Anyone else wondering about ADHD diagnoses in modern mums?

[ChefsKisser]

I’ve noticed recently in my mum peer group sooo many women are being diagnosed with ADHD and starting medication. We are a middle class area, most of these mums have professional jobs, nice looked after houses etc. some but not all have gone private, many through NHS.

Speaking to them lots talk about feeling overstimulated, not being able to sit down dashing from task to task etc. I feel like I feel the same! I also definitely feel like amphetamines would help focus me and slow down my brain… But I also don’t feel like I have ADHD when I read about it I have traits but I think a busy job as a nurse, juggling kids, school, hobbies etc etc is exhausting and constant. I didn’t struggle in school and the only negative impact on my life is that I can basically never sit down and relax.

I don even know what I’m asking really but does anyone else feel like everyone around them is being diagnosed and the starting to wonder whether to jump on the bandwagon?

I think maybe you should read up on it a bit more before making judgements.

Yes, I completely agree! Most of us feel like we’re spinning so many plates and can’t relax but whether that’s life or whether we all have ADHD, I don’t know!

I can’t see why you’d go for an adhd diagnosis (and think you’d get one) if you don’t think you have adhd, you don’t have traits of adhd and your life isn’t impacted by adhd, unless this is a troll post to complain about the rates of diagnosis?

Assuming you’re being genuine, lots of people have traits of adhd, you can’t just ‘jump on the bandwagon,’ and get a diagnosis because you fancy some amphetamines to get you through the day. the diagnostic process is all about how it impacts your life and the adhd traits need to be evidenced throughout your life. The traits also can’t just be explained away by something else (eg a busy mind just because you’re a busy mum)
So given you don’t currently think it’s impacting you or has ever impacted you, you’d have to lie and get other people to lie for you too as they speak to friends and family as well.

Maybe now it’s something you’re thinking about you’ll be more aware and realise some things you’re doing that are due to adhd and you can begin to build a picture and learn about it a little more, but it sounds like from what you’ve said that you’re just busy.

I think maybe it's when you have to juggle kids, a house, a partner and a job that the shit hits the fan and they can't do it.

I do find that my generation and onwards expect things to be "fixed" instantly when previous generations would have been used to waiting and putting up with things. So people now want reasons and a diagnosis when my parents generation would just accept that they were "rubbish at maths" or couldn't do sports.

Bandwagon?

One of the major pieces of an ADHD diagnosis is evidence that these issues have been there since childhood. Quite a bit of the diagnostic process is invested in establishing that.

As a PP has said, whether you wanted to “jump on the band wagon” or not, you wouldn’t be diagnosed with ADHD if you hadn’t struggled with those traits in your childhood or adolescence.

I know two women who’ve been diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood and both have had incredibly severe mental health issues throughout their lives from having to mask and from the shame/ stress they felt about not being able to do things their NT peers found easy. It might be that the women you know are downplaying the significance of some of their struggles out of embarrassment or for fear of over sharing.

or, maybe theres more pressure on people in modern times?

Third thread I’ve read today on the side of ‘ADHD is not real’.

Mumsnet HQ said they had an autism troll. Have they branched out?

It's not a bloody bandwagon, and anyone who thinks it's a piece of piss to get an assessment and diagnosis (let alone meds, if you choose to pursue that route) is deluding themselves.

As for the 'oh everyone seems to have it these days!' you can absolutely have ADHD type traits, as a lot of the factors present across every day life. It's if it's severely impacting your life / functioning that it's usually ADHD - it's a disability

I'm getting a bit tired of these threads lately.

Women internalise a lot of the shit that goes with ADHD. All I know is that a diagnosis and medication not only turned off the constant river of noise in my head, it also allowed me to find strategies that work with ADHD not against it. It also turned off my profound self-loathing because I stopped seeing myself as an abject failure no matter what I accomplished.

I literally had no idea what it meant to have empty, quiet space in my head until I was medicated. There was just constant noise without end, much of it self-critical.

I spent my childhood under psychologists and therapists because ADHD wasn’t a thing back then. Your childhood history plays a huge part in the diagnosis, it’s very difficult to diagnose if you have no information from your childhood.

This thread is from May so it think it’s someone clicking on recommended threads and reviving them without checking the Op date rather than a troll

And by the way, I looked exactly like one of the mums you describe from the outside. Inside I was drowning, the house was a catastrophic mess, I paid hundreds in replacing lost items and paying fines, my health was failing and peri was the final nail in the coffin. There's an interplay between dopamine and oestrogen, so much so that many of us need a higher dose of meds in our luteal phase.

People are so ignorant of what ADHD is, including sadly medical professionals.

Good spot! Ironically the date went completely unnoticed by lots of ADHDers on the threads

A major symptom of ADHD is lack of executive function skills. ADHD meds help with concentration but barely touch the sides with self organisation. DD has ADHD; does brilliantly academically but can't clean and tidy her room. I would imagine if these women are able to juggle so many things, they don't have ADHD. Unfortunately, private psychiatrists will tell you what you want to hear.