40 Years of ADHD: What Pioneer Dr Kathleen Nadeau Has Learned About ADHD Women, Late Diagnosis & Thriving

You're understanding your ADHD. But what happens when you’re ready to actually live differently?

Join me live in Manchester this December for The Next Chapter — an immersive event for women ready to move beyond understanding their ADHD and explore what comes next with more confidence, self-compassion and permission to be themselves.

All surrounded by like-minded neurodivergent women who truly get it. Ready for your next chapter? Find out more: Book your place here⁠.

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For decades, ADHD research focused overwhelmingly on hyperactive boys while girls and women with ADHD were missed, misdiagnosed or told they were anxious or depressed. ADHD expert, Dr Kathleen Nadeau has spent more than 40 years helping to change our understanding of ADHD in women.

On this week’s episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, I’m joined by internationally recognised clinical psychologist, author and ADHD pioneer Kathleen G. Nadeau, PhD.

Kathleen has written or co-authored 18 books on ADHD and was awarded the CHADD Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025. Her ground breaking work has helped bring ADHD in girls, women and older adults into a conversation that once centred almost entirely on hyperactive young boys.

And having ADHD herself, alongside decades of clinical experience and generations of ADHD within her own family, Kathleen brings a perspective that goes far beyond diagnostic criteria.

We talk about what ADHD looked like when Kathleen entered the field in the 1970s, why so many intelligent girls and women were missed and what happens when a woman spends her life believing she simply needs to try harder.

We also get into hormones, perimenopause and postpartum mental health, the physical conditions increasingly being seen alongside ADHD and why our healthcare systems still struggle when women’s physical and mental health needs intersect.

But this isn’t only a conversation about what has gone wrong.

Kathleen talks beautifully about finding the environment in which your ADHD brain can thrive, the healing that can come with a later-life diagnosis and why women need connection with other women who finally understand.

You do not have to spend the rest of your life trying to make yourself fit the wrong environment.

Sometimes, you need to plant yourself in a different garden.

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In this episode, we cover:

How our understanding of ADHD has changed since Kathleen began working in the field in the late 1970s

Why ADHD was once seen almost entirely as a condition affecting hyperactive young boys

The moment Kathleen began recognising ADHD in parents, adults and within her own family

Why bright, high-achieving children can have ADHD even when they're doing exceptionally well academically

Looking beyond traditional ADHD diagnostic criteria to understand the wider experience

How girls and women with ADHD were overlooked and the work that began changing that

Rejection sensitivity, feeling different and the impact of growing up without an explanation for your ADHD

Why ADHD can be both challenging and a source of curiosity, connection and different ways of thinking

Whether our schools and workplaces are asking ADHD brains to function in environments that don't suit them

ADHD hormones, puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and why the research is still catching up

Why women's ADHD symptoms have so often been misdiagnosed as anxiety or depression

What happens when psychiatry, women's health and other areas of medicine operate in separate silos

The physical conditions and health difficulties increasingly being seen alongside ADHD

Why connection with other ADHD women can be such an important part of healing

Receiving an ADHD diagnosis in your 60s, 70s or later, and navigating grief for the life you might have lived

Why a late diagnosis can offer more healing than regret

Kathleen's “right garden” approach and finding the environments, re