Attention Deficit

In most clinical settings, boys are treated for ADHD at least 4 to 1 over girls. Boys, it is thought, tend to present symptoms outwardly more than girls resulting in physical behaviors that are easily noticeable (hyperactivity).

In an article reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, February 2008, author of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and his colleagues find that the roles are reversed in adults; females seem to be more impacted than men.

"We found that adult women with ADHD frequently have high levels of emotional symptoms as well as the cognitive problems found in ADHD," Dr. Frederick W. Reimherr told Reuters Health.

Reimherr’s conclusions were drawn from analysis of data from two clinical trials of Strattera. Strattera is a non-stimulant medication for ADHD produced by Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical giant.

ADHD symptom data were collected ADHD on 515 individuals. Approximately one third of this population were women. Seventy-five percent of the women in this population had a combined-type ADHD as opposed to only 62% of the male population represented in this study.

Women also presented more problems with sleep than did males in the study. Women had higher scores measuring both anxiety and depression than did their male counterparts.

Women presented poor temper control, mood volatility, and emotional over-reactivity than did their male counterparts (37 % in women as opposed to 29 % of males).

In an interview with Reuter’s Health correspondents, Reimherr cites that, "these symptoms – depression, temper control problems, feelings of tension, and over-reacting to life stresses – might cause a doctor to miss the diagnosis of ADHD … We feel that this will lead to problems in treatment for such women."

Such studies are limited to the initial data collected by the original researchers at Lilly. Therefore, one is not able to draw positive conclusions regarding the origins of the differences cited by Reimherr. For example, do hormones, age differences, economic statuses, education, or marital statuses, affect the data? We cannot know due to the limitations of the data in this study.