The Power of Early ADHD Screening and Diagnosis in Girls with Cynthia Hammer
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here 🌟
This week, I’m joined by Cynthia Hammer, author, advocate, and founder of the Inattentive ADHD Coalition. Diagnosed with ADHD at 49, Cynthia shares her powerful story of living undiagnosed for decades and how that experience inspired her mission to raise awareness, especially for girls who are so often overlooked.
We explore the emotional and practical effects of late diagnosis, why inattentive ADHD remains under-recognised, and how early intervention can make a lasting difference. Cynthia’s journey is both inspiring and validating, especially for those questioning whether ADHD has shaped their own path.
Tune in to learn why early recognition matters and how it could change lives, starting with the next generation of girls.
What You’ll Learn
✨ Why ADHD in girls is still frequently missed or misdiagnosed due to masking and societal expectations
✨ The emotional toll of undiagnosed ADHD and misunderstanding of inattentive ADHD
✨ The role of early diagnosis for ADHD girls and screening for the whole family
✨ Signs teachers and parents can look for to diagnose ADHD
✨ How to shift from shame and negative self-talk to self-compassion and understanding
✨ Cynthia Hammer’s personal journey with adult diagnosis and her advocacy through the Inattentive ADHD Coalition and FINDtheADHDgirls project
✨ The evolution of ADHD awareness and what the future of diagnosis and support might look like
✨ The power of community and advocacy to empower women in the next generation navigating ADHD
Timestamps
05:33 – Getting diagnosed at 49: Cynthia’s ADHD story
09:39 – Why girls are so often missed in school systems
16:33 – The impact of misdiagnosis and gender bias
22:31 – From self-criticism to self-acceptance: Cynthia’s mindset shift
28:13 – ADHD and family dynamics
31:10 – The need for better ADHD screening and early support
Find out more about Cynthia and her work via her website, www.iadhd.org or via Instagram.
Links and Resources:
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⭐ If you love the podcast but want more ADHD support, get a sneak peek of my brand new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit and pre-order it here!
⭐ Launching September! Tired of ADHD support that doesn’t get you? My new compassionate, community-first membership ditches the overwhelm by providing support aligned with YOU! Join the waitlist now for an exclusive founding member offer!
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Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
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Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Today, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Cynthia Hammer here today.
Speaker A:Now, Cynthia was diagnosed at the age of 49, which is not that uncommon nowadays.
Speaker A: agnosed with ADHD, and it was: Speaker A:So I'm really looking forward to speaking to Cynthia.
Speaker A:But what she's then done with her diagnosis, she's written a book about her life within attentive adhd, which is called Living With Inattentive ADHD Climbing the Circular Staircase of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Speaker A:Despite the fact that she doesn't like the name and she's been an amazing advocate, she's been working towards screening and more awareness of ADHD in girls specifically.
Speaker A:And I'm really looking forward to talking more about this.
Speaker A:And now Cynthia joins us.
Speaker A:It's 6am her time, she's 81 and I know she's going to give us something.
Speaker A:So much wisdom and knowledge of what she's uncovered over the past 30 years of working in this space.
Speaker A:So thank you so much, Cynthia, for being here.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:It's fun to be here, but it's amazing.
Speaker A:I was just saying, you know, 6:00am your time and you're here and I know you're really passionate about this topic, this conversation and reading through your bio of all the things that you have innovated with regards to ADHD and girls and how you've started things, because you've seen the injustice of the lack of awareness and the, and the screening and the lack of understanding of how ADHD manifests in girls.
Speaker A:So I'd love to hear a little bit about, I guess, what did it look like 30 years ago when you saying that you thought, well, that people thought that you were one of the only adults in the US with ADHD.
Speaker B:The year After I got diagnosed, there was an adult conference for ADHD held in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Speaker B:And when I went there, Dr.
Speaker B:Hallowell was there and Terry Matlin were there, and they had been diagnosed a few years earlier.
Speaker B:So we were the beginning of people getting diagnosed with ADHD in the first ADHD conference.
Speaker B:But I came back to Tacoma determined to help other adults learn about it.
Speaker B:So I started a nonprofit there, and I was lucky.
Speaker B:A local hospital let us have space to have meetings.
Speaker B:And then it kind of grew from there.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker B:We started to have annual conferences where we'd have the national speakers come to present.
Speaker B:And I ran that for 15 years.
Speaker B:And then actually, I went on and trained to be an ADHD coach.
Speaker B:That was a thing back then.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Hallowell had a model of coaching where you just call up a friend, and you'd say to the friend what you were going to do that day, and the friend said that to you, and.
Speaker B:And that was your accountability to each other.
Speaker B:And that was the original coaching model.
Speaker B:But then David Guirich got involved, and he created the Coaching Academy, and that's where a lot of American coaches got trained.
Speaker B:But when I first was diagnosed, there was no books, no coaches, no information about adult adhd.
Speaker B:And I don't even remember books about ADHD in children very much.
Speaker B:But then I found one book by Lynn Weiss, who is a psychologist, and she had written about ADHD in adults.
Speaker B:And in the back of that book, I found one other woman in Washington state who had adhd, and she kind of became my support person.
Speaker B:She remembers how devastated I felt getting this diagnosis.
Speaker B:And for me, I guess I woke up one day and just said, I realized I had been grieving.
Speaker B:For a whole year, I had been grieving.
Speaker B:I felt very ashamed of having adhd.
Speaker B:And as I wrote in my book where I was working, I felt like with the Puritans, some woman that was a fallen woman had to wear an A on her clothing.
Speaker B:And I envisioned that I had an ADD on my forehead that everyone could tell that I had this condition.
Speaker B:And I was just very embarrassed about it and ashamed of it.
Speaker B:And when I went to the national conference, Dr.
Speaker B:Hallowell spoke, and he was very at ease saying he had adhd.
Speaker B:And when I asked him about that, he said he never has been ashamed of having adhd.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:So in my mind, I wanted to get to that place, too.
Speaker B:And with starting the support group, I knew that I had to stand in front of a group of people and announce I had adhd.
Speaker B:So it was very hard for me to just say that.
Speaker B:And I sat in my car and practiced over and over and over again just saying, I am Cynthia Hammer.
Speaker B:I have adhd.
Speaker B:I got to the point where I could say it without a tremulous voice.
Speaker B:But still, envisioning saying it in front of a group of people was very threatening.
Speaker B:But when I showed up, because I had envisioned an audience of 100 people, there were, like, 25 there, and it became much easier to say it.
Speaker B:And then once you say it, it's not no problem, because you realize it's a much bigger issue to you than it is to anyone else that hears you say it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker A:I mean, I can only imagine what that must have felt like for you back, you know, in the 80s when there was really no one, you know, that, like you say, we didn't have podcasts, there was nothing online, there was no books.
Speaker A:So you really must have felt so alone.
Speaker A:And that shame is pervasive.
Speaker A:I remember, you know, I was only diagnosed nearly five years ago, and.
Speaker A:And at the time, no one was talking about ADHD only five years ago in women.
Speaker A:So for me, there was so much shame, even though I was reading about it and knowing that I wasn't alone.
Speaker A:And there was still this narrative of, what, you mean, you've got adhd.
Speaker A:That's what kids have, that's what small boys have.
Speaker A:Like, how can you have it?
Speaker A:And all the stigmas and all of that attached.
Speaker A:And, you know, I love Dr.
Speaker A:Halliwell.
Speaker A:He's been on the podcast twice.
Speaker A:But as a man, as a man, they have this privilege because.
Speaker A:Because it can almost be like, oh, it's just a part of my personality.
Speaker A:And I can be chaotic and I can be forgetful because a woman or a secretary or a wife is going to pick up the pieces.
Speaker A:But when you're a woman with ADHD and you're expected to be the picker upper and the organizer and the one that kind of clears things and tidies things, and we find that difficult.
Speaker A:We struggle with that.
Speaker A:That impacts so many different parts of us as well.
Speaker B:As you're talking all the chores that wives or mothers have to do, I'm really thinking those are all executive functions.
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker A:And Sari Solden, who I'm sure you, you know about, she calls them, she messages, all the she messages that we've had, you know, over the years of people telling us that that's what women should do, that's what wives that do, that's what mums do.
Speaker A:And when we don't fall into that bracket perfectly, it's a direct, we feel it's like a direct flaw in our personality or our status as that person or we're not a good enough mum or wife or daughter or sister or whatever that is.
Speaker A:ADHD is the thing.
Speaker A:That's definitely a thing that we have to accept and embrace and understand.
Speaker A:But I think for women it's much more multi layered and deeper, maybe for men.
Speaker A:And I don't.
Speaker A:I wondered if you agreed.
Speaker B:Yes, I think we get more mental health issues because of our ADHD and the messages we give ourselves.
Speaker B:Even though I interviewed 25 men that had the inattentive type of ADHD and I was surprised that a lot of them experienced a lot of the same emotions that women do, I think a lot of it results from not getting diagnosed early.
Speaker B:And when you have the hyperactive type, you get diagnosed early and, and you just grow up understanding yourself better.
Speaker B:So I personally think getting diagnosed is a key to a lot of change people can make in their lives.
Speaker B:And that's why we're working so hard to get girls diagnosed early.
Speaker B:I mean, we want boys to get diagnosed early too, but we know there's been a big gap in girls not getting diagnosed early.
Speaker A:Yeah, I want to hear a little bit about this because I know you have worked tirelessly to increase awareness around screening from a younger age.
Speaker A:And maybe you can explain a little bit about what age you think might be the optimum age.
Speaker A:And do you want all kids screened?
Speaker A:So kids start sc and personally I think you should start school and you get screened for adhd, dyslexia, dyscalcul, and it's just part of starting school.
Speaker A:And then you're able to then be funneled and streamed into different places and get more support in some areas and you know, you can thrive in other areas.
Speaker A:I wonder what you think about that.
Speaker B:Well, okay.
Speaker B:Personally, my personal feeling is if we could get diagnosed at birth, that would be the best, but we don't know how to do that yet, but maybe someday we will.
Speaker B:And in the US I think that pediatricians are supposed to screen for autism by age two because they.
Speaker B:And so I think as soon as we are able to diagnose, that's when we should do it.
Speaker B:And when I've talked to physicians and psychologists in the U.S.
Speaker B:they mostly feel comfortable diagnosing a child by age 7.
Speaker B:They sometimes could diagnose earlier if it's really an extreme case.
Speaker B:But generally they get the teachers, they get the information from teachers they get the information from the parents.
Speaker B:And by age 7, the child is learning to read.
Speaker B:So there's some ability to assess for learning disabilities.
Speaker B:And so that's why we chose the age of eight, because doctors are telling us they could diagnose by seven.
Speaker A:I mean, how easily can you screen, I guess, from such a young age?
Speaker A:Because I'm going to play devil's advocate.
Speaker A:I totally agree that screening is needed, but if people turn around and say, oh, you know, kids mature at different ages and what happens if we are?
Speaker A:And I'm going to do an inverted commas labeling kids, we're sort of pigeonholing them.
Speaker A:What do you think about if people say that?
Speaker B:I talked with Kathleen Nadeau, who's written a lot about girls and women with adhd, and she reassured me, I guess, that when you diagnose children earlier, it's easier to diagnose them because they're less complicated.
Speaker B:The girls haven't been masking that long.
Speaker B:There's not the overlay of depression, there's not the overlay of anxiety.
Speaker B:So she talks like it's easier.
Speaker B:And what I say is that we can diagnose girls sooner if we learn to not just watch for one or one behavior.
Speaker B:I think for the girls, it's more of a complex of behaviors.
Speaker B:You're looking for several things, several subtle symptoms, maybe some overt symptoms.
Speaker B:But it's not like the boys that he's hyperactive and he's disruptive and, you know, you really can identify him with a girl.
Speaker B:I think it's more, a little bit more detective work.
Speaker B:And what Dr.
Speaker B:Mason said is that what happens when I'm in the schools is the teacher at the beginning of the year, she can pick out the children that she thinks they're going to need extra help.
Speaker B:And the girls with ADHD look good the first month of school.
Speaker B:And so later on, when they start looking out the window, when they start losing the place in this class lesson, when they don't do the backside of the paper, or when they have messy handwriting, when they're interrupting to ask a neighbor, where are we?
Speaker B:What should I be paying attention to?
Speaker B:The teacher isn't rethinking, oh, this child's having trouble.
Speaker B:This child is struggling.
Speaker B:And so they're not picking up on the clues that are there.
Speaker B:And there's someone in England that has a brilliant idea as he's thinking.
Speaker B:Instead of asking teachers to find these children or they're having difficulty, they talk about the bell curve.
Speaker B:And he's talking that if the teacher could Just bring to the psychological staff of the school the children that are on the low end of the bell curve, the ones that are the outliers for certain behaviors, the outliers for being tardy, for losing their possessions, for all the things we think of as the symbols, the symptoms of girls having adhd, if we just get alerted to watch for those things.
Speaker B:And that's what we're trying to do in all of our messages, is make people aware of all the different ways it presents.
Speaker B:It's not always.
Speaker B:And even if it is the combined type, if it's the hyperactive type, girls usually present differently because of those she messages.
Speaker B:You're not supposed to be rambunctious, you're not supposed to be running on the jungle gym and, you know, all this kind of messages.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Speaker A:I've got three daughters, all of them have been diagnosed with ADHD.
Speaker A:And, oh, it all presents very differently.
Speaker A:Like, they are.
Speaker A:They're literally like models for me to be able to see how it can manifest.
Speaker A:But I just talk about ADHD so openly and so freely in the house to the girls, so they can never have any doubt in their mind to, you know, where their struggle comes from, what the meaning is.
Speaker A:So they understand about executive functioning, they understand what anxiety is.
Speaker A:I don't want any shame or any stigma.
Speaker A:I just want them to understand it so they can feel empowered to ask for help or support or just ask me for anything.
Speaker A:It's not perfect, for sure, because I think you're 100% right that the teachers are the gatekeepers, you know, from a very young age of these children.
Speaker A:And if you've got parents who really don't know very much about adhd, like, at all, and there's many, many, you know, I forget I live in my little echo chamber on.
Speaker A:And I think everyone should know all of this information, but they really don't.
Speaker A:And so, oh, they just sort of pass it off as, oh, she's a bit of a worrier or she's a bit restless or she's a bit of a fidgeter.
Speaker A:And then they pass it off and then they're not connected.
Speaker A:Connecting all the dots of, yes, she's a fidgeter, but does she struggle with sleep and is she anxious and does she have problems, you know, with, like, friendship groups and is she very sensitive?
Speaker A:And does she have problems with sensory, you know, overload or feeling overwhelmed?
Speaker A:And then when we're able to create this sort of caseload of clues, like you say, and very often it's the teacher that can connect all those dots.
Speaker A:So I personally think that teaching programs should have a whole.
Speaker A:I don't know how long it takes to train as a teacher, but there should be definitely a few weeks dedicated to spotting the signs of neurodivergence in children.
Speaker B:I agree it's great for teachers to do that, but apparently in England teachers are more free to tell parents, I have a concern about your child.
Speaker B:And in the US it's the opposite.
Speaker B:Teachers are very concerned about liability, about saying anything, offending parents, saying things in the wrong way.
Speaker B:And also school districts, it's more expensive for them if they have children who have been diagnosed because there's services they need to provide.
Speaker B:And so school districts, sometimes it's against their interest to identify children.
Speaker B:And so in the US we decided our model is to try to educate parents.
Speaker B:We're trying to educate teachers too, but we feel like that's where we have to make a difference in the US because the teachers, even if they learn, they're going to be reluctant to bring that knowledge to the parents.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's really interesting and it's hard to hear that, isn't it?
Speaker A:Because you know, it all comes down to finances.
Speaker A:It's not, maybe it's a slightly different situation here in the UK that yeah, I think there are some really progressive and forward thinking teachers especially maybe newly trained, but essentially it's the parent wanting to hear the information as well.
Speaker A:So I think you're right that we need to be, you know, there has to be awareness with parents, has to be teachers, the gatekeepers, you know, the doctors, the first line, people where they are seeing beneath the surface, especially for girls of what ADHD looks like and how those more nuanced signs, especially the masking, you know, the fact that the girls make it harder to diagnose because.
Speaker B:Of the masking, you know, even in preschool they start picking up on social cues about how to fit in and what they need to be doing differently.
Speaker B:And so a really alert child will start masking by age three.
Speaker B:We put that burden on ourselves right from the start.
Speaker A:My model of coaching and my model of supporting women with ADHD especially is trying to find the strengths, helping women thrive.
Speaker A:Seeing this as, you know, yes, we've had difficulties, but seeing this as like a positive next chapter in your life.
Speaker A:And I'm wondering when you are thinking about, you know, screening for a young age, do you think that we can then help more people to thrive and less people will struggle with their adhd?
Speaker B:Of course, yeah.
Speaker B:No, I just think that's the whole thing of teaching parents to understand their child early and to know what to be aware of, learning how to parent them better, how to create structure in the home to help them, the routines.
Speaker B:I just think that we all know if you find out earlier, you're going to do better.
Speaker B:And the women I've talked to, I've talked to a couple of women who have really seemed to be so together about having their adhd and it surprises me and they say it's because they've been in therapy for years.
Speaker B:And so there's a lot of damage done to people's self esteem that they, you know, it's a process that you work through for yourself and for me, some of that is just starting to do something that's successful.
Speaker B:And as you do that successful thing, it gives you the confidence to undertake another successful thing.
Speaker B:And you learn the things you can do that are successful and you learn to accept yourself for the things where that's just the way you are.
Speaker B:Like, I can look at things I've attempted and think, oh, I've wasted a lot of time doing things that I didn't really follow through on.
Speaker B:But then I could say, no, that's my learning process.
Speaker B:That's how I get to the things that I do be successful with.
Speaker A:I think that's a really powerful reframe for so many people because there are so many shameful thoughts in our heads when we start hobbies and projects, careers, learning, qualifications, all sorts of things, and then we get bored, we get derailed, we lose interest, the dopamine kind of tapers off and we're no longer interested.
Speaker A:And before we understood our adhd, there would be this whole kind of story.
Speaker A:You know, I had it.
Speaker A:I always had the same story of, you don't commit, you're flaky, why do you always give up?
Speaker A:You don't try hard enough, you're not qualified enough.
Speaker A:There was just, it was just constant, it was like this barrage and my self esteem was rock bottom and my poor husband, you know, he had to was there.
Speaker A:He was like constantly like picking me up.
Speaker A:But then as soon as I got my ADHD diagnosis and I worked through it with therapy and coaching and development and learning and then speaking to all amazing experts like yourself.
Speaker A:The narrative has changed so much now and I just see it exactly like you say.
Speaker A:It's like the way I process and some projects aren't meant to be finished and some projects I see to the end and I can congratulate myself for it.
Speaker B:What I want to Say, too, when I interviewed these 25 women with combined type, I asked them about their ADD symptoms before their diagnosis and since their diagnosis.
Speaker B:And for many of them, they hadn't improved that much, but they were much happier in life.
Speaker B:And the reason was because they now understood themselves, they accepted themselves, and they said they were kinder to themselves.
Speaker B:So just that alone brought them more happiness.
Speaker B:Because it's like someone berating themselves because they can't see the blackboard.
Speaker B:Why would you berate yourself for something you can't do anything about?
Speaker B:You're doing the best you can.
Speaker B:But I want to tell the story about.
Speaker B:For me, I had to learn to stop the negative self talk.
Speaker B:And I think that is the most important thing that people can learn to do because it doesn't help at all.
Speaker B:And if you can just stop it before and then after that, introduce positive self talk.
Speaker B:But the first thing is to stop the negative.
Speaker B:So when we had the support group, this man that was helping me run the groups, he said, I work for the worst boss possible.
Speaker B:He's always criticizing me.
Speaker B:And then he said, I'm self employed about putting a rubber band on his wrist and snapping it every time you catch yourself giving yourself a negative criticism.
Speaker B:And after the first week, I said, well, how are you doing?
Speaker B:He said, I have a very sore wrist.
Speaker B:But if you keep doing that and you get rid of the negative self talk, and then you work on the positive self talk.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I heard from a neuroscientist that it's impossible to get rid of a thought, a negative thought, unless you replace it.
Speaker A:So you can't just wipe it out and then just leave it kind of like empty.
Speaker A:So the best way is to say something like if you recognize a thought such as, I never finish things, or I'm not good enough, or I'm.
Speaker A:Other people can do that, but I can't, then you find a reframe that feels right for the moment, that feels kind of like you're reaching for something more positive and maybe a bit more realistic.
Speaker B:I can't do it yet.
Speaker B:I can't do it yet, but I can do it someday kind of thing.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:This sort of growth mindset, then it makes getting rid of that negative thought easier, because if we've had that thought for so many years to then just get rid of it, it's just impossible.
Speaker A:So it's kind of like gently moving out the door kind of thing.
Speaker A:Like inch by inch moving it.
Speaker A:And then all of a sudden we have a beautiful new armchair instead of the old, the old tatty armchair that we've had to sort of gently usher out the room.
Speaker B:What I said is that it was the time of equal rights.
Speaker B:And I said that at the end of the night when I was reviewing the day and it would be all negative.
Speaker B:I didn't do this, I didn't do that.
Speaker B:I first started to say for every negative I had to say something positive to balance it.
Speaker B:And then I would just slowly get rid of the negative.
Speaker A:Yeah, and I think it's really easy for us, you know, women with adhd.
Speaker A:We are typically doing a lot, you know, I'm not going to overgeneralize, but we, there tends to be a group of us that might be over committing, over achieving, have lots of ideas, lots of energy and lots of things that they want to accomplish, but it's always at the expense of something else such as our energy, our health or sleep, maybe relationships, that type of thing.
Speaker A:And so it's very easy for us to criticize that all we do or have a negative spin.
Speaker A:But you know, we're often doing lots more than most people, you know, trying to achieve lots money.
Speaker A:I mean, I look at your biography and what you've achieved and what you continue to do is exceptional.
Speaker A:But we have to give ourselves that, that compassion of actually it's okay to take a break, it's okay to pause, it's okay to rest, it's okay to do nothing because we've got this, all this restless energy.
Speaker A:We just think that we have to put it to, to use all the time.
Speaker A:And then when we don't do something with it, we think we're being lazy or we think that we're kind of wasting our time.
Speaker A:I mean, maybe I'm just speaking for myself.
Speaker B:Yeah, some of that I don't relate to when I'm inattentive type.
Speaker B:You know, I think the, the hyper, the high energy people are probably harder on themselves maybe.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker A:Because then there's the other, the other type where you know, just getting up in the morning is difficult.
Speaker A:You know, getting dressed, having showers, all of that.
Speaker A:You know, I see it, I see it all.
Speaker A:And that's the thing with ADHD is that there's never a one size fits all.
Speaker A:Which I guess coming back to your screening, the screening tool has to be so nuanced really, doesn't it?
Speaker A:To make sure that we're not missing.
Speaker A:I'm going to talk about girls, but we're not missing the girls that are.
Speaker B:On our website we have a free checklist that find the ADHD girls.
Speaker B:And it was, it's based on the DSM and the Diva 5, but then it's modified and two physicians and three psychologists looked at it.
Speaker B:And the thing with the, the, the symptoms is that, well, Dr.
Speaker B:Ferron was worried that we'd get false positives.
Speaker B:And I said that if a family gets a lot of these check marks, if they check a lot of these behaviors, they should go see a doctor anyway.
Speaker B:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker B:Even if it's not adhd, there's something to be concerned about with this girl.
Speaker B:If she's losing a lot of her things, if she's not having good relationships, if she's emotionally going off the handle.
Speaker B:So the things in our checklists are describing a 7 year old girl that likely has ADHD.
Speaker B:But even if not ADHD, there's a reason to be concerned about this girl.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you say that all families should be screened.
Speaker A:If one child or one person's got adhd, the whole family should be screened.
Speaker B:Yes, yes.
Speaker B:Because, well, it's a family is a system and you know, if you're a parent with ADHD and you don't know about your adhd, and as you said, it was a, a challenge for you because when you learned about it, you already were a parent and so you had to be dealing with your children as you're trying to learn about your own adhd.
Speaker B:So there was this woman at a conference, I thought this was brilliant.
Speaker B:She said that women should be screened for ADHD when they're delivering their baby because they will have those months, those years maybe of getting to deal with their own ADHD before they take on having to deal with a child who might have adhd.
Speaker B:And it seems like such a simple place to do that because the, I think it's.
Speaker B:The World Health Organization has a five question screener that's supposed to be very accurate, very valid.
Speaker B:And so if we could get hospitals to do the screenings with the women because they do postpartum depression screenings and just add on this screening and if those women left that hospital knowing they had adhd, we'd be getting back to that thing I said we should get diagnosed at birth.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I'm not 100% sure if while you're delivering the baby is the best time, but I would say that if there's been a, a pattern from puberty, you know, as we know, hormones are so intrinsically linked with girls that there's been patterns of, you know, PMDD and like you say, postnatal depression and we need to be getting there before because we don't want women to be getting postnatal depression.
Speaker A:We don't want girls to be having PMDD and women to be having pmdd.
Speaker A:We need, like you say, if we have that screening and that awareness, we can help ourselves.
Speaker A:I have lots of structures in place now, wellbeing and holistic structures.
Speaker A:I know obviously we've not even touched on medication, but if we're able to support ourselves knowing that we have a cycle every month and then we go and have perimenopause and menopause as well and we're able to find ways that work for us and it might be very different for each person, but it all comes down to awareness and understanding.
Speaker A:And like you say that you have this self acceptance and you have the self compassion and the ADHD symptoms may still be there or the traits may be there, but the way we look at them is different and the way we react to them and respond to them is so different.
Speaker A:And I have so much more compassion for myself, but I actually have more compassion for my mum because she didn't know she had ADHD and I didn't know she had it.
Speaker A:And as parents we have to regulate, to regulate ourselves.
Speaker A:So we have regulated children and if we don't have a regulated parent, like you say, the whole family is just goes into sort of chaos.
Speaker A:So it's vital.
Speaker A:I think screening is vital because the impact of it is so widespread and it can be so damaging, I think, you know, across the board.
Speaker B:Well, and, and when tied in the screening, when people are worried about screening and getting false positives, it's like they say, even people that say worry that ADHD is over diagnosed, there's a greater concern of what happens if you aren't diagnosed.
Speaker B:I mean, we're learning now that we die on average 10 to 12 years earlier and a lot of that is because of accidents or suicides.
Speaker B:And so that's a huge concern.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think when we say, at least in the US that we have 11% of children have ADHD and yet for the adults we only have 3 or 4%, it's because we haven't recognized those adults.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's not that we stop having adhd, we don't grow out of it, it's just that we haven't found the adult population like we have found the child population.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think what, what you're saying is when we think about it, the disparity between the 3% and the 11%, I mean, as you're Speaking, I'm sort of thinking ahead and wondering, you know, if in 20 years time we're going to look at this conversation and just think, how could we have been there?
Speaker A:But I also wonder, are we going to be calling it adhd?
Speaker A:Are we going to just be seeing this as just a very different type of wiring that we've considered to be the neurotypical or the normal type of wiring and then we're going to be able to understand things much better, you know, from an addiction perspective.
Speaker A:Eating disorders, depression, anxiety, like it's not.
Speaker A:I know that there's a school of thought and I do think our brains are being rewired differently because of technology and because of screen time and social media and our distractions and our concentration levels of, you know, everything that goes on with, with regards to all the tech.
Speaker A:But I know that ADHD has been there and it's been very prevalent way before tech and, and social media because we've seen it in our families.
Speaker A:You know, every single person that's been diagnosed with ADHD can look back through their family tree and see how it played out in different ways.
Speaker A:You know, whether it was, you know, the, in prison, addiction, bankruptcy, suicide, eating disorders.
Speaker B:It's not, it's not new.
Speaker B:But what Dr.
Speaker B:Ferrone says too, is that the reason we think there's more of it getting diagnosed is because maybe people that had four symptoms are now, you know, a little bit more noticeable.
Speaker B:If you used to have six symptoms to get diagnosed, maybe now with four symptoms you're more noticed.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I hope with all this awareness, doctors becoming more understanding and we're reading more and people are able to ask for help.
Speaker A:And I mean I've just seen in the past five years just working in this space.
Speaker A:Yes, there's still all forms of naysayers and people that are saying, oh, it's over, over prescribed and the medications dreadful and this and that.
Speaker A:But I truly believe exactly what you say that more screening we have, the more assessments and the more understanding, the better outcome people's lives are going to be.
Speaker A:And that's essentially what it's there for.
Speaker A:We don't, we're not there to put every, every person on prescription medication.
Speaker A:Like that's not the reason for this.
Speaker A:The reason for this is that we want people to live better lives and to have better opportunities.
Speaker A:Not for every single child to go on prescription medication, but if they need it and that's going to help them, then great.
Speaker A:But if they don't need it and they can make changes through lifestyle change and tweaks and changing jobs and living in a different area or, you know, changing their diet, then that's brilliant as well.
Speaker A:There has to just be a more open minded, holistic look at the situation as well, I think.
Speaker A:But I wondered if you we might be able to provide that checklist that you just told us about and we can keep putting it in the show notes for people to download.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:We're making handouts every single month and everything.
Speaker B:We're going to have a repository on our website and all the materials we create create will be in the public domain.
Speaker B:So anyone that wanted to come and get our carousels, get our graphics, get our handouts, they can get it and distribute it themselves.
Speaker A:Brilliant.
Speaker A:Okay, well if you can provide those links, I will make sure that I share them with my audience as well.
Speaker A:But I just want to say thank you so much, Cynthia for being here.
Speaker A:I really appreciate your time, especially at the early hours of your morning.
Speaker A:But yeah, it's been amazing talking to you.
Speaker B:Good.
Speaker B:Enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker A:If today's episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.
Speaker A:I really hope this book is going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves this podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kinds of kinds of conversations.
Speaker A:If you head to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co UK, you'll find all the information on the book there, which is going to be out on the 17th of July.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
