Busy Philipps has long been, well, busy with things like her many roles on TV shows like Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek, Cougar Town and ER and her hosting the TV talk show Busy Tonight on E! But now she’s also been getting busy about bringing more attention to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, otherwise known as ADHD. Philipps, currently 46 years of age, recently talked to me about how she was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult at age 39 in shall we say a rather child-like manner.
Philipps Got Diagnosed With ADHD Through Her Child
“I had taken my own child to get assessed for strictly learning differences and things that were going on with her at the time,” Philipps recalled. “And as her doctor was going through the checklist for ADHD, I just had this dawning realization that everything that he was mentioning sounded like things I had been struggling with, and so I went and sought my own diagnosis from my own doctor.”
That was seven years ago. And finding out that she herself had ADHD helped get her to pay more proper attention to what she had been experiencing for so many years without a diagnosis. “I’d been trying to juggle so many things very unsuccessfully and had felt incredibly overwhelmed and was constantly masking and overcompensating,” she explained to me and went on to describe how she tried to explain what was happening to herself. “I went through a myriad of sort of ways to explain my behavior, my disorganization, my inability to keep dates and times straight, my double booking, my forgetting that it was the class field trip so I needed to pack a lunch, but I also had a meeting at two.”
You could say that the challenges had piled on, both literally and figuratively. “Piles of clothes around my house or little piles of things that sit there for long periods of time waiting to be put away,” she mentioned. “I really internalized so much of it, and it made me feel really bad about myself and that there was something inherently wrong with me. I would look around and see other people that I was friends with seemingly have such an easier time.”
Prior to her diagnosis, Philips was in her words, “very, very hard on myself.” But getting the diagnosis was in turn “incredibly freeing” for her. It’s helped Philipps “be kinder to myself about it and sort of move through it easier.”
Philipps Emphasized Challenges Women Face In Getting Properly Diagnosed With ADHD
Philipps is certainly not alone in going years without getting properly diagnoses with ADHD. Studies have suggested that less than 20 percent of adults with ADHD get properly diagnosed and treated. In other words, there is ironically a deficit in attention to ADHD in general. I’ve already covered some of this when writing in Forbes earleir this year about Paris Hilton and her experience with ADHD
But females, surprise, surprise, may face additional challenges in getting proper diagnoses and treatments. As I’ve covered before in Forbes, many parts of the U.S. healthcare system can be somewhat dismissive of women and different sociodemographic minorities when it comes to all sorts of health concerns. Plus, as Philipps emphasized, “Frequently, [ADHD] presents so much differently in women and girls than it does in boys and men.”
Indeed, ADHD symptoms for men can be more be likely to present externally and thus be more obvious, like with hyperactive behaviors, risk taking and physical impulsivity. Whereas, symptoms for women tend to be more internalized and subtle, such as with more quiet distractibility, daydreaming, disorganization, excessive talking and emotional dysregulation. On top of that, societal expectations may force women to mask their symptoms more and thus be misdiagnosed with other things such as anxiety or depression. And take a guess as to which sex the diagnostic criteria for ADHD have been more based upon historically. Here’s a hint: it rhymes with ail.
As a result of all this, females with ADHD may be significantly less likely to get properly diagnosed, with boys being around three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD during childhood, according to the Duke Center for Girls and Women with ADHD. This makes women more likely than men to get their ADHD diagnose for the first time in adulthood. “Because of medical bias and the way that our world is set up, a lot of times women’s and girls’ symptoms are overlooked, which leads to misdiagnosis or like this sort of later diagnosis in life,” Philipps lamented. “I cannot tell you just through my podcast or online or in public how many women have come up to me and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, I heard you talk about this, and it sounded just like me, and I talked to my doctor, and I also have ADHD.”
Philipps also talked turkey with me about how she tried to manage her symptoms before she knew they were ADHD ones. “When I was in my early 20s, I think I ate just a turkey sandwich for lunch every day for years,” she recalled. “And part of that from my understanding now is that when you’re trying to keep track of so many things, when you have ADHD, if you can eliminate the decision making in any way, it helps you out. So a lot of people with ADHD tend to have this sort of repetitive eating thing.”
Philipps Is Using A Combination Of Ways To Manage Her ADHD
Getting an ADHD diagnosis didn’t necessarily mean that Philipps had to go cold turkey and completely quit eating turkey sandwiches. But it has allowed her to, “work on getting the tools that will help me sort of manage my symptoms,” as she indicated. She has been using a combination of the medication Qelbree, a non-stimulant taken once a day and various lifestyle modifications. “For me, a non-stimulant has really been the right choice, and I think people need to go through the trial and error process with their own doctors to see what works best for them,” said Philipps. “I know personally getting real deep sleep is important to me, so I was not able to take a stimulant daily.”
She also noted that she likes to keep notes. “Everything goes in my calendar,” she explained. “As soon as I get an appointment or anything, like even with my kids going on a field trip, so she has to pack a lunch, writing it down immediately has been incredibly helpful.”
Philipps Is Staying Quite, Well, Busy
Knowing that she has ADHD hasn’t kept Philipps from staying, well, quite busy, either. She’s been filming a new television show for CBS called Cupertino that will be airing this Fall. “It’s about a startup sort of law firm in Silicon Valley, kind of taking on the titans of the tech industry,” she explained. And, naturally, a show about Silicon Valley and named after Cupertino, California, is being filmed in, well, New Jersey because why not? And if that weren’t busy enough, Philipps has also been writing a second book.
On top of that, Philipps wants to continue raising awareness about ADHD and has partnered with Supernus Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Qelbree to do so. And this includes bringing more attention the particular deficit that women face in getting properly diagnosed and treated.
