ABSTRACT
In 2006 Dray and her colleagues posed the question ‘Why are girls with ADHD invisible?’. The same question was asked a few years later by Myttas (2009), and it is still a pressing issue. In my diagnostic practice I see equal numbers of males and females with ADHD. This is in sharp contrast to the ratios reported by clinicians who see children referred for diagnosis for suspected ADHD. Although the male/female ratio varies significantly across countries and surveys, with typical figures being somewhere between 6:1 and 12:1 (Myttas, 2009), they all report much higher numbers of males than females. Given that Cooper and O’Regan, as long ago as 2001, reported more or less equal numbers in secondary school of boys and girls having ADHD, this suggests a very high proportion of girls not having their ADHD recognised. This is important because of the high numbers of females with ADHD reporting mental health issues, such as eating disorders and high levels of anxiety and depression (Biederman et al., 2010).
