Losing your key every time to concentration problems at work and periods of loneliness or depression. Adults who receive an ADHD diagnosis are not always surprised by that: many of them have been running against all kinds of problems for years.
The number of Dutch people using ADHD medication has quadrupled in the last twenty years, according to recent data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). In 2023, around 300,000 people in the Netherlands received ADHD medication. It is striking that medication is increasingly being provided to people over 25 and that the increase is strongest in women: almost six times as many women now use ADHD medication as in 2006.
For a long time ADHD was seen as a boy’s disease. Women are now overtaking a ‘backlog’, said psychiatrist and professor at VU UMC Sandra Kooij earlier this month in the CBS figures NRC.
“Until 2013, the research into ADHD was aimed at children, especially young boys,” says Dora Wyncank. She is a researcher and psychiatrist at GGZ institution PsyQ and obtained his PhD on ADHD and biological rhythms, in particular hormonal influences in women. When the DSM, the manual that psychologists and psychiatrists use for diagnoses, was renewed in 2013, the diagnosis criteria for ADHD were expanded. For example, more examples were added of behavior at different ages. According to Wyncank, that helped care providers to also diagnose and treat ADHD complaints in adult complaints.
Nowadays more medical and pharmaceutical research into women is being done, she says. “Research shows that women with ADHD can get more complaints about hormone fluctuations, such as menstruation and around the transition. For example, women with ADHD also have more chance of postnatal depression.”
Half a million
According to The website of PsyQ ADHD probably occurs in 3 to 5 percent of the Dutch population. That amounts to at least half a million people with ADHD.
Children with ADHD often stand out because of their hyperactive behavior and impulsivity. In adults, attention and concentration problems are more in the foreground, says PsyQ. Adults internalize hyperactivity sometimes more, says Wyncank. “Then people experience unrest inside, rather than exhibiting busy behavior.”
Adults can also sometimes mask symptoms better. “In particular, women with ADHD are sometimes very perfectionist and more inclined to adjust socially.” That does not alter the fact that the so-called late ADHD people will take a lot of energy and effort to behave ‘non-neurodivers’, she says, with all the consequences. “ADHD rarely comes alone. Think of depression, burnout, fears, sleeping and eating problems, an enlarged risk of overweight and cardiovascular diseases, addictions.”
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Lazy, a lack of self -control, a boy’s disease: are the prejudices about ADHD unjustified?
Hanneke Mijnster.
Photo Jagoda Lasota
Hanneke Mijnster (44) was diagnosed at the age of 42
“I always found life very tough. I searched for help at different times because I always found myself weird, difficult, gloomy. In my study time I went to the psychologist with complaints of fear of failure and gloom.
“I could be very exuberant with friends, make people laugh, hang out the clown. And suddenly all my energy was gone. I went to Pinkpop with a group of friends, but I could not enjoy it because I was totally overwhelmed. I was disappointed. I tried to keep it up in social situations, but then I was sometimes a sort of Zombie.
“When my two children were younger, I could sometimes get so overwhelmed that I couldn’t handle it anymore. Or did I get up in my work that the youngest came down at a quarter past seven:” Are we actually going to eat? ” Then you feel so guilty.
“I ate compulsively, had so much unrest in my body. I am a freelance journalist and I could not write anymore without eating. I dampened my unrest with cookies. I did not dare to talk about that with psychologists I visited. When I went to the doctor to talk about my difficult relationship with food, it may have been ADHD.
“I am proud of who I became without knowing what I had, but how nice it would have been if that eating disorder would have been spared me. I find it sad that I have experienced the first forty years of my life as so hard. Now that I have a diagnosis, and medication, I like life again.”
Lisa.
Photo Jagoda Lasota
Lisa (31) received an ADHD diagnosis around the age of 27
“Two friends of mine have ADHD, they sometimes said to me: maybe you have it too. Before my thesis I was often in the library for eight hours, I might have only been working effectively for two hours.
“The real challenges began with my first job. It was difficult to stay focused in an office garden, or to get away from average tasks – I put it off for me endlessly. My colleague once said in an introductory meeting: this is Lisa, our ADHD’er. I decided to have my complaints investigated.
“ADHD is a popular topic on Tiktok, with fellow sufferers who exchange tips. That’s nice. But it is possible that you soon think: I also have ADHD, if you lose your OV chip card once. Earlier if you lose your OV pass fifteen times in a year, as happened to me, that could be a sign.”
“I have always had high ambitions and was always strict for myself. After my diagnosis I became a little milder. Maybe I wanted to have a diagnosis earlier, I wonder what had become of me. With medication I might have had that PhD position at that one university, and I had now walked a completely different career path.
But again not, because I have now proved to myself and everyone around me that I have also been able to do a lot of things without that diagnosis. ”
Lisa does not want her last name in the newspaper. It is known to the editors.
Lisa does not know if she would like to have a diagnosis before, but wonders what had become of her.
Photos Jagoda Lasota
Jan Anne Kalkhoven.
Photo Jagoda Lasota
Jan Anne Kalkhoven (56) received an ADHD diagnosis when he was 39
“When I received my ADHD diagnosis seventeen years ago, my employer was not in the right place at my employer. I went to my supervisor with a list of my qualities and the things that I am less good at. I was outside again within fifteen minutes. Suddenly I was a ‘business risk’ and I was allowed to think about the future of my career.
“Later I got more room to fill in my work in my own way. For example, it goes much better if I have several projects at the same time, and that is now also possible. I started doing courses for self -insight and awareness. They led to more self -acceptance: I do things differently than a lot of people. That insight works better than a pill.
“I had depressive periods for my diagnosis, especially when things were not possible that others could do. At the age of eighteen I spoke with a study supervisor and who suggested that I might have ADHD. If I had searched a little further, I might have been diagnosed twenty years earlier.
“What made me gloomy was that it cost me so much energy to fit in the system. Time and again to adjust to others. I no longer use medication, it didn’t make me happier. It had to make me” normal “, but I didn’t feel myself anymore.”
Jan Anne Kalkhoven went to do courses for self -insight and awareness, which led to more self -acceptance.
Photos Jagoda Lasota
Jacqueline van de Sande.
Photo Jagoda Lasota
Jacqueline van de Sande (57) was diagnosed around the age of 40
“For my work in the adult mental health care, I sometimes took question lists that are part of an ADHD diagnosis process. Then sometimes I thought: I have this too, and actually much worse. I was often busy with many things at the same time, which sometimes got me too much and then I let everything fall out of my hands again. I also had the maintenance of social contacts.
Jacqueline van de Sande now has an ADHD practice in addition to her work as a family practitioner. And she wrote the book Blood irritant! – The invisible struggle of women with ADHD.
“In my youth I was super busy and impulsive. For example, I jumped out of a moving school bus to make classmates laughing. At school I performed below my level and I got homework guidance at a high level. That’s how I could lose my energy, but it was also important for my self -image. Through my sports performance I didn’t think about the only thing. I thought that I was a little bit of my sisters. I did not pay the only thing about the area, I was a little bit of my sisters. I did not pay a little bit of my sisters. I did not pay a little bit of my sisters. I did not pay a little bit of my sisters. I was a little bit of my sisters. I did not pay a little bit of my sisters. I was a little bit of my sisters. Good at WAS.
“You often hear that the ADHD symptoms are extra bad in women in the transition. For me it is also the case, with medication I can overcome it.”
Jacqueline van de Sande now has an ADHD practice in addition to her current work as a family practitioner.
Image Jagoda Lasota