ADHD test for women: a free screener and what to know before an assessment

A 2020 expert consensus statement on girls and women with ADHD, led by Susan Young, set out several reasons for later identification. Girls are referred less often, partly because their difficulties are less likely to disrupt a classroom. Inattentive difficulties are easier to overlook than hyperactive ones. Anxiety, low mood and eating difficulties may be noticed and treated first, and the ADHD underneath can be missed.

Many women also work very hard to compensate: rewriting notes, staying up late to catch up, or relying on routines and lists to hold things together. That effort can hide the difficulty from others and sometimes from themselves, until life gets more demanding. Hinshaw and Nguyen's 2022 review describes the same pattern of underrecognition and the lasting effects of being identified late.

Women who later seek assessment often describe a long history of feeling disorganised compared with peers, losing track of conversations, starting many things and finishing few, chronic lateness, and an exhausting amount of effort spent appearing on top of things. Some describe restlessness that shows up as talking a lot, fidgeting, or a busy mind rather than running around. Emotional ups and downs and sensitivity to criticism come up often too, though they are not part of the formal criteria.

None of these is specific to ADHD. Many women recognise some of them for other reasons. A clinician looks for a pattern that goes back to childhood, appears in more than one part of life, and causes real problems.

Many women notice that attention and organisation feel harder at certain points in the menstrual cycle, after having a baby, or around perimenopause and menopause. Hormonal change can affect concentration and mood in anyone, and for some women it is the point at which long-standing ADHD difficulties become impossible to manage with effort alone. Research in this area is still developing.

This is worth mentioning in an assessment, because a clinician needs to separate long-standing patterns from new ones. Note when difficulties started, whether they change with your cycle or life stage, and what was going on at school as a child.

Answer for how things usually are, not your best or worst week. If you have built strong workarounds, think about how often the difficulty happens before the workaround kicks in. For example, you might never miss appointments because of five alarms, but still find remembering them hard without the alarms.

The ASRS-6 counts how many of your six answers fall in its shaded range, and four or more is the published level for suggesting a professional conversation. A lower count does not rule ADHD out. If you want to go further, the ADHD traits test is an original NeuroType reflection across eight areas that can help you collect examples in your own words.

Bring concrete examples from work, home, money, relationships and self care. School reports, especially comments like "could do better if she concentrated" or "daydreams", can be useful. If a parent or sibling can describe what you were like as a child, ask them. Mention anxiety, low mood, eating difficulties or burnout you have had, and any treatment, because these often sit alongside ADHD and a clinician needs the full picture.

Routes, waits and costs differ between countries. The assessment guide by country covers the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, and what to bring to an assessment has a fuller checklist.

This article is original NeuroType editorial content. It draws on the 2020 expert consensus on girls and women with ADHD by Young and colleagues, the 2022 review by Hinshaw and Nguyen, the 2014 survey by Quinn and Madhoo, the 2005 ASRS validation paper, and NICE guideline NG87. ASRS items are not reproduced on this page. It is not clinical advice. Corrections can be sent to hello@neurotype.app.