My wife asked me to do one of the online screening tests for Autism and ADHD, 50+ I think I may have a few answers for who I am…
This has come from our daughter having a’ “maybe”, but lets wait and see as it really hard to tell in Girls’ if they have mild ADHD.
There are (I believe) less of the ‘classical symptoms’ in prepubescent girls. We were told that from about 10 years on it is much easier to have a diagnosis - this is where girls seem to start to display the more classical symptoms of ADHD
It has been a huge learning curve for us, and from it my wife and I have come to the conclusion that (although not diagnosed) we are probably both neural-divergent. She has scored very high on multiple online ADHD tests and I did a respectable 43/50 on an autism screen.
Yeah both ADHD and autism is harder to diagnose in girls and women because for a good bit there was an assumption that they can’t get it, because their symptoms usually present very different. Now it has been recognized in the DSM-5 for a while but psychology is kind of playing catch up with them, so it takes time for actual therapists to learn to isolate those new diagnoses.
I personally believe that one of the reasons this is so hard is that girls culturally tend to value social interaction way higher than boys, giving them more experience, which leads to better masking skills, and all these skills do is hide the symptoms. Thus it also becomes harder to diagnose. I asked a group of peers who had autism if they ever tried or considered to withdraw from society or social interactions. The 2 men said they considered it but ultimately it wasn’t feasible, the 2 women said they never even considered it, which kind of supports that hypothesis, although it’s all anecdotal.
But yeah, we’ve come a long way to finally diagnose and treat women appropriately as well.
It’s not just masking; ASD has a big chunk of energy drain of camouflaging. Girls in particular, regardless of ASD or not, have very specific expectations, and it particularly ends up being an intense drain on energy.
My ex would copy her semi celebrity sister’s aesthetic, behavior, and values. She would spend time in front of a mirror practicing facial expressions. She would spend excessive amounts of time internalizing social rules (that she would freak out about if I broke them).
Interesting, thank you and I wish you all the best