Women with ADHD: the condition often looks different for girls and women than it does for boys and men. Check out the following authors/books.
Therapist Sari Solden pointed out years ago that girls with ADHD are often overlooked. She’s the author of the groundbreaking and bestselling 1995 Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embracing Disorganization at Home and in the Workplace—revised and expanded in 2005.
Solden devised a self-test regarding women with ADHD. Click on the link.
Dr. Ellen Littman, co-author of Understanding Girls with ADHD, indicates that girls’ symptoms often increase after puberty, which is the opposite for many boys.
A newer title about women with ADHD:
Zoe Kessler, who didn’t find out she had ADHD until she was in her 40’s, wrote ADHD According to Zoë: The Real Deal on Relationships, Finding Your Focus, and Finding Your Keys (2013). The online Jasper/Goldberg Adult ADD Questionnaire helped her self-diagnose (HuffPost). “By question four, I panicked. I had no idea why these questions were even on the test. Wasn’t everybody like this?” She had to conclude, “Apparently not.”
Getting diagnosed, though, led to a “positive shift in self-perception” for her. She adds, “Knowledge about ADHD will set you free from a path of unmet goals and unanswered questions.”
Another resource is Linda Roggli‘s website and book. Midlife women with ADHD can find support at Roggli’s ADDiva.net. Her 2011 Confessions of An ADDiva: Midlife in the Non-Linear Lane has been widely praised by those who can relate.
Tracy Otsuka came out with
A brand new title is Gilly Kahn, PhD. From the publisher: “The world is right—ADHD girls and women do interrupt—but not all of it is unintentional, and almost all of it is extraordinary…”
As Kahn states in a Psychology Today post, “One thing we are quickly learning about ADHD in women, which seems intuitive, is that the role of emotions and emotional dysregulation has been underemphasized in the ADHD criteria.”
See this page for additional books by various authors on this subject.
