Phone alarms are what get teaching assistant Layla Kornota through her day. The 30-year-old, diagnosed with ADHD as a child, has four alarms to wake up, one to get dressed, another to pack her work bag — and many more. “It feels like overkill to a lot of people, but I have these markers that I need to hit,” she says, explaining that the alerts help her ADHD brain focus and establish a routine. But that sense of control evaporates as soon as her period nears. “It’s like you’re clinging on, for dear life, onto the ball that is continuing to roll, and sort of cursing yourself and the world the entire time.”
Layla is one of 50 women taking part in a first-of-its-kind study by Queen Mary University and King’s College London, which is putting the link between menstrual cycles and ADHD symptoms to the test. The participants, all women with ADHD who are on medication, are tracking their cycles and the impact on their symptoms and daily life. Early accounts are striking: some say they feel “disabled” by their symptoms at certain times of the month.
“New study examines how periods worsen ADHD symptoms, as women describe feeling 'disabled' during certain times of the month.”
Nineteen-year-old Héloïse, who is studying for three university degrees, calls ritalin — her ADHD medication — a lifeline that gives her a three-hour window of focus. She takes the pill, sits in the library and waits for it to kick in. But during her period, she just “waits and waits” for a reaction that never comes. “It feels like losing a walking stick or something you use to support yourself. All of a sudden it’s broken,” she says. Like other participants, she only saw the pattern between hormonal changes and her ADHD after mapping her symptoms for the study.
The research comes amid a surge in demand for ADHD assessments, fuelled by social media and greater awareness of how the condition affects women. Roughly 2.5 million people in the UK are thought to have ADHD, with hundreds of thousands waiting for an NHS diagnosis. NHS figures from December last year show a 23% increase in prescriptions for stimulants and drugs used to treat ADHD compared with the previous year. Yet a government taskforce report last November found ADHD was still being under-diagnosed and under-treated, and the BBC has revealed that some areas of England are now shutting their NHS waiting lists because they cannot cope with demand.
For women like Layla and Héloïse, the study offers hope that the link between hormones and symptoms will be better understood — and, eventually, better treated.