Medical Misogyny: Why Women with ADHD Are Still Being Dismissed

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**Dr Helen Wall** (0:30)
So many women not getting what they need from health care. The research is not great in anything to do with women, but particularly women with ADHD.

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:36)
Today we are talking to a woman who has refused to let women's health be dismissed for 25 years. Helen Wall is a GP and BBC Breakfast health expert, and one of the few people talking about the intersection between ADHD and women's health. Helen is here to make you think about neurodiversity differently.

**Dr Helen Wall** (0:55)
She is number one for heavy menopause, menopause management. I get so frustrated that we stop talking about enough. When I first became a GP, the main HRT we were giving was pre-marring, which is pregnant horse urine. It's all very much different now. Many women with ADHD are high achievers, perfectionists, but there's always a cost to that.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:15)
Whether you've had an ADHD diagnosis or you're thinking about it more and more, Helen may have the answer for you.

**Dr Helen Wall** (1:21)
If you are waiting for an ADHD assessment, I would...

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:25)
And before we get into the conversation, if you could do me a favor that literally takes you two seconds, hit the subscribe button or leave a five star review depending on what platform you're listening on. It really helps us to continue to grow the podcast and bring you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you, Dr. Helen. I was so unbelievably excited for this podcast episode as a girlie with ADHD to talk all about how hormones affect our brain, even in women who don't have ADHD.
But first, I would love to talk to you a little bit about what led you to be so interested in this space.

**Dr Helen Wall** (2:06)
You're probably not as excited as me because very rarely do you get to talk about female hormones on the female brain. It is so huge and I get so frustrated that we're not talked about enough. I have always been into women's health. I was actually going to do OBS and gynae. I got a place for run-through training. I was doing my foundation year 2 job and I was heavily pregnant. I was one of those crazy people that got married at medical school. I was heavily pregnant with my daughter who's now 18 I was just being treated really badly by surgical jobs. I just said to my husband, I can't do this. I can't have this family and do this world. I've always tried to weave in women's health throughout my GP career. I've done a lot of my family planning training, my sexual health training, my diploma in obst and gyna, and then my menopause training. That was running in the background. Then I hit what I probably think is a little bit of an early perimenopause. My brain just stopped working. I was 41 I couldn't function.
I've got a family history of breast cancer. My mom had breast cancer and died when I was at medical school. I was having annual mammograms and the GP didn't want to give me HRT. He said he was too young. He said you've got a family history of breast cancer. But I literally sat in my lounge and was like, I can't go to work. I can't function. My brain is just not working. That started me thinking, something else is going on here. This can't just be perimenopause and menopause. Anyway, I went privately for HRT. Then after that, my daughter started to unravel, her executive function, her emotional regulation. She'd hit puberty at this point. All these things are stacking up. Then she got diagnosed with ADHD. I just thought, this is like, something's not right here. There's got to be more to hormones and the brain. I just went down a rabbit hole.
The end of that rabbit hole was this book kind of thing.
I've just become really interested in it. I've seen so many women now and spoken to so many women who've been impacted by hormones on their brain. But worse than that, they've been dismissed, they've been misdiagnosed, they've been fobbed off because we don't talk about it in medicine. It's not taught in medical school, it's not taught in GP training.