Girls with Autism or ADHD Not Taken Seriously, Study Says

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101004101332.htm

I really would love to know what the rate for this is. I kind of suspect it's a lot higher than many would expect.

Even in NZ where women have a better position than many other first world countries, there were way more men at aspie meetings

so I assume girls get over looked because their behaviour is less aggressive, hence does not attract attention by authorities.

We wish to return here to one of the major aims of the UMASS Study—an examination of possible sex differences between men and women with ADHD. This addresses the issue of whether ADHD in females is different, perhaps qualitatively so, than it is in men. Claims have been made concerning women with ADHD, that the disorder may be uniquely different in them than it is in men with the disorder in ways other than what would be expected from general sex differences in the population (Nadeau & Quinn, 2002; Ratey, Miller, & Nadeau, 1995; Solden, 1995). Yet such assertions are based either on studies of clinic- referred children with ADHD or entirely on clinical experience supported only by anecdotes. This is because there are very few scientific studies of clinic-referred women with ADHD on which to base any such conclusions. We tried to address this lack of information on women with ADHD throughout this text by reporting on the sex differences among our samples whenever they were statistically significant across the myriad domains of symptoms and adaptive functioning studied here. Sex differences were not evident on most measures. The majority of our results indeed undercut any such claims by advocates of anything special to or specific about ADHD as it occurs in women.

For instance, it has been said that “the diagnosis of ADD in women escapes even the best clinicians, because these women often lack the typical symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity in childhood or adulthood” (Ratey et al., 1995, p. 260). Our results, in fact, show this claim to be false. We found no differences in the number of hyperactive or impulsive symptoms between men and women with ADHD in this study.

In examining self-reported symptoms (Chapter 3), we found that males self-reported more current symptoms in the interview than females, regardless of group, but men and women did not differ in their recall of childhood ADHD. The same pattern was evident on the rating scales of these symptoms. But we also found that the group × sex interaction was significant on some measures. This would imply that some sex differences might be evident within particular groups that were not evident in the other groups. We found that men and women with ADHD did not differ in their self-ratings of either their current or childhood symptoms. The sex difference of note was found in our Clinical control group, where women reported higher symptom ratings than men. There also were no significant sex differences found in the ratings of ADHD symptoms provided by others. And while a significant group × sex interaction did appear in the employer ratings, it was once again limited to the Clinical control group, where employers rated men as having more ADHD symptoms than women in the workplace. In short, women with ADHD do not differ from men in the severity of their symptoms, the age of onset of those symptoms, the number of domains in which they are impaired (Chapter 5), the total severity of impairment they experience, or the age of onset of specific domains of impairment in any way that can be specifically attributed to their having ADHD. Nor do they differ in the severity of the new EF symptom list we developed as the best list for the diagnosis of ADHD in adults (Chapter 7). In general, men report more total symptoms of ADHD by interview across the groups and rate themselves as having higher impairment scores on rating scales than do females, but such findings are not specific to the ADHD group. All of this suggests that men and women with ADHD have the same disorder and have no qualitative differences in their disorder as a result of their sex. What quantitative differences exist are those found between men and women generally.

It has also been claimed that women with ADHD may be more prone to exhibit symptoms of depression and anxiety and may be less aggressive than males with ADHD (Ratey et al., 1995). In a study by Rucklidge and Kaplan (1997), women with ADHD were in fact found to have more depression and anxiety, mores stress, a more external locus of control, and lower self-esteem
compared to women in a control group. But men were not evaluated in this study, so it is highly possible that these findings are not specific to women with ADHD but merely characterize ADHD across both genders. A later study by these authors found this to be so. Again, our results point to just such a conclusion. On the dimensional ratings of depression from the SCL-90-R, no effects of sex were significant. And while women reported higher rates of anxiety, this was typical of women in all three of our groups and was not specific to women with ADHD versus men with the disorder. We did find that women with ADHD actually reported higher rates of attention problems on the Young Adult Behavior Self-Report Form (Chapter 6), but they were also rated by others as being more aggressive than males with ADHD. These are among the few differences that were specific to the ADHD group and not evident in our control groups. They run counter to the earlier assertions by clinicians.

so I assume girls get over looked because their behaviour is less aggressive, hence does not attract attention by authorities.