Researchers studied trends in the use of mental health medications among about 2.5 million insured Americans and found that the number of women aged 20 to 44 on ADHD medicines shot up 250% from 2001 to 2010. In general, amongst women aged 20 to 44 around one in 50 took medicine to control ADHD. One factor that might play a role is the approval for use of all five medicines since 2001.
Dr. Lenard Adler, director of the Psychiatry and Neurology Adult ADHD Program at the New York University School of Medicine, says that many of the women might have been outside of regular statistics until they became adults. The problem doesn't usually crop up later in life, its generally thought of as a childhood / teenage problem.
Adler was not involved with preparing the Medco report, but also cautioned that boys' psychologically will generally show the hyperactivity commonly associated with ADHD, thus males get treated younger as they are more of a problem to manage in school. The attention deficit part of ADHD might not be noticed in more passive individuals until later in life. Adults these days having a lot to keep track of, may not necessarily be diagnosed or need treatment until they are a little older than the classic schoolboys with ADHD.
Russell Barkley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, who has long studied ADHD in adults, explains another issue is that when a child is diagnosed with ADHD, the likelihood of the parents having also it can be as high as forty percent. Since it is often the mother taking the child to the doctor and women are more likely to seek medical help for themselves, suddenly recognizing the problem their child has in themselves, they begin taking the medicine they needed all along.
Since ADHD doesn’t pop up all of a sudden in adulthood, it's likely that women who started taking meds in the past decade flew under the radar until they became adults, says Dr. Lenard Adler, director of the Psychiatry and Neurology Adult ADHD Program at the New York University School of Medicine.
That’s because girls are less likely than boys to exhibit the “H”—for hyperactivity—in ADHD, so boys with the condition are more likely to be noticed, says Adler, who was not involved with the Medco report. But as children grow into adulthood, he says, the “attention deficit” component of ADHD becomes more prominent, because grown-ups have a lot more to keep track of.
The girls whose ADHD had gone unrecognized, chalked up to laziness or lack of motivation in school, grow into women who stumble when they encounter the real world of work and family. They can’t hold jobs, and, because they are so disorganized, they pay their bills late, if at all, lose track of appointments and misplace their kids’ school permission slips.
Parenthood often leads to adults finally getting an ADHD diagnosis, Adler says. “Many times for a parent, what will bring them in to be diagnosed is they have a child who’s been diagnosed.” The parents might recognize that their child’s symptoms are ones they themselves have dealt with for years.
When a child is diagnosed with ADHD, he says, there’s a 30 percent to 40 percent chance that a parent has it, too. Of those parents, the moms are more likely to seek professional help than the dads, explains Russell Barkley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina who’s long studied ADHD in adults. And in the last couple of years, Barkley says, he’s been interviewed for a number of articles about ADHD in women, which have probably heightened awareness.
Adler says he’s glad the data show more women are seeking treatment, but since 4.5 percent of adults are thought to have ADHD, it's clear that less than half are getting help. “There’s a large group out there still not being treated,” he says.
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