Ashley Ang
Appearances
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
So I had started off as kind of almost this in-home aide, working with a young girl who was at the very beginning of puberty. And she was experiencing a lot of symptoms of ADHD, as well as anxiety, depression, and some behavioral problems.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
And as I was working with her over a couple years, I noticed that as she was going through puberty, everything just kind of got worse, despite having a psychiatrist, me in the home helping her get off to school, the parents being very involved. Things just seemed to keep getting worse, despite all of the care that she was receiving.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
And so with that, I really wanted to study when I was looking at PhD programs was what is going on during this time period around puberty that just seems to be making everything worse.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
And I, during my interview, had proposed, have you thought about looking this in adolescence? So it was the perfect combination of I'd be able to help her with her research and she'd be able to help me learn how to do this research. and learn how to look at this in adolescence.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Broadly, we found that ADHD symptoms are changing across the menstrual cycle. We also saw some connections with different hormones.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
We are seeing that for these young adult females, we're seeing very similar changes of hormones impacting ADHD symptoms. We're also thinking that there's other reproductive life events like pregnancy, perimenopause, that might also be experiencing these changes around ADHD symptoms.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Now there's many different kinds of birth control, where some stabilize hormone levels, others continue to have changes in hormone levels. There's different hormones involved in each one, so it's a very complicated process. But the thought is that if we're able to stabilize these shifts in hormones, we might be able to stabilize those ADHD symptoms.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
Yes, I think that is definitely where we're at right now, where there's just this overwhelming need for more research in this area.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
I'd be happy that if in 15 years this was something that physicians even knew about, that they were talking about with their patients, that this is something that they might be experiencing. So if we can get to that point and researchers have moved on to interventions, I think that that would be an okay place for us to be.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
It's kind of a slow-moving process, but that is kind of the realistics of research.
Climbing the Walls
Are hormones the final frontier for women with ADHD? | 6
I think overall it is a criteria that might need some flexibility. I think 12 is a very arbitrary number, and so that could be something that's updated in the future.