Everyone Has ADHD Now – Debunking the Late-Onset Myth

Listen to the full episode #62: [YouTube] | [Spotify] | [Apple]

Everyone has ADHD now.

You've heard it. Maybe you've even thought it yourself. ADHD diagnoses have exploded over the past decade-ish, especially among adults. So naturally, people are asking: what the hell is going on?

Are we overdiagnosing?

Are smartphones frying everyone's attention span?

Did ADHD just suddenly appear out of nowhere?

Let me save you some time: no, everyone does not have ADHD.

And, a lot more people have it than we thought. Yet, the reason has nothing to do with a sudden epidemic and everything to do with finally recognizing who we've been missing all along.

You know, people getting diagnosed at 30, 40, 50 and folks saying, well you must be a late bloomer. You just have adhd that presented later in life, aka late onset!

Mmmm, pero no though - they didn't develop it as an adult. They’ve had it all along.

ADHD is a neuro developmental condition, which means it starts in childhood. The DSM-5 literally requires symptom onset before age 12. You don't wake up at 35 and suddenly have ADHD.

So What's Happening with All These Late Diagnosed Adults?

They were missed. Overlooked. Flippantly disregarded.

Research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that women with ADHD experience nearly a 4-year delay in receiving an ADHD diagnosis compared to men, despite having high rates of prior contact with mental health services. That's not late-onset. That's late recognition.

It seems that a significant proportion of young adults meeting criteria for ADHD would not have met full diagnostic criteria as children; not because they didn't have symptoms, but because those symptoms were missed, minimized, or attributed to something else.

The childhood diagnosis ratio of boys to girls with ADHD is about 3 to 1. But in adulthood? It's closer to 1 to 1.

Which means half the women with ADHD weren't even on anyone's radar as kids.

Read more here.

Most ADHD research was done on hyperactive little boys who couldn't sit still in class.

Girls? We internalized. We masked. We became perfectionists and people pleasers. We looked fine on the outside while drowning on the inside. None the wiser.

It’s been noted that girls with ADHD:

• Exert considerable effort to mask symptoms to avoid social sanctions

• Often present more with inattentiveness rather than hyperactivity/impulsivity

• Are less disruptive in classroom settings, leading to lower referral rates

• Develop coping strategies that hide their struggles

Teachers didn't refer us for evaluation because we weren't disruptive. We just daydreamed. Forgot things. Struggled quietly.

And when we did show symptoms? They got chalked up to anxiety. Depression. Hormones. Borderline personality disorder. Anything but ADHD.

Recent registry-based research from Wales found that women diagnosed with ADHD were more likely than men to have been prescribed antidepressants before their ADHD diagnosis - and then discontinued those medications after receiving the correct diagnosis.

Suggesting the earlier diagnosis of mood or anxiety disorders was, at minimum, secondary to ADHD or, at worst, a complete misdiagnosis.

Over the past 5 to 7 years, I've seen this fascinating cascade effect.

Kids are getting diagnosed earlier and more frequently. And when parents are sitting in those diagnostic appointments, hearing the symptoms read out loud, something clicks into place for them.

Wait. That sounds like me.

So Mom gets evaluated. Then Grandma hears about it and thinks, huh, maybe that explains why I've struggled my whole life too.

We're not seeing an epidemic of new ADHD. We're seeing generations of people finally getting answers for struggles they've had all along.

The science didn't change. The awareness is.

Okay, let's tackle the elephant in the room: smartphones.

Yes, screens affect everyone's attention. A USC study of 2,600 teens found that high-frequency digital media users showed increased ADHD-like symptoms.

Correlation is not causation.

ADHD is a chronic, pervasive, neurological wiring pattern. It shows up across multiple settings, for years, and it doesn't come and go based on whether you deleted Instagram.

Screen-induced distractibility is situational. Cut back on screen time and your attention improves within weeks. This one truly is about discipline.

ADHD? It was there before you had a smartphone.

It'll be there after you put it down.

Here's what actually happens: people with ADHD are MORE prone to screen addiction because our brains crave dopamine and screens deliver it fast.

But screens didn't cause the ADHD. They just amplify it.

And yes, heavy digital media use can worsen ADHD symptoms or mimic them in people who don't have the condition. But here's what doctors are supposed to do: take a thorough history. Look at childhood patterns. Rule out other causes.

The problem isn't that ADHD is overdiagnosed. The problem is that some clinicians are sloppy with their prejudices on who looks like they have adhd, assessments are often inaccessible for many, and myriad other systemic and societal reasons.

Most ADHD research, like most medical research, was based on male bodies. Male presentations. Male symptoms.

But women's bodies are different. Our hormones fluctuate. Estrogen affects dopamine. Our ADHD symptoms get worse or better depending on where we are in our cycle, whether we're pregnant, postpartum, or perimenopausal.

None of that has been studied historically. We weren’t really considered to be all that different from men, certainly not enough that more funding needed to be portioned off for our bodies.

Research by Mowlem et al. (2019) found that parent and teacher reports are more likely to over-rate boys' ADHD symptoms and under-rate girls' symptoms. Girls with ADHD are less likely to display overt symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity, making them less likely to be referred for evaluation.

So when a woman showed up with ADHD that looked different than the hyperactive boy model, she got misdiagnosed. We're only just now starting to understand how ADHD presents in women.

And shocker, it turns out a lot of us have been walking around undiagnosed for decades.

No. Everyone does not have ADHD.

But a lot more people have it than we thought. Because for years, we were only looking for one type of person.

The current prevalence estimate is about 5% of the population.

That's not everyone. But it's also not rare.

And if it feels like suddenly everyone's getting diagnosed, that's because we're finally catching the people who should have been diagnosed years ago:

• Late-diagnosed women

• People of color who were dismissed

• Anyone who didn't fit the stereotype of a white hyperactive boy bouncing off the walls

The diagnoses aren't fake. The struggle was always real. We just finally have the language for it.

The next time someone says everyone has ADHD now, you can correct them.

Not everyone. Just the people who've actually had it all along.

We're not seeing an epidemic. We're seeing recognition. We're seeing women finally being taken seriously. We're seeing people of color finally being evaluated fairly. We're seeing the stereotype of ADHD expand to include the reality of how it actually shows up.

The science hasn't changed. The stereotypes are just starting to crack.

And honestly? It's about damn time.

• Late-onset ADHD doesn't exist > it's late recognition of childhood symptoms that were missed

• Women are diagnosed 4 years later than men on average due to masking and gender bias

• The 3:1 childhood ratio [boys:girls] becomes 1:1 in adulthood, showing massive underdiagnosis

• Smartphones worsen ADHD symptoms but don't cause ADHD

• ADHD prevalence is around 5% - not rare, but not everyone

• Generations are getting diagnosed as awareness spreads

• The diagnostic surge reflects better recognition, not overdiagnosis

Listen to the full episode #62: [YouTube] | [Spotify] | [Apple]