We Need to Talk About ADHD in Young Women

We've been excluded from this conversation for a long time...and we're suffering because of it.

- CHRISTEN A. JOHNSON

Hannah Ramsey always felt like multiple radio stations were playing in her head at once. By the time she finished her first year of college, the noise had become impossible to ignore. So she did what any young person with a health-related question now does: She hopped on the internet.

She soon found herself down a very busy rabbit hole. On Reddit, in a channel with more than 366,000 members called ADHD Women, Hannah read post after post that resonated deeply with her. On YouTube, she watched videos from cultural commentators she admires—the experiences they described, the symptoms they mentioned, so many of them mirrored her own. (TikTok wasn’t Hannah’s personal go-to, but it, too, hosts lots of similar content, including 66 million videos with the term “ADHD women late diagnosis.”)

Hannah’s research motivated her to find a psychologist and get formally evaluated. And at 19, she was officially diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a chronic neurodevelopmental condition that impacts how the brain develops, functions, and processes information, according to the CDC. Getting confirmation of something she'd long suspected was a relief. Plus, she says, "finding community with other women who have ADHD helped alleviate the shame, self-doubt, and feelings of inadequacy I had throughout my life."

Hannah's story is far from rare. Usually considered a "little boy's issue" and primarily diagnosed in male kids, ADHD) seems like it's now hitting adult women hard. From 2020 to 2022, new diagnoses in women ages 23 to 49 roughly doubled, according to Epic Research data. In 2021, prescriptions for stimulant medications like Adderall, used to treat ADHD, skyrocketed, with the biggest leaps being for women in their 20s and 30s.