“Eventually, the antidepressants didn’t work anymore and I hit bottom… By the time I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was on long-term disability and felt I had no control over my life.” “Antidepressants worked for a while, but my anger and frustration flare-ups were still an issue,” wrote a woman diagnosed with ADHD in her 50s. “I believe if, instead of being diagnosed with bipolar 2 (cyclothymia), anxiety, and depression, I had been appropriately diagnosed with ADHD and given coping skills and treatment for that, my life would be completely different,” wrote another ADDitude reader. “This led to me never getting better and ending up having a mental breakdown before I got my proper ADHD diagnosis 10 years later.” “I was misdiagnosed and received treatment that did not help me,” wrote one survey respondent misdiagnosed with depression and anxiety. This staggering statistic, revealed in a recent ADDitude survey of 2,760 women, confirms the anecdotal reports we hear often of medical gaslighting, distrust of self, unnecessary suffering, delayed treatment - and the grave consequences of each.

Half of all women with ADHD receive a misdiagnosis or an incomplete diagnosis before finally identifying and treating their attention deficit disorder.

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