Kathrine Bang Madsen

So you would see if you're... ADHD is very context dependent.

So if you're in an environment that is very supportive of your difficulties, then they may never surface, the difficulties, right?

But when the context changes, and that means that you see more demands, new challenges, and...

responsibilities, then this change of context may actually push the women into that the difficulties actually surface around here.

And I'm not saying that they haven't surfaced before, because they probably had, but they have been able to manage it before.

Well, I would definitely like them to know, also because our study shows that more than half of these women actually are in contact with psychiatric services before they get an ADHD diagnosis.

And that is for depression, anxiety, and also only 1% of substance use disorder, right?

And that tells me something about that they're already in contact with professionals who know how to diagnose, right?

But the professionals, they may not see through the symptoms that the mothers actually have.

So maybe the mothers, well, they show up in contact with psychiatric care and they are

very tired and have poor concentration and difficulties planning.

And these symptoms and also emotion regulation, again, right, irritability and emotional lability, they feel overwhelmed.

But these symptoms also overlap with depression.

So it is very difficult to see, is this depression or is this ADHD?

And of course, the doctor would think postpartum depression at first, right, because that is more the norm.