Does menopause exacerbate symptoms of ADHD (or vice versa)? ADDitude posed this question to more than 1,500 women with diagnosed and undiagnosed ADHD earlier this year in a reader survey. The finding: A whopping 94 percent said yes — their ADHD symptoms grew more severe during perimenopause and menopause.
For more than half of the women, ADHD symptoms grew so severe during their 40s and 50s that they called menopause the period in which “ADHD had the greatest overall impact on their lives.” Only 17 percent said the same about ADHD symptoms in their 20s and 30s, and even fewer before then.
Memory & Overwhelm are Primary ADHD Problems
Mid-life hormonal fluctuations began, on average, at age 45 with perimenopause and continued with the onset of menopause at age 49 for ADDitude survey respondents. During this stage, the most impactful ADHD symptoms were brain fog or memory issues, and overwhelm, both of which 70 percent of women said had a “life-altering impact” in their 40s and 50s. By contrast, only 11 percent of women called memory problems life-altering during their 20s and 30s; half said the same of overwhelm earlier in life.
“I was good at masking and worked really hard to stay on top of things as a child, teenager, young adult, and young mother and in my working life — and I managed to cope,” wrote one mother of four who entered perimenopause at 50 and is now 64. “In my late 40s, no amount of hard work could cover up the struggles and everything got on top of me, increasing anxiety, leading to overwhelm and emotional dysregulation, and exacerbating all the struggles I had all my life.”
Some women said they worried that brain fog and memory problems — symptoms of both ADHD and menopause — would affect their job performance. Others said new and worsened ADHD symptoms, namely emotional dysregulation, affected their relationships during perimenopause and menopause. One ADDitude reader said her symptoms were so abrupt and disruptive that she feared she might have early-onset dementia. [... Continue Reading on (additudemag.com)]
