Dr. Sharon Saline on Understanding and Working with ADHD in Girls

You may have heard about the “lost generation of autistic women,” which refers to those women whose diagnoses were missed when they were younger because of the male gender bias in the diagnostic criteria. But that phenomenon doesn’t just apply to autism – the same thing goes for girls and ADHD. There’s actually been a lot written about this in recent years, including a popular 2020 article in The Guardian called The Lost Girls: Chaotic and Curious, Women with ADHD All Have Missed Red Flags That Haunt Us.It’s true that the stereotype of a kid with ADHD is that energetic, impulsive, disorganized boy. But in girls especially it can also look like perfectionism and having a hard time receiving feedback, forgetfulness, misreading social cues and struggling with friendships, drifting off, and inconsistency in schoolwork. In this episode, you’ll hear about why ADHD in girls often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, what kind of ineffective coping strategies girls with ADHD may to hide their struggles, and what some of the early symptoms are and how to recognize them. We also talked about the challenges of how rejection sensitive dysphoria, which co-occurs in many people with ADHD, may impact girls, and ADHD burnout.