Gender and ADHD: The Diagnosis Divide
It’s a story all too common: a teenage girl starts to struggle in school, wondering why she’s having so much more trouble than her peers. Despite being a happy child, she becomes depressed and uninterested. Her parents have no idea what is wrong or how to help.
If she were a boy, she’d probably have had an adderall prescription from the time she was ten. ADHD symptoms such as hyperactivity, lack of focus, and short attention span tend to appear more obviously in boys because they will act out, talk too much, or act impulsively. Girls often struggle with these aspects of ADHD too, but because girls are better at masking them due to socialization beginning essentially at birth, they go unnoticed. Girls have an awareness from a young age that they shouldn’t be “too much”- things like speaking out of turn or too often are discouraged in a completely different way from boys, who frequently get away with them. Boys who are “too much” get diagnosed with ADHD. Girls who are “too much” are just misbehaved.
This is obviously speaking in very binary terms, and actually has nothing to do with anyone’s gender but their gender performance and how other people perceive and treat them because of their gender performance. Babies born with male sex organs are more often than not raised the way society says a boy should be raised, and gender awareness starts very, very young because everything is gendered even before we are born. So, when referring to a “boy” or “girl,” what is really meant is someone whose gender performance is in line with society’s definition of that gender. Many younger kids are still forming who they are and their genders so they rely heavily on gender socialization to tell them how to act.
Because ADHD is so much more obvious in boys, they are diagnosed three times as often as girls. If not diagnosed and treated in her teenage years, a girl with ADHD is more susceptible to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other issues that make life much harder. Girls tend to turn negative feelings about their school performance and other struggles inward, while boys are more external with these emotions. This can manifest in a boy being physically aggressive and a girl being verbally aggressive or a “mean girl.” Class plays a part in this issue as well, as upper-class teenagers are more likely to get the help they need, including tutors and the ample resources that private schools provide, while a lower-income girl at public school may not get proper help even if diagnosed.
Fortunately, information about ADHD and how differently it can look in different people is much more available than when our parents and grandparents were in school, and most schools do have resources for kids with learning disabilities, including Elon. Even the most supportive of parents can miss signs but if they are better educated on what to look for, less kids, especially girls, will slip through the cracks.