ADHD in China: how women with the condition are stigmatised and dismissed, and can’t find help
- Women with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are being failed by the Chinese healthcare system, with many self-diagnosing through social media
The bus announcement jolted 30-year-old Liu Danyang out of her trance, but she had already missed her stop. Getting off at the next one, then taking another bus back, she missed her stop again.
As frustrated as she was, she was used to it. This kind of detour is part of her daily routine negotiating the streets of Suzhou, a city to the west of Shanghai.
Zoning out again, Liu walks by the door to her apartment building several times before she finally remembers to enter.
This is far from a new thing for her, but back in 2021, she saw a post on the social networking platform Mastodon detailing symptoms of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and “I checked all the boxes”, she thought.
“But I’ve always been quiet,” she reasoned, looking over symptoms such as acting out. “There’s no way I have ADHD.”
Nevertheless, she found an adult self-report scale online and took the test, which indicated a high possibility of ADHD, and, as she intuited, on the attention deficit, not the hyperactivity side.
