Trigger Warnings: mentions of self-harm, disordered eating, depression, anxiety, suicide, alcohol abuse and addiction.
Today, writer and commentator, Kat Brown and I are going to explore the co-occurring conditions that so often arise with ADHD and ultimately tend to delay diagnosis.
Considering that ADHD is still not widely understood in healthcare and educational settings, it’s not wonder that girls and women are often misdiagnosed with other better known conditions.
The issue is that if the root cause is ADHD, no amount of work, meds or therapy will be able to make meaningful and significant changes until the ADHD is addressed; something Kat and I are only too aware of.
Kat Brown and I met years ago during a shared stint at Glamour Magazine. A journalist and social media editor, Kat is also an in-demand commentator on the subjects she has experienced closely herself, among them ADHD, mental health and childlessness.
In this episode, Kat shares her journey to diagnosis in 2020. She describes the various labels she was given ahead of the moment she first began to suspect it was actually ADHD driving so many of those behaviours.
We discuss how we both picked apart our anxiety and depression to better understand what was really behind our feelings, and how no matter how much work we put into addressing our mental health, it would never quite stick.
Kat also reveals how she’s now investing in herself armed with this deeper understanding, and the new routines she’s slowly developing to address both ADHD and the comorbidities so many of us are prone to.
You can find Kat’s book, No One Talks About This Stuff here and read more of her work here .
THE EXPERT
Dr Jo Steer is a chartered clinical psychologist working with children in Surrey, and the author of Understanding ADHD in Girls and Women
Please note, your first port of call if you think you might have ADHD should be your GP. In the meantime, you can find more information here:
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