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ADHD Grows Up
What happens to adults withADHD?
BY PAM HOUGHTON
Editor’s Note
For years it was assumed that children simply “outgrew” ADHD. The
U.S. Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast, Simone Biles, recently
revealed that she has ADHD. The 19-year-old has been taking
medication for it since she was a child. So what happens to kids
with ADHD when they grow up? Some of them like Simone Biles
and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, also diagnosed with ADHD,
may just grow up to be Olympic gold medalists.
TERRY MATLEN DIDN’T
DISCOVER SHE HAD AT-
TENTION DEFICIT/HYPER-
ACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD,
commonly called ADD) until her
daughter was diagnosed more than 20
years ago. “I came upon a book – the
only book at the time – about adult
ADD,” the Birmingham psychother-
apist says. That book was Attention
Deficit Disorder in Adults, by Lynn
Weiss, PhD (Taylor Trade Publishing,
2005), now in its 4th printing. “I read
it and was floored,” Matlen continues.
“It described my family and explained
a lot of things for me when I was
growing up. But a lot of it sounded like
me.” Later, she found a local chapter
of Children and Adults with Atten-
tion-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(CHADD). Though she joined to get
help for her daughter, she met other
adults, who, like her, constantly strug-
gled with organization. “It was the
strangest but most wonderful feeling.
I could talk with them without being
ashamed.”
A national conference in Indiana
where “everyone was losing their keys
and forgetting names” changed her
life. It was then she “decided to get
evaluated. Detroit is sort of a hotbed
for experts in this field.” At first skep-
tical of her diagnoses – nah, everyone
gets distracted, she thought – her
ADHD was confirmed by two more.
One of those experts is Ann Arbor
psychotherapist Sari Solden, who
celebrated the 20th anniversary of her
book, Women with Attention Deficit
Disorder: Embrace Your Differences
and Transform Your Life, (Underwood
Books, 2005) last May. After Matlen
read the book, “I found my soul, who I
was and why I was the way I was, and
decided to make it my career path to
work with adults who had ADHD.” In
2014, Matlen published The Queen of
Distraction: How Women with ADHD
Can Conquer Chaos, Find Focus, and

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Get More Done (New Harbinger Publications, 2014).
What is ADHD? According to Matlen’s book, it’s a neuro-
biological disorder, “characterized by impairment of executive
functions” – planning, organizing and time management, for
instance – “and self-regulation. This results in inattention,
hyperactivity/impulsivity or a combination of the two.”
How does the condition uniquely affect women?
“Even though most women work outside the home, they still
idealize and internalize gender role expectations,” Solden says.
It’s the moms who feel pressure to plan the family’s social life,
cook nightly meals and maintain an organized household.
While such responsibilities can be a challenge for anyone, they
are particularly daunting to women who struggle with execu-
tive functioning – then feel “shame and embarrassment” when
they fail. When they seek help for anxiety and depression, the
cause is often undiagnosed ADHD, Solden says. “You really
start questioning yourself and your character, which is why
therapy is often need-
ed after these women
get diagnosed.”
Brenda Thomas, 51,
struggled for years. “I
was always down on
myself, questioning
‘why can’t I do these
simple things?’ What
comes so easily to
others takes hours
and hours for me,”
says Thomas of the
“hundreds” of craft
projects she never
finished, appointments
she missed and bills she couldn’t pay on time. Tired of apol-
ogizing “because I was always forgetting things,” the mother
of three decided to get evaluated after her son was diagnosed
three years ago. Sure enough, she had ADHD, too. “People are
incredulous that I have it because I hide it so well. We entertain
all the time, but everything is last minute. I do not plan ahead.
I can only get things done with a hard deadline,” says Thomas,
who is a member of Matlen’s Queens of Distraction Facebook
group. “If someone had told me I had ADHD – even 10 years
ago – that would have changed so much for me.”
Why aren’t women diagnosed earlier?
“Most of what we knew about ADHD was through white,
hyperactive school-aged boys. Only in the last 20 years have
we expanded the dialog to include women,” says psychologist
Michelle Frank, who works in Solden’s Ann Arbor practice.
While fidgety behavior in boys – who generally have the hyper-
active type of ADHD – is easier to detect, the inattentive type
of ADHD more frequently seen in girls is not.
So for the girls “who are smarter or have structure growing
up, they won’t hit a wall until they go to college, get married
or have children,” Solden says. “At some point, they aren’t able
to keep up with the demands of their education or IQ.” Or
they work hard to stay organized in key areas at the expense of
everything else.
What are some clues you may have ADHD?
“Is your house always cluttered? Do you have a hard time lis-
tening to a conversation when there’s noise in the background?
Do you have difficulty making decisions? Are you bored easily?
Do you have a lot of interests but don’t put much effort into
any because you are off in another direction?” Matlen asks.
“Many women with ADHD are compulsive in their behaviors.
Eating can calm down the ADD brain. Shopping, too, because
it’s stimulating. Certain kinds of stimuli are actually calming.
I know grown women who can watch TV for hours and hours
but not pay attention to what their husband says.”
Once ADHD is diagnosed and treated – often with medi-
cation but also with lifestyle changes – it’s easier to focus on
strengths, such as creativity and compassion, and to find jobs
and outlets that suit the unique ADHD temperament, Solden
says. In her book, Matlen suggests women with hyperactive
tendencies may prefer high stimulation fields such as police
work, emergency medicine, teaching or sales, while inatten-
tive types may seek careers in writing, research or computer
technology; even an ADHD
accountant can thrive, Matlen
says, “because she loves num-
bers, hyper focuses and finds
deadlines helpful for keeping
her on task.”
Thomas takes ADHD
medication to help her stay on
task even though it makes her a
little jittery and her mouth dry.
“When I have a lot going on, I
take it every day, except when
we go on vacation.” She also
hired an organizational expert
who specializes in helping peo-
ple with ADHD, who helped her develop a “very simple filing
system. I had made everything so complicated and everything
doesn’t have to be” that way.
Other strategies include lists that are easy to see. “People
with ADD do well with visual cues,” Matlen says. A client of
hers taped index cards to the bathroom mirror to remind her
of daily tasks. Another used a whiteboard. Doing everything
the night before – a strategy that comes more naturally to non-
ADHD types – also helps. Once a week, Matlen gives members
of her Facebook group an hour to get things done, whether it’s
taxes or bills or the laundry. “Deadlines keep us together.” NS
For More Information:
Website: www.addconsults.com.
Website for Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/
Hyperactivity Disorder: www.chadd.org.
Website for Sari Solden: www.sarisolden.com.
ADHD Estimate
It’s difficult to estimate the number of
adults with ADHD, author and expert Terry
Matlen says. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
roughly 10 percent of children between
5-17 years of age were diagnosed with
ADHD between 2012 and 2014. For years
it was assumed many children outgrew
ADHD, but Matlen thinks they grow into
adults who “figure out how to get around
the clutter and time management issues.”
Diagnosing ADHD
ADHD is often diagnosed through either
a battery of tests or behavioral rating
scales that require self-reporting and
the reporting of others. Either way, Ann
Arbor psychologist and ADD specialist
Michelle Frank says it’s important to
find a professional who is skilled in di-
agnosing ADHD. Terry Matlen maintains
a directory of ADD professionals on her
website.