THE TRUTH ABOUT ADULT ADHD

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was long thought to be something only unruly schoolkids suffered with. Now, the science is telling us a very different story

- by DR JACK GOULDER

There’s a stereotype,” Camilla tells me, “which is that if you’re not a complete screw-up, you can’t have ADHD.

It’s particularly common among psychiatrists.”

She would know. Growing up, Camilla was a model student. She got excellent grades, won a place at medical school and eventually became a psychiatry trainee and researcher. Then, towards the end of her twenties, everything suddenly came to a halt.

When the stress of a botched medical procedure combined with mounting pressures at work, she found herself burnt out and unable to do her job.

“My brain just stopped working. I was putting orange juice in the washing machine instead of the fridge. I couldn't figure out the train home and kept ending up in the wrong parts of town.” She ended up taking sick leave.

It was her therapist who first suggested she get an ADHD assessment. “I said, ‘It feels like I’m always trying 100 times harder to be organised and I’m twice as bad as everyone else” and something clicked in the therapist’s mind.

Yet when she went to her GP for a referral, she was told: “You're a doctor and you're married, you can't have ADHD.” Even though she was working in psychiatry, Camilla herself was unsure. “I thought ADHD was naughty, fidgety boys who couldn't sit still and failed at school. It just wasn't me.”

For decades, ADHD was seen as a childhood disorder - marked by restlessness and inattention - that largely faded with age. Over the last 20 years, however, researchers have challenged this view. Many now see ADHD as a lifelong condition that remains under-recognised. But the idea has proved controversial.