Bouncing balls of school boys who never even keep their valve during class. That image of people with ADHD is seriously outdated, experts found a few years ago. Adults women can also form of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, As ADHD is called in full, have.
In the meantime, this also shows the figures. On Monday, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published a study showing that more than 300,000 Dutch people were prescribed ADHD medication-such as Ritalin-in 2023. That is four times as much as in 2006, when the CBS investigated this for the first time. And where in 2006 only 30 percent of Dutch people who received this medication was older than 25 years, it rose to more than half in 2023.
“60 percent of women with ADHD have a postnatal depression, which is three times as much as normal”
It is also striking that more than a quarter of the people who received pills in 2023 did not receive ADHD medication a year earlier. Among women this was even 32 percent. Two thirds of the new users are older than twenty years. It is also striking that men are still prescribed medication more often than women, although women rise faster among women.
In her office in The Hague, Sandra Kooij, psychiatrist and special professor of ‘ADHD in adults’ at AUMC/VUmc, the old cliché of the galanating school boys does not have back: “Women have just as often ADHD as men, but you did not see that in the diagnoses who were set as a woman. “It was not recognized and not treated. Women have a disadvantage to catch up. I think that they are so in the statistics in the statistics. There is more knowledge about ADHD. Not only among doctors, but also in the target group.”
Why did this last so long?
“Women were simply not investigated. Their hormone fluctuations would disturb the measurements. It was thought: it is easier if we only investigate men, then we will not be bothered by those mood swings. So women were seen as a sort of ‘men without a cycle’. So half of humanity was not included in the surgical study.
What complaints do women have with ADHD?
“The symptoms worsen the symptoms in a great deal in the week before menstruation. The women get anger and lose control of their behavior. They get stuck, as it were. There appears to be an interaction between ADHD and hormones. ADHD disrupts the dopamine strap. Dopamine is low in your estrogen, then you have nothing twice. ”
“After the birth that is also the case. 60 percent of women with ADHD get a postnatal depression, which is three times as much as normal. Also during the transition that can last for about ten years, ADHD causes problems. Then the hormones fluctuate and the transition complaints in women with ADHD can still aggravate, so they can not think about the work of sleep. is high time we ADHD [ook bij vrouwen op latere leeftijd] better recognize and treat. ”
How do men and women differ in ADHD?
“Men answering the classic picture: they are busy, aggressive and cannot concentrate poorly. Women with ADHD are more focused in and anxious. They also try to mask their complaints more to meet the requirements that society sets for them. That breaks you up one day. Many women with a burnout. This disorder rarely comes.”
With the cooperation of Nina Eshuis
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