Dr. Yath Ramesh

Now, there is a significant overlap between ADHD symptoms, particularly emotional dysregulation and RSD, with other conditions which include borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder.

There's sort of a spectrum between the three where there is an overlap with all three.

And the problem that women have is that, yes, they might get labelled with another diagnosis when it could be ADHD, but when the treatments don't work, what do we do then?

We don't necessarily circumvent back to thinking about ADHD.

they might pick up another label, treatment resistance.

And at this stage, they trial more and more treatments, and it feeds back to the original thought, which is there must be something seriously wrong with me.

So we have this problem come up.

And then the third step in this is that they go through, they get the diagnosis, missed, they can get misdiagnosed.

And after all of that as well, the support that we offer them isn't personalized to take into account the complexity of ADHD in their circumstances.

So what I'm talking about here is, I mean, I think this is probably a good time to talk about menopause.

So

In the perimenopausal state, you obviously have fluctuations in your oestrogen levels, and then you have a depletion of oestrogen in the menopausal state.

Now, it's very easy to oversimplify the experiences of a woman to a single diagnosis.

So we recognize the influence of trauma, we recognize the influence of hormones, of menopause, but if we don't recognize that all of these things can interact with each other,

then again, we can pigeonhole women into a single diagnosis and not appreciate the complexity.

And for all these reasons, I think it's very easy to miss ADHD until a much later stage in their life.

if we think about the situation that you're you're in by the time that they come to me so first of all if we look at treatment resistance so

Women may have been given a diagnosis that they feel fully doesn't explain their symptoms.

They may have tried multiple medications.

They may have tried multiple therapies.