Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Trouble with eating, and with how your body looks, gets missed far more often in men. The questionnaires and the expectations behind them were built around women.
In men it runs more towards size and muscle than towards thinness, and towards fixing on one part of the body that everybody else says looks perfectly normal. None of that matches what a screening form asks, so the question never comes. If it is part of your life, say it plainly at an assessment instead of waiting to be asked.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We have honoured the children of Adam (Quran 17:70). The body you may be at war with is part of what has been honoured, which is reason enough to speak about it.
۞وَلَقَدۡ كَرَّمۡنَا بَنِيٓ ءَادَمَ وَحَمَلۡنَٰهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِ وَرَزَقۡنَٰهُم مِّنَ ٱلطَّيِّبَٰتِ وَفَضَّلۡنَٰهُمۡ عَلَىٰ كَثِيرࣲ مِّمَّنۡ خَلَقۡنَا تَفۡضِيلࣰ ا
We have honoured the children of Adam and carried them by land and sea; We have provided good sustenance for them and favoured them specially above many of those We have created
Qur’an 17:70read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of gender differences in ADHD found males and females more alike than different overall, while noting that girls are more often diagnosed with the inattentive presentation, which is easier to miss than visible hyperactivity. That studied case runs the opposite way to this one, and the mechanism is the same: what a tool expects shapes who it finds. The specific work on eating difficulties in men with ADHD has barely been done, which is part of the problem.
Rucklidge JJ. (2010). Gender differences in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.. The Psychiatric clinics of North America doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A tool built around one presentation keeps finding that presentation and quietly misses the others.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Much of the symptom wording was written with children in mind. If a question sounds like it is about someone climbing the furniture, translate it into your adult life rather than answering no.
Hyperactivity and impulsiveness almost never turn up alone. When restlessness appears with no attention difficulty beside it, that is a reason to ask what else might be going on.
Home DNA tests turn up relatives nobody expected. If someone is thinking of taking one to fill in a blank family history, it is worth saying out loud that it may hand them more than they asked for.