While the UK ADHD population is still grappling with ongoing medication shortages, new research from Mamedica has found that not only are the 2.6 million people diagnosed being left behind but a further 4.5 million Brits believe that they have undiagnosed ADHD.
Undiagnosed ADHD can come with a myriad of complications which leads to a reduction in quality of life for neurodivergent people. According to ADDitude Magazine, undiagnosed ADHD can lead to impulsivity, emotional instability ,and feelings of anger and worthlessness.
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How long are NHS waiting lists for ADHD diagnosis?
Of course, throughout the UK, waiting list times differ but a report by ITV released in October found that in some areas of the UK, adults could be waiting up to 10 years for a diagnosis.
Speaking to ITV, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We know how vital it is to have timely diagnoses for ADHD, and we are committed to reducing diagnosis delays and improving access to support.”
Additionally, Sheffield magazine Now Then has reported that in the 12 months between June 2022 and June 2023, only 21 adults received an assessment from The Sheffield Adult Autism and Neurodevelopmental Service (SAANS), which resulted in nine diagnoses.
Now Then stated that with 5,481 service users on the waiting list at the end of the same period, with current assessment rates, it would take 261 years to get through the current waiting list.
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How this crisis is affecting women
According to the ADHD Foundation, 50-75% of the women in the UK with ADHD are undiagnosed, and as a result may be experiencing poor health and socio-economic outcomes.
While awareness of ADHD in women and girls has improved in recent years, ADDitude Magazine warns that there is still a lot of information gaps with professionals such as teachers and gynaecologists.
They said: “We now know that fluctuating female hormones worsen ADHD symptoms, yet this important issue is largely neglected. Gynaecologists are not educated about ADHD; psychiatrists don’t study the effects of female hormones on the condition; and many females feel minimised and mistreated.”
How is the ADHD diagnosis crisis being tackled?
The shortage in medication has led to doctors in England being told to not prescribe new patients with ADHD medication but this is expected to be resolved by December. From there, it is up to individual health boards to tackle backlogs.
However, back in May of this year, MPs on the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) called on the government to prioritise tackling NHS waiting lists to assess people who could have the disorder.
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Tory MP James Sunderland, a vice chair on the APPG, said to PoliticsHome that he wants the government to “throw the kitchen sink” at tackling NHS backlogs relating to ADHD, particularly for school-aged children.
Have you ever been told to ‘just try time management’? If you’ve got ADHD, it’s likely that you’ve tried every time management hack in the world, but none of them seem to work.
We often know what to do, we just can’t do it. Having a brain that only experiences time as ‘now’ or ‘not now’ can make it extremely difficult to plan ahead, organise our time, or prioritise our work. This is linked with the 30% developmental delay in executive functioning skills such as memory, self-awareness, and motivation – it is not your fault.
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Having a Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes means that we might zoom ahead on the things we’re interested in, but crash into walls when we need to slow down. At work, this can be extremely difficult as we try to juggle endless competing demands.
As neurotypical solutions don’t work for neurodivergent brains, here’s 3 ADHD-friendly time management hacks to thrive at work:
1) Hack your interest based nervous system
People with ADHD have interest based nervous systems, which means we thrive off interest, adrenaline, and novelty. By understanding what interests you, and how you can incorporate gamification and fun into planning ahead, you can stay one step ahead of procrastination by planning ahead.
As an ADHD Coach, I’m constantly supporting clients to figure out the ways that work best for them to manage their time – from colour blocking their work in their calendar in advance and wearing watches, to setting up calendar reminders and arranging weekly body doubling sessions to focus on the things they don’t want to do. You can also never have too many clocks around you!
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As we have a limited number of ‘spoons’ of energy, it’s also sensible to hack your days by doing something you don’t want to do first thing in the morning. For me, this is going to the gym – I incorporate my interest based nervous system by sleeping in my gym clothes and finding accountability buddies!
2) Turn marathons into sprints
As our brains are constantly seeking dopamine and stimulation, we can turn long term projects into sprints by incorporating artificial deadlines and accountability. It’s much easier to work with short term goals that feel immediate and urgent, which can be harnessed with regular 1:1 meetings and dopamine boosts such as positive feedback celebrating our ‘wins’.
For example, I break down long term objectives into three month goals. Setting short term priorities can help us to break these down further, such as by setting weekly or daily goals, and to share these with another person for accountability, checking in on how it went at the end of the day.
Instead of trying to do everything on your to do list, picking just one thing to get done can help you to get started, overcoming the common challenge of ADHD decision paralysis.
Having visual reminders of short term sprints can be highly effective and motivate us to get them done, such as by visualising our progress with trackers. This also helps us remember what to not do – if something isn’t one of our sprint goals, it’s a ‘not now’! Writing down distractions or ideas in a notebook enables us to return to these when we review our next set of sprints.
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3) Ask for help
Asking for help at work may feel overwhelming for people with ADHD, but it’s important to remember that you deserve to be supported – and this helps everybody! One highly effective technique for time management at work is by asking your team to use a briefing document for new work.
This sets out in a shared document what a project will involve, breaking objectives into short term actions, and scheduling any check ins with colleagues as needed. In general, it can be very helpful to have written instructions for everything in the workplace, and to regularly ask your manager what you should prioritise and how you will know when a piece of work is complete.
Having additional check ins is a common reasonable adjustment employers can implement to help employees with ADHD to manage their time effectively. This could be with a colleague, or externally with an ADHD Coach, for example.
Ultimately, it’s important to have a foundation of psychological safety at work to empower you to feel safe enough to focus on the ‘not now’. Having colleagues who clearly set out expectations and support you to ‘do what you know’ empowers you to use your super whizzy brain within a structure of safety and support.
It might feel like we’re surviving from day to day, but creating an environment tailored to our brains can enable us to use these unique traits to thrive at work because of our ADHD, not in spite of it.
ADHD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children. According to the charity ADHD UK, it’s thought to impact around 3.62% of boys and 0.85% of girls between the ages of five and 15.
As a result, there’s a lot of helpful research and literature to guide parents who find themselves raising a child with ADHD. However, less is written about parents who themselves have ADHD.
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The demographic certainly exists. In fact, while some children no longer display signs of ADHD as adults, it’s estimated that 3.5% of adults in the UK experience ADHD. A small study published in 2016 also found that, of 79 children with ADHD, 41% of their mothers and 51% of their fathers also had the disorder.
To shed some light on the experience of parenting with ADHD, HuffPost spoke to experts about the challenges that parents with ADHD face as they raise children while trying to manage their own symptoms.
ADHD is underdiagnosed in parents.
“Parents are absolutely under or misdiagnosed, as are many adults in general, because there’s still this misunderstanding that ADHD is a ‘kid’ disorder,” said Michigan-based psychotherapist and ADHD coach Terry Matlen, who herself is a parent with the disorder.
Although the perception has been shifting, we still have a long way to go in giving parents and other adults better access to evaluations and treatments. A number of factors contribute to this issue.
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“Many ADHD symptoms overlap with the common experience of parenting,” said therapist Rachael Bloom, who practices in Los Angeles. “All parents talk about dealing with being distracted, overwhelmed, overstimulated, etc. Parents who in fact do meet the criteria for a clinical diagnosis of ADHD often talk themselves out of seeking a diagnosis by telling themselves that what they’re experiencing is normal.”
“The executive function challenges of ADHD and the tasks of parenting are like a double whammy, a setup for overwhelm.”
– Dr. Lidia Zylowska, author and psychiatrist
Someone who grew up in the ’80s, ’90s or earlier was less likely to get a proper diagnosis when they were a child than kids are today. So over time, parents with undiagnosed ADHD likely learned ways to compensate for their symptoms or make themselves seem more “normal” to others.
“A lot of adults have learned to ‘mask’ their ADHD symptoms and often function ‘well enough’ on the outside to have symptoms overlooked,” said Billy Roberts, a therapist at Focused Mind ADHD Counselling in Columbus, Ohio. “In addition, ADHD is challenging to diagnose in adulthood, especially if someone is seen by a provider who does not specialise in adult ADHD. Commonly occurring mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety can mimic symptoms of ADHD and often a thorough testing process is needed to confirm the diagnosis.”
As a result, it’s quite common for parents to receive an ADHD evaluation after their child is diagnosed, as they often recognise their own struggles in their kid’s experience.
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Parents with ADHD may feel like they have to work harder to hold it all together.
“Adults with ADHD can struggle with planning, organisation, prioritising, and focusing in the moment,” Roberts said. “However, for most parents, they find that there isn’t a day that goes by in which they do not need to plan, organise, or problem-solve at a moment’s notice. Consequently, adults with ADHD often feel like they have to work ten times harder to ‘hold it all together,’ as they must compensate for the frustrating parts of ADHD.”
People with ADHD generally have problems with executive function ― the skills related to planning, organisation, time management, decision-making and all the other things it takes to get stuff done.
“As all parents know, having children means managing not just yourself but also your children, often with increased stress or sleep deprivation,” said Dr. Lidia Zylowska, a psychiatrist with the University of Minnesota Medical School and author of “Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD.” “The executive function challenges of ADHD and the tasks of parenting are like a double whammy, a setup for overwhelm.”
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In addition to feeling generally underwater, parents with ADHD may feel like they’re unable to pass on organisational skills to their children or teach other lessons.
“Parents tell me, ‘How in the world do I help my child if I can’t help myself?’” Matlen said. “That could include difficulties with their child getting homework done, paying attention in class, etc. The parents suffer the same problems but in a different setting. For example, a mom with ADHD may forget to sign her child’s permission slip for a field trip, while her child may forget to hand in homework.”
They may struggle with emotional regulation.
“The biggest challenge parents with ADHD face are challenges regulating their emotions,” said Cristina Louk, a clinical psychologist based in Washington state who also has ADHD.
She compared the experience to a snow globe. When your emotions run high, things are a bit like a snow globe that has been shaken.
“The image is hidden,” Louk explained. “You can’t see clearly. Things are cloudy. This is what it’s like for ADHDers to experience ‘overwhelm.’ When emotions are high, our brains get cloudy, we can’t see things clearly. This can be really challenging as a parent when we need to tend to our child who may be acting out or experiencing their own emotion dysregulation.”
Reaching this point of overwhelm means you struggle to be fully present and at full capacity. The situation is especially tough if you have a child with ADHD and you both experience this dysregulation at the same time.
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“If the child is having a meltdown, the ADHD parent may lose patience quickly or join in the meltdown,” Matlen said. “Patience runs thin.”
Sensory overload can be an issue.
“Another area where parents often struggle is sensory overload ― feeling overstimulated, ‘touched out’ ― experiences that are common for all parents, but the severity and impact on a parent with ADHD is much more significant,” Bloom said.
Researchers have started looking into the connection between sensory processing disorder and adults with ADHD. The conditions of living with children can present extra challenges to these adults.
“Many with ADHD are hypersensitive to noise and chaos,” Matlen said. “How does a parent with ADHD manage with a chaotic disorganised house with hyperactive, loud children?”
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These struggles bring up feelings of guilt and shame.
“Parents often have a lot of guilt about how their ADHD impacts their children,” Bloom noted.
Being late to school drop-off or pick-up, forgetting to sign a field trip permission slip or otherwise not being organised can affect kids and make parents feel terrible.
“Parents with ADHD may find many aspects of parenting difficult and may not always meet the expectations of what ‘good parent’ is,” Zylowska said. “Such moments can bring up feelings of self-criticism, shame or blame for parents with ADHD and overall increase stress and negative emotions in the family.”
Parents with ADHD may have additional sleep challenges.
Parenthood isn’t typically associated with healthy sleep patterns, but ADHD can make it worse.
“Since I am a parent with ADHD of a now young adult child with ADHD, I can attest to the problems experienced in such families,” Matlen said. “I could write quite a bit about that, and my heart goes out to these families. It is exhausting, which brings me to another topic: sleep issues. We tend to see exhausted parents and children.”
Indeed, studies have suggested that adults with ADHD might be predisposed to sleep issues. They may have problems with the nerve pathways that regulate wakefulness and sleep-wake transitions or biological disruptions to their circadian rhythm. These issues can lead to trouble falling asleep, frequent waking in the night, difficulty waking up and other struggles.
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Conflicts with partners might arise more frequently.
Parenthood presents a whole new set of obstacles for couples to navigate together. When one parent has ADHD, however, this new chapter can feel particularly complicated.
“Conflict over household responsibilities or different parenting styles can arise between the ADHD and the non-ADHD partner,” Zylowska said.
You may take different approaches that feel imbalanced or have trouble understanding your partner’s mindset at times. That’s why it’s extra important to have big conversations about parenting, your shared goals and values, and logistical approaches to raising children together.
Parents with ADHD aren’t always able to take their medication.
Many adults with ADHD have found that medication is an effective way to manage their symptoms and live a more well-balanced life. But this treatment generally isn’t an option for expectant parents.
“Most of that drugs that help people manage their ADHD are contraindicated for pregnancy and breastfeeding,” Bloom said. “So from the minute someone finds out that they’re pregnant, they have to stop taking the medication that they might’ve been on for years and figure out how to manage without any type of pharmacological intervention.”
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If you suspect you have ADHD, here’s what to do.
“ADHD is a heritable condition. There is a 50% chance that one of the parents of a child with ADHD also has ADHD,” Louk said. “So, if your child was diagnosed, I would also consider getting an evaluation. I would also advise getting siblings evaluated.”
Even if your child doesn’t have ADHD, talk to your primary care physician if you suspect you might. Look at the signs of ADHD in adults and see how many feel familiar to you.
A full evaluation of your symptoms, family history and other relevant data, as well as psychological testing, can help lead to a diagnosis. And when it comes to ADHD, the diagnosis is a major step toward taking back control of your life.