ADHD is usually thought of as a predominantly male problem, but a new report from Medco Health Solutions shows the number of women taking medication for ADHD is rising rapidly.

Researchers studied trends in the use of mental health medications among about 2.5 million insured Americans and found that the number of women aged 20 to 44 on ADHD medicines shot up 250% from 2001 to 2010. In general, amongst women aged 20 to 44 around one in 50 took medicine to control ADHD. One factor that might play a role is the approval for use of all five medicines since 2001.

Dr. Lenard Adler, director of the Psychiatry and Neurology Adult ADHD Program at the New York University School of Medicine, says that many of the women might have been outside of regular statistics until they became adults. The problem doesn’t usually crop up later in life, its generally thought of as a childhood / teenage problem.

Adler was not involved with preparing the Medco report, but also cautioned that boys’ psychologically will generally show the hyperactivity commonly associated with ADHD, thus males get treated younger as they are more of a problem to manage in school. The attention deficit part of ADHD might not be noticed in more passive individuals until later in life. Adults these days having a lot to keep track of, may not necessarily be diagnosed or need treatment until they are a little older than the classic schoolboys with ADHD.

Russell Barkley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, who has long studied ADHD in adults, explains another issue is that when a child is diagnosed with ADHD, the likelihood of the parents having also it can be as high as forty percent. Since it is often the mother taking the child to the doctor and women are more likely to seek medical help for themselves, suddenly recognizing the problem their child has in themselves, they begin taking the medicine they needed all along.

A woman with ADHD as a girl in school may simply appear unmotivated or lazy, but later in life, moving into the real world, struggles to cope with holding down a job, remaining organized, paying bills, etc., and Adler says he is glad there are more women seeking treatment. However, he cautions that estimates suggest around 4.5% of people suffer from the problem and with only 2 percent or 1 in 50 seeking help, there is still a large swath of the population that is going untreated.

Written by Rupert Shepherd