(Press-News.org)
Scientists have found that ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) in women is diagnosed approximately 5 years later than in men, despite symptoms appearing at the same age. Women with ADHD also suffer greater emotional and functional difficulties than men. This work will be presented at the ECNP Congress in Amsterdam, after recent publication.
Lead researcher Dr Silvia Amoretti (Barcelona) said:
“ADHD affects millions of people, but our understanding of how it presents and impacts males and females differently remains limited. We found that females are underdiagnosed, often receiving a diagnosis years later than males. This delay may lead to worse clinical outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and functional impairment. Males on the other hand showed a higher level of involvement in delinquent behaviours such as legal problems and driving-related difficulties. We believe that a better understanding these sex-based differences might improve diagnosis and treatment.”
The researchers analysed a large clinical sample of 900 adults (54.9% male, 45.1% female, average age 36.94) diagnosed with ADHD for the first time at a specialized outpatient program in Barcelona. They assessed differences between males and females in terms of age at diagnosis, ADHD symptom severity, psychiatric comorbidities, psychosocial functioning, and disability. Participants underwent a standardized battery of clinical interviews and validated rating scales. They found that females had been diagnosed with ADHD at an average age of 28.96 years, whereas males were diagnosed at age 24.13 on average. Symptoms appeared in both males and females at approximately the same age. Males were around 3 times more likely to have encountered legal problems (18.1%) than were females (6.6%).
Silvia Amoretti said:
“We found that although ADHD symptoms started at a similar age in males and females, women were diagnosed about five years later. By the time of diagnosis, they showed more severe symptoms, worse functioning in daily life, and higher rates of depression and anxiety.
This is important because it shows that ADHD often goes unnoticed in women until it becomes a serious problem. Our findings suggest that we may be missing the early signs in girls and women, especially when their symptoms are less disruptive but still impactful. This has clear implications for earlier screening and sex-sensitive diagnostic tools.
We didn’t set out to compare the age of diagnosis in males and females, we were aiming to understand the general age when symptoms appear, regardless of sex. This finding was not part of our initial hypotheses but became evident during the analysis but became evident during the analysis, and the scale of the difference in diagnosis between the sexes was a surprise.
It’s likely that women are diagnosed later because the symptoms of ADHD manifest themselves differently in men and women. Boys are more likely to be hyperactive or impulsive, and this behaviour is more visible to parents, teachers and clinicians. On the other hand, girls with ADHD are more likely to seem inattentive and generally less disruptive. This becomes clinically important, as it means that women are just not treated early enough, and often are just not diagnosed at all. We have seen similar tendencies internationally, so it is likely that this is a global problem. The nature of the condition leads to poorer diagnosis in women everywhere, meaning that women can lose on average five years of treatment, 5 years of a better life”.
Commenting, Professor Sandra Kooij (Amsterdam UMC/VUmc and PsyQ, the Hague, the Netherlands) said:
“This study by Sylvia Amoretti and colleagues shows the delay in diagnosis in girls and women with ADHD compared to boys and males. Different presentation of symptoms, lack of awareness among clinicians that women have ADHD too, and the hormonal changes leading to severe mood instability in the last week of the cycle are all responsible for the gender differences in time to diagnosis of ADHD.
Increasing awareness in both society and medicine helps girls and women to get earlier help when they need it”.
Professor Kooij was not involved in this research; this is an independent comment. Professor Kooij is founder and chair of the European Network Adult ADHD.
The work on which this is based was published in European Psychiatry, doi: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2025.2441. None of the comments in this press release are included in the publication. Please acknowledge the presentation at the ECNP congress in any press release.
END
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Power plants may emit higher amounts of pollution during lapses in federal monitoring and enforcement, such as during a government shutdown, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.
The study, published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, details the short-term effects of enforcement of federal environmental laws and regulations on power plant air emissions.
Using data from the 2018-19 federal government shutdown, which lasted 35 days, as a natural experiment, the researchers found ...
The increasing pressure for teachers to obey school curriculum policies is “profoundly demotivating” and is leading directly to people leaving the profession, a new study warns.
Teachers value being able to be creative and collaborate with each other to design lessons but are increasingly subject to school policies requiring their conformity.
The research shows this is also reducing their curriculum-making skills and reducing teacher autonomy and motivation, as well as relationships between colleagues and with pupils.
There is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis in England. There is a particular challenge in recruiting physical science teachers, ...
HAMILTON, ON October 10, 2025 – Researchers at McMaster University have developed a new menstrual health product designed to complement and enhance an existing menstrual cup that is safer, easier to use and more environmentally sustainable than current options.
The innovation is part of a broader initiative at McMaster to develop wearable technologies that proactively monitor women’s health. As part of this work, the research team has published a perspective review in Nature Communications, outlining how emerging technologies, ...
Some industrial processes used to create useful chemicals require heat, but heating methods are often inefficient, partly because they heat a greater volume of space than they really need to. Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo devised a way to limit heating to the specific areas required in such situations. Their technique uses microwaves, not unlike those used in home microwave ovens, to excite specific elements dispersed in the materials to be heated. Their system proved to be around 4.5 times more efficient than current methods.
While there’s more to climate ...
The vast majority of consumer electronics use lithium-ion batteries, and with each generation, these devices are designed smaller, lighter and with longer battery life to meet the growing demands of consumers. Each new iteration also brings the batteries that power the devices closer to the limits of their size, weight and performance. Researchers are constantly testing new approaches and materials for making lightweight, high-performance components. The latest contender is MXene, a type of metallically conductive two-dimensional nanomaterial discovered by Drexel University researchers ...
MIAMI, FLORIDA (Oct. 10, 2025) – Women living close to federally designated Superfund sites are more likely to develop aggressive breast cancers — including the hard-to-treat triple-negative subtype — according to new studies from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
According to a National Institutes of Health study, some especially aggressive forms of breast cancer that are resistant to treatment are on the rise. Now, three recent ...
Oct. 10, 2025
MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request.
Contact: Emilie Lorditch, University Communications: 517-355-4082, lorditch@msu.edu; Bethany Mauger, College of Natural Science: 765-571-0623, maugerbe@msu.edu.
Images, video
Fuel for the finish line: How sperm achieve ‘overdrive’
Why this matters:
To successfully reach and fertilize an egg, sperm undergo a rapid and massive increase in energy.
Researchers have revealed how sperm use glucose found in their environment ...
University of Tennessee, Knoxville Nuclear Engineering Department Head Brian Wirth has been elected a 2025 Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Wirth, a UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair Professor of Computational Nuclear Engineering, was recommended for the prestigious honor by the APS Division of Plasma Physics (DPP). He was recognized for “seminal advances in understanding plasma-surface interactions involving helium in metallic plasma-facing components, and for extensive community leadership and service.”
The APS is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance physics by fostering a vibrant and global community dedicated to science and ...
Reston, VA (October 10, 2025)—New research has been published ahead-of-print by The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM). JNM is published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to advancing nuclear medicine, molecular imaging, and theranostics—precision medicine that allows diagnosis and treatment to be tailored to individual patients in order to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Summaries of the newly ...
Glaciers are fighting back against climate change by cooling the air that touches their surfaces. But for how long? The Pellicciotti group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has compiled and re-analyzed an unprecedented dataset of on-glacier observations worldwide. Their findings, published today in Nature Climate Change, demonstrate that glaciers will likely reach the peak of their self-cooling power by the next decade before their near-surface temperatures spike up and melting accelerates.
Thomas Shaw keeps a vivid memory of this special summer day in August 2022. The postdoctoral researcher in Francesca Pellicciotti’s group at the Institute of Science ...
