Dr. Yath Ramesh

Or they may have been declined for certain types of psychological therapies because they don't fit into the box that that therapy was designed for.

And so they can often feel like...

there is no clear solution or way forward to help them to understand their experiences that in itself if we think about the fact that the underlying issue here might be adhd reinforces this feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with you and often they can feel feel like they're going mad from that perspective but there's a second element as well which is that

As you go through life and as things become more complicated, again, the pressures and responsibilities on women can be different for men, as we all know.

rather than recognizing that complexity and recognizing those burdens and responsibilities for them, there seems to be more of a focus on the fact that they're struggling and not able to cope and not able to manage in those situations.

So then what happens?

Again,

A woman might understand herself as being, her experiences as being the product of everything going on around her, but society might tell her that to internalize it, to think that there is something wrong, we need to treat it.

And it might be depression, it might be anxiety, it might be your failure to be able to cope with those circumstances.

So there, there's another sort of stressor there.

But then if we go back to menopause again, so what menopause can do in the context of ADHD is, yes, it can exacerbate some of those ADHD symptoms, but you also might find particular cognitive symptoms come out even more.

So short-term memory deficits occur.

difficulties with processing multiple inputs.

These might have been things that you hadn't seen before, but when you start to experience new cognitive difficulties, again, it can lead to women feeling like, I'm going mad.

There's something, you know, something crazy is happening in my brain and I can't explain it.

And if you don't have the language, the understanding, and the ability to comprehend the complexity of that,

then it's really difficult for you to be able to connect the dots for that woman.

And look, I hold myself up and my hands up and say that it's a learning journey for me as well.

And it's through listening to other women explain these things that I even understand where I get my understanding from.

But yeah, so there's a lot of more work that needs to be done here.