During pregnancy, the research team discovered that the rate of new ADHD diagnoses dropped about 72% from where it was during the pre-pregnancy period. There also weren’t many diagnoses for the first two years after the women gave birth. But once the children were between two and five years old, the rate of new ADHD diagnoses started to creep up. And, in moms of kids between the ages of four and five, the rate of ADHD diagnoses jumped.
Overall, women who were two to five years postpartum had a 24% higher risk of an ADHD diagnosis compared to women in the pre-pregnancy stage.
What’s going on here?
There are likely a bunch of factors behind this. “We know that girls and women are less likely to be diagnosed in general because the symptoms are underrecognized in them,” Tamar Gur, MD, PhD, director of the Sarah Ross Soter Women’s Health Research Program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF.
While some women with undiagnosed ADHD may be able to compensate for their symptoms before having a baby, Dr. Gur points out that motherhood can be incredibly challenging on many fronts. “It stresses your executive functioning, and you’re sleep deprived,” she says. “That can really amplify and unmask the core ADHD symptoms.”
As kids get older and near preschool, those demands increase, Hillary Ammon, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Anxiety and Women’s Emotional Wellness, tells SELF. “Add these responsibilities to your existing responsibilities and it may become challenging to schedule everything, stay organized, or begin and complete tasks,” she says. “Add in unexpected interruptions, and it becomes even more challenging for someone struggling with executive dysfunction.”
Those time-management and focusing strategies that may have worked before having kids can be thrown out the window after a little one arrives, Dr. Madsen says. “Some women describe that after giving birth they can’t rely on the coping strategies that previously worked because sleep, time, flexibility, and autonomy are all reduced, so long-standing vulnerabilities become more visible and impairing,” she says.
