Sasha Hamdani explains that the average age of ADHD diagnosis for women is 35, often triggered when their own child gets diagnosed, whereas for boys it's typically between ages 5 and 7.
Hamdani was diagnosed with ADHD at age 9 after leading a classroom insurrection where she got every kid standing on their desks and chanting, prompting an immediate evaluation.
Despite being diagnosed and medicated at age 9, Hamdani's parents called her medication a 'vitamin' and never told her the diagnosis, meaning she effectively got diagnosed twice.
Hamdani felt the difference from medication immediately, with school becoming less painful and boredom more manageable, but she continued taking it without knowing what it treated for years.
The gender disparity in ADHD diagnosis stems from boys typically presenting with hyperactive, disruptive symptoms that get noticed early, while girls more often show inattentive symptoms that appear as daydreaming or anxiety.
Because girls' ADHD symptoms often go unrecognized, many women spend decades building workarounds for a condition they don't have a name for until adulthood.
Hamdani, now a psychiatrist specializing in ADHD, entered medical school at 18 on a six-year combined program, aided by the medication she took without knowing its purpose.
The stigma around ADHD in the early 1990s was so severe that even Hamdani's pediatrician mother hid the diagnosis label from her own child while still medicating her.