Paying Attention to Adult ADHD

New awareness and diagnostic tools are helping more of us understand how our brains work

- Melissa Greer

Growing up, Suzanne Smith* always thought she was dysThe lexic or had some sort of learning disorder. The Baltimore, Maryland-based artist says she daydreamed during class and doodled on her work, eventually falling behind. She was clumsy, often breaking things or making a mess. Throughout her childhood, she was called quirky and eccentric-traits that people would attribute to her creative personality.

"I found different ways to cope and just accepted that this is me," she says. But eventually, "it got to the point where I was really not functioning well, and my relationship with my husband was taking a hit." Smith describes herself as "disorganized" and says she finds it hard to focus, making everyday household tasks like cooking and cleaning very challenging for her.

"It's an unfair division of labor, and that was resulting in resentment," she says.

Smith began doing some research online and reached out to the University of Maryland Psychology Clinic, which offers sliding-fee scale mental health evaluations. After undergoing an assessment there in August 2024, she was diagnosed with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at the age of 54. She's now part of a growing number of people who have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults.

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that in 2023, an estimated 15.5 million adults in the United States (about 6%) had ADHD. Of those, roughly half had received their diagnosis in adulthood. ADHD diagnoses among adults have been rising over the last two decades, but in 2020, when many of us were spending more time online, the number of adults seeking treatment sharply increased. What happened, say experts, is that millions of adults whose symptoms had been missed or misdiagnosed in childhood were suddenly seeing themselves represented in TikTok videos, Facebook memes and Instagram ads.