for co-diagnosis of both conditions.What’s it like to live with two neurotypes with overlapping and sometimes opposing traits? How do features commonly associated with autism — like strict adherence to routines, special interests, and stimming — harmonize or clash with ADHD features like hyperfocus, impulsivity, and novelty-seeking? How do common experiences with social functioning and masking show up? Here’s what ADDitude readers told us about the AuDHD experience and what they wish the world knew about living with autism and ADHD.“I often feel like a living contradiction. I want order but cannot maintain it.

Sometimes, an ADHD diagnosis can bring more confusion than clarity. As a parent, you may think, “Should I share the diagnosis with other adults in the family and in my child’s life? How do I know who to trust?”You may fear possible judgments and others’ assumptions about your child or yourself. You may feel anxious, ashamed, or uncertain of who to tell or where to go for support.

I have always had a strong connection and pull to music, gaining inspiration from trailblazing female artists like Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. But my relationship with music reached another level when I – during a moral burnout episode – stumbled upon a different kind of sound that changed my understanding of my AuDHD brain.In my field of work, I see injustices often.

Not available April 23? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.The therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs for treatment-resistant conditions including mood disorders has sparked renewed interest among researchers, psychiatrists, and patients.

Eighteen months into the stimulant shortage, people with ADHD have grown accustomed to enduring a certain rigamarole when trying to locate necessary medications.In addition to draining limited reservoirs of stamina, time, and patience, the monthly ordeal of searching for stimulants often includes upsetting encounters with pharmacy staff. Among ADDitude readers who use ADHD medication, 38% report that they’ve been made to feel like a “criminal” or “addict” when trying to obtain their prescribed medication.

As a psychotherapist, an ADHD coach, and someone who lives with ADHD, I understand fully how the shame, stress, and anxiety of our symptoms and challenges – from procrastination and forgetfulness to time blindness and impulsivity – cause many of us to develop defense mechanisms. We seek to protect ourselves, especially when ADHD causes us to be consistently inconsistent and disappoint the people in our lives, by developing coping strategies that sometimes cause us more harm than good.The following four defense mechanisms commonly develop among individuals with ADHD:Blaming as a defense mechanism looks like making others responsible for the occurrence of an ADHD symptom and its consequences, as seen in the following examples:Your child forgets that an assignment is due.

March 27, 2024ADHD symptoms in children are associated with unusual interactions between the frontal cortex and deep centers of the brain where information is processed, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Psychiatry.1 These findings may help inform additional research into the ADHD brain that leads to more effective treatments and interventions.A research team from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Human Genome Research found children with ADHD demonstrated heightened connectivity between brain structures involved in learning, movement, and reward, and frontal areas of the brain that regulate emotion, attention, and behavior.“The present findings suggest that these brain alterations are specifically associated with ADHD and are not indicative of general features of childhood psychopathology or influenced by comorbid symptoms,” the study’s authors wrote.Researchers have long suspected that ADHD symptoms result from atypical interactions between the frontal cortex and these deep information-processing brain structures. However, the study’s authors noted that prior studies testing this model returned mixed results, possibly due to the small size of the studies they suggested.The present study examined more than 10,000 functional brain images of 1,696 youth with ADHD and 6,737 without ADHD aged 6 to 18.

Every parent of a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD or ADD) knows what it’s like to troubleshoot behavior problems — your child saying no to requests or blurting out disrespectful retorts.Children with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) take defiant behavior to the extreme. They have a pattern of angry, violent, and disruptive behaviors toward parents, caretakers, and other authority figures. These children require smart, specific oppositional defiant disorder strategies — and more than their fair share of patience.“Choose your battles carefully, and find humor in every situation.” -Robin, ColoradoForty percent of children with ADHD also develop ODD.

Not available April 18? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.Do you fall into traps of procrastivity? With this type of procrastination, priority tasks are avoided by engaging in other tasks that are productive and necessary, but which end up being self-defeating because they steal your time and undermine your prioritized plans.

About half of adults in the U.S. report experiencing loneliness, with higher rates reported among young adults — a concerning trend that started before the pandemic.1 In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr.

March 22, 2024ADHD traits such as distractibility and impulsivity may have benefited our ancestors as they foraged for food, and they continue to play a crucial role in how people with ADHD adapt and survive, suggests new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.1University of Pennsylvania researchers recruited 457 study participants to play an online virtual berry-picking game. The goal was to collect as many berries as possible within eight minutes by hovering their cursor over bushes.

Bad texter? Even worse at making phone calls? Notoriously bad at keeping in touch with friends?Do you sometimes drown in shame over how long it’s been since you last reached out to a friend? Do you cringe as you remember your last conversation with your friend, eons ago, when the ball was in your court to respond? “There goes another friendship” you think to yourself. The thought of reaching out now, after all this time, makes you want to run and hide.Life happens. We all juggle so much all the time, and ADHD executive dysfunction subjects others, even those who are important to us, to the dreaded realm of “out of sight, out of mind.” When it happens, you catastrophize.

In 2020, my son was born prematurely, weighing a tiny 600 grams, or a little over a pound. He was what they call a micropreemie. I had never seen a premature baby before, but there he was, so tiny he fit in the palm of my hand.

March 21, 2024High-intensity exercise treats depression as effectively as do cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and medication, according to a new study that found combining SSRIs, a type of antidepressant, with exercise improved depressive symptoms more than medication alone.1The systematic review and meta-analysis led by a research team from the University of Queensland, Australia, found that the more intense the physical activity, the more effective it was at managing depression. More specifically, vigorous exercises (e.g., running, interval training, strength training, mixed aerobic exercise) reduced depression symptoms in participants more than light physical activity (e.g., walking and hatha yoga), although the latter did provide some benefit.These findings emerged from examinations of 218 randomized controlled trials, including 14,170 participants diagnosed with depression, to determine the effectiveness of exercise, psychotherapy, and antidepressants in treating depression.When the researchers narrowed their analysis by demographics, they discovered that strength training and cycling positively impacted more women than men, and yoga or qigong provided more benefits to men than women.

Friendships don’t form overnight. Most friendships take shape thanks to proximity and shared experiences. Meeting the same people repeatedly and sharing mini experiences with them over and over sets the scene.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is as multifaceted as the individuals who live with it. Just as there is no one singular presentation of ADHD, there is also no singular treatment.

March 11, 2024Immersive virtual reality-based interventions (VR) can improve cognitive deficits associated with ADHD in children, according to a study published in 2023 in the journal Virtual Reality. Compared to active and passive control groups, children with ADHD experienced positive outcomes with large effect sizes global cognitive functioning, attention, and memory when using immersive VR therapies.1In a meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 149 participants were assigned to the immersive VR group and 172 participants to the control group.

Not available April 9? Don’t worry. Register now and we’ll send you the replay link to watch at your convenience.ADHD doesn’t travel alone.

Join the live Facebook Event now at https://www.facebook.com/additudemag/videos/1140688666941981Ask your questions to Dr. Sharon Saline and connect with other ADDitude community members.

March 14, 2024Teenage girls who often ruminate exhibit patterns of brain activity different from their non-ruminative peers after encountering social rejection, according to new research published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.1 Increased activity was seen in the parts of the brain involved in developing self-concept, which researchers say suggests that ruminative teens internalize social rejection and integrate it into their view of themselves.“Everyone experiences rejection, but not everyone experiences it in the same way,” explained Amanda Guyer, Ph.D., one of the study’s authors and associate director of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California at Davis. “Our results suggest that girls who tend to ruminate are experiencing more than just momentary sadness after rejection.

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Before I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 33, my body felt like a mystery, an experience I assume is nearly universal for women with a late diagnosis. Yes, there was forgetfulness, distractibility, “careless” errors, internal restlessness, and emotional dysregulation. Yes, there were incredibly painful menstrual cycles with mood changes so drastic they should have their own amusement park rides named after them.

Q: “I have a bad track record of flaking on plans with friends. I’m enthusiastic about the plans at first, but nervousness, social anxiety, and rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) get the better of me, and I cancel at the last minute. My friends, of course, get upset.