Girls, Women and ADHD w/ Researcher, Professor Esme Fuller-Thompson
Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson is cross-appointed to the Faculties of Social Work, Medicine and Nursing at the University of Toronto. She is also Director of the Institute for Life Course & Aging. She has published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and Cancer. Her research examines ADHD and mental health, the association between early adversities and adult physical and health outcomes, and disparities in health. Her work has widely cited in the media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and CNN. We’re talking about why the number of Women with ADHD are underreported, about the dark side of ADHD, depression, how to lookout for warning signs in your child, and strategies for making a positive difference. Enjoy-
***CORONA VIRUS EDITION***
In this episode Peter & Dr. Fullerton-Thompson discuss:
1:12- Intro and welcome Esme!!
1:53- Is it true that there is a big difference between males with ADHD and females with ADHD? Ref: (requires log-in) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cch.12380
3:07: Ref: More Play, Less Problems?? Episode with Dr. Debbie Rhea. LINK Project
3:10- How ADHD is looked at differently between males vs females and how they act and react with it?
5:38- Without strategies to manage your ADHD things can go terribly wrong; women with ADHD have substantially higher odds for things to go wrong than men. How do we address this from early-on in a child’s life?
9:00- On the need of structure and how it’s a key component of managing your ADHD
10:15- Ref article: The Dark Side of ADHD: Factors Associated With Suicide Attempts Among Those With ADHD in a National Representative Canadian Sample
11:45- As numbers of suicide are higher than before, what can parents, teachers, doctors do to be aware/on the lookout for signs, and how to move forward once diagnosed?
13:14- On addiction and depression. 15:18- Ref: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Impulse Control
16:35- Dr. Thompson, how can people find more of your studies of your research? Just type in Fuller-Thompson + ADHD, HERE on Google Scholar, or via https://socialwork.utoronto.ca/profiles/esme-fuller-thomson/
17:40- Thank you Dr. Fullerton-Thompson! And thank YOU for subscribing, reviewing and listening. Your reviews are working! Even if you’ve reviewed us before, would you please write even a short one for this episode? Each review that you post helps to ensure that word will continue to spread, and that we will all be able to reach & help more people! You can always reach me via peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterThanNormal on all of the socials.
18:02- Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits!
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey everyone, happy day, Peter Shankman here, welcome to another episode of Faster Than Normal, I'm thrilled that you're here, as I always am. We are going to touch on a subject today, we're going to talk about ADHD, um, it's not as happy-go-lucky as my normal episodes, but that's okay because sometimes they can't all be happy-go-lucky., and sometimes you’ve got to talk about stuff that is, um, a little disturbing to sort of get along and to make sure that people understand all aspects of ADHD, I highlight the good points all the time. But you know, it's, there are times where they're not so good, and I think we all know that, and so I am thrilled today to be talking to Professor Esme Fuller Thompson. Um, she's cross-appointed to the faculties of social work medicine and nursing at the University of Toronto, and she's also Director of the Institute for Life Course & Aging. She's published more than 150 articles in peer reviewed journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, at The Lancet and Cancer, her research…. examines ADHD and mental health, the association between early adversities and adult physical and health outcomes and disparities in health. She's been quoted in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CNN… whole bunch of others. And I'm, I'm, I'm really, I'm honored that you took the time to come in today professor. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me, I'm delighted to be here.
So what I found... you, because there was an interesting article, um, that came to my attention and I think,, there were a couple of them. One of them was in child health care, uh, development, and that was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, casts a long shadow findings from a population based study of adult women with self-reported ADHD. We don't talk about gender breakdowns that much, um, I, I think no one does really…. does, um, in the ADHD/ADD world, but there is a big difference between, uh, males with ADHD and females with ADHD.
Well, I think women with ADHD tend to be under the radar screen. Most teachers and health professionals are not really thinking about women and ADHD, and you may present a little bit different, uh, in a different way, so the majority of people with an ADHD diagnosis are males, and for sure it is higher in the... among men, but I think because women often present more, um, distractible rather than the hyperactive, they're… they really don't get noticed enough, and our research is indicating that the women with the diagnosis of ADHD are quite vulnerable with respect to a variety of mental health concerns.
Yeah, I, and I believe that, you know, we had a professor [Episode with Dr. Debbie Rhea] from the University of Texas on the podcast who, uh, spent a semester in a junior high school, um, giving I think elementary school or a junior high school, can’t remember which one, giving, um, they changed the, the workout schedule, the recess schedule from 20 minutes a day to 60 minutes a day. And they changed the lunch, the lunch, uh, options from, uh, primarily carb-based to primarily protein based, and they saw a drastic, not only decrease in ADHD outbursts from boys, but addressing increase in, um, girls who were willing to participate in class. And that, that struck me, that's always stuck with me, you know, we don't, we don't look at ADHD as the same thing. And, and there are a lot of differences between... between male and female, boys and girls and how they, and how they act and react with it.
Absolutely. So, I mean, there's two things. One possibility is that women with ADHD are doing more or doing less well, which is what our data seems to indicate, but it could also be that if anybody, there's a whole spectrum to ADHD, like there's a spectrum to everything… and it might be that the, only the women who are at the far, far upper end of the spectrum with the most symptoms, are the people that are being actually diagnosed. So these negative outcomes may be more true for men who are at the upper end, but it's just that men along the whole spectrum may have been diagnosed. Um, the other piece of what you raised that… isn't particularly, um, from my data, but other research exercise, is so key exercise structure, organization, it just makes life more livable for sure, for people who have, um, impulse control issues and, and, and disorganization, personal coaches, there's all kinds of positive things that can really make a difference because I think these mental health outcomes that we're looking at, are partly because there's a cascade of negative, um, outcomes, relationships, uh, income, uh, that all of these things, if you can't get yourself completely organized. So, um, being physically active, having lots of structure, having some, maybe so…