I was 42 when a psychiatrist told me that I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD.
After a lifetime of feeling there was something wrong with me, I finally had an explanation – but nothing about my life changed overnight. I am still forgetful, impulsive and often paralysed by procrastination.
Yet I can’t help wondering how differently things might have turned out if those four letters had been attached to me at 12 instead of 42.
Would an earlier diagnosis have helped me fulfil my potential, or held me back?
According to a new Government–commissioned review, children diagnosed with ADHD before the age of 17 are around four times more likely to be out of education, employment or training in early adulthood than those without the condition.
The investigation, led by clinical psychologist Professor Peter Fonagy, raises uncomfortable questions about whether labelling children with neurodevelopmental conditions has the potential to do more harm than good, particularly if a diagnosis leads to lower expectations of what they can achieve.
Would my life have panned out the same way had I been told I have the condition during my formative years? Would it have made me reluctant to work, or believe that I was unable to?
If there’s one thing nobody who’s worked with me could reasonably accuse me of, it’s being workshy.
Emma Gritt was 42 when a psychiatrist told her that I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD
I’ve spent almost 20 years working in demanding editorial roles at national newspapers and magazines, often in senior positions requiring me to manage people, projects and deadlines.
I love working and have never been frightened of hard graft.
Yet my life is propped up by a flimsy scaffolding of to–do lists that I struggle to get through, reminders, colour coding, timers, and elaborate attempts to impose order on the chaos in my head.
If I am feeling particularly overwhelmed, I write a list with the first entry simply being the instruction to ‘write a list’, just so I can tick something off and hopefully generate enough momentum to tackle the next task.
At work, I can immerse myself in a complicated subject and research it for hours, yet struggle to remember a straightforward verbal instruction moments after being given it.
I have a terrible habit of underestimating how long things will take and leaving important tasks until the last possible moment. Sometimes the fear of not doing something perfectly prevents me from starting it at all.
My university dissertation, for example, was written in the 36 hours before the deadline. I passed, but the resulting grade cost me the first–class degree I had hoped to achieve.
And like many people with ADHD, I have struggled with romantic relationships and finances; I am the only person in my female friendship groups who does not have a long–term partner, substantial savings, or a mortgage.
Every time somebody suggests ADHD is a fashionable label, an excuse for laziness or something people are desperate to be diagnosed with, I feel as though I’m being accused of making up difficulties that have affected my entire life.
I find the relentless negativity surrounding the condition increasingly dispiriting.
I’ve spent years becoming increasingly frustrated with myself for struggling with things that appear to come naturally to other people.
My journey towards understanding why began in October 2024, when I tearfully explained to my GP that I felt there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but as I looked at friends, noting their financial buoyancy, mortgages, marriages and families, I felt increasingly left behind. The gnawing suspicion that I was somehow different, which had followed me since childhood, had become impossible to ignore.
My GP agreed to refer me for an ADHD assessment, but with a waiting list of eight years in my local NHS area, I opted to use Right to Choose, which allows patients in England to access assessments from an alternative NHS–contracted provider.
The new report also raises serious concerns about the ‘consistency and quality’ of ADHD and autism assessments carried out by private providers, which now conduct more than half of NHS–funded ADHD assessments and a third of autism assessments.
With more than 800,000 people waiting for an ADHD or autism assessment in England, the private diagnostics sector is booming – especially as through Right to Choose, you might ‘only’ be waiting ten months to get seen, rather than ten years.
I don’t disagree that the industry needs scrutiny. In fact, I’ve often wondered whether everyone who seeks an ADHD assessment leaves with a new set of letters trailing their name.
Of all the numerous adults I know who’ve pursued a late diagnosis, not one has been told they’re simply forgetful or impulsive.
But when I remember all the hoops I had to jump through in order to even speak to a psychiatrist about my concerns, I’m confident that any ‘fakers’ would have fallen by the wayside.
Before the referral progressed, I underwent blood tests and an ECG, followed by an extensive questionnaire covering my behaviour from childhood onwards. My mother was required to complete a separate report about me.
Even then, I waited another ten months before finally getting to speak to a psychiatrist in August 2025.
At the end of our 90–minute video consultation, he confirmed that I met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, predominantly the inattentive type. My symptoms had been present since childhood, affected multiple areas of my life and could not be better explained by another psychiatric condition. He also noted possible autistic traits.
I was 42, and finally had an explanation for why I’d spent so much of my life feeling like an oddity.
But rather than celebrating my new diagnosis, I felt surprisingly sad.
Examining my life in such forensic detail had forced me to confront how many difficulties I’d spent decades dismissing as personal failings. And when my mother and I began revisiting my childhood, it became painfully apparent how many clues had been missed.
My school reports repeatedly described me as bright but failing to apply myself. At one parents’ evening, teachers complained that I preferred staring out of the window ‘looking at birds’ to paying attention to them.
I lived in a world of my own, unless a subject fascinated me, in which case I was capable of becoming the most engaged person in the room.
At primary school, I was so enthusiastic about debating the existence of God during religious education lessons that the school brought in the local vicar to speak to me – but when it came to maths I shut down.
I had additional lessons after school from the age of 10 until my GCSEs.
At secondary school, my mother was summoned to the headmistress’s office over my chronic lateness.
Exasperated after years of trying to get me anywhere on time, she explained that I’d been late for everything since birth – quite literally, as I’d arrived two weeks overdue.
Teachers regularly separated me from friends because I talked too much, while pencil cases and schoolbooks disappeared with alarming frequency.
Coursework was inevitably completed at the last minute, often after an all-night panic. I still managed to get good grades – but could I have done better? Definitely.
At home, my parents affectionately called me a ‘space cadet’, partly because I appeared incapable of listening to instructions and had obscure interests.
As a teenager, I also developed an extraordinary aversion to metal objects.
The smell and texture became so unbearable that I swapped ordinary cutlery for plastic forks and chopsticks, used a rag to open door handles and frantically washed my hands if I thought they smelled metallic.
Refusing to touch coins was particularly inconvenient in the cash-dependent 1990s.
People with ADHD can experience sensory processing difficulties, becoming overwhelmed by particular sounds, smells or textures, although these symptoms are not exclusive to the condition.
But my greatest difficulties have always been less visible.
Until relatively recently, I assumed everybody had a constant stream of dialogue running through their head.
That everyone woke during the night with imaginary conversations and songs playing on a seemingly endless loop, or overthought straightforward decisions until they became incapable of making them.
My psychiatrist recorded that my mind raced at ‘100 miles per hour’ and that I was constantly tapping my fingers during our session.
Physically, however, I’ve never been particularly hyperactive.
If anything, I’ve often felt as though I’m dragging an anchor behind me, edging on a nervous breakdown if I have slept for less than nine hours a night.
It’s perhaps unsurprising that ADHD was overlooked in girls of my generation.
Historically, the condition was associated with physically hyperactive young boys, while girls with predominantly inattentive symptoms frequently went unnoticed, especially as we are so good at ‘masking’.
Greater recognition of these differences has helped explain the rising number of women receiving diagnoses in adulthood, but this increased awareness has also brought greater suspicion.
When I told one former editor about my diagnosis, his response was almost scornful. How could I possibly have ADHD when I was so organised and enthusiastic about work?
Admittedly, I was late almost every morning. But otherwise, I bore little resemblance to his perception of somebody with the condition.
What he couldn’t see was the enormous effort that went into maintaining that appearance of competence. I’ve come to realise that I have always had to work a bit harder on the nuts and bolts of ‘real life’ than neurotypical people.
Comments suggesting that ‘everyone is a bit ADHD’ or that the condition is simply an excuse for laziness are particularly difficult to stomach when I’ve spent years berating myself for not achieving more or being ‘utterly f**king useless’.
My assessment also forced me to confront the wider consequences of my behaviour, from impulsive spending to poor romantic choices.
Emma Gritt, pictured here as a child in the 1990s, spent a ‘lifetime’ feeling as though there was something wrong with her
After my diagnosis, I chose not to go on medication immediately. People with ADHD are prescribed drugs containing stimulants which aid focus, but like all treatment there are side effects and it can be hard to come off them.
I wanted to see if I could improve things simply from making lifestyle changes. However I’m now in the queue for an appointment for starting medication because I want to see if it will make a noticeable difference.
I cannot blame every poor decision or unhappy experience on ADHD, nor would I want to. But understanding the condition has given me a different perspective on patterns of behaviour that previously made little sense.
It hasn’t magically made me more organised or stopped my mind racing. Nor has it erased the anxiety and self-criticism that accompanied so many years of struggling.
But there’s a profound difference between believing you’re simply inadequate and understanding that some of your difficulties have a recognised explanation.
That is why I find the suggestion that diagnoses automatically limit people’s ambitions so troubling.
Of course children shouldn’t be given inappropriate labels, and nobody should be encouraged to lower their expectations of what they can achieve.
But surely recognising genuine difficulties early and providing the right support offers a better chance of success than allowing somebody to spend decades feeling like a failure?
