How my period is supercharging my ADHD
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- Kings College London and Queen Mary University launched a first-of-its-kind study tracking 50 women with ADHD on medication through their menstrual cycles, using electronic diaries to plot hormone levels against symptom severity and medication effectiveness.
- NHS prescription data from December shows a 23% year-on-year increase in ADHD stimulant prescriptions, while a November government taskforce found the condition still under-diagnosed and under-treated, with some English areas shutting NHS ADHD waiting lists entirely.
- Psychiatrist Sally Cubbin explains that oestrogen dips before a period reduce dopamine, amplifying ADHD symptoms and driving impulsive behaviours such as binge eating, overspending and skipping contraception.
- Layla, a 30-year-old teaching assistant, and Héloïse, a 19-year-old student sitting three university degrees, both report their carefully built routines and medication effects collapse during menstruation — Héloïse compared her non-functioning Ritalin to 'losing a walking stick.'
- Lead researcher Dr Jessica Agnew-Blais notes ADHD was historically framed as a condition of boys and children until the late 1990s, and says the study will also generate data on how menopause and peri-menopause affect ADHD symptoms.
Why it matters: Roughly 2.5 million people in the UK are thought to have ADHD, with hundreds of thousands waiting on NHS diagnoses that some areas have stopped accepting. The study puts clinical weight behind what women have reported for years on social media — that medication effectiveness and symptom severity visibly track the menstrual cycle — exposing a research blind spot that left women with ADHD largely unstudied until the late 1990s and could reshape how clinicians time or dose prescriptions.
