ADHD & The Female Brain (The Answers!)
Change Your Brain Every Day
Dr Daniel Amen
4.7 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's short video, Dr. Daniel Amen and his wife Tana Amen talk about ADHD and how it differs in males and females. They'll also share practical tips that you can implement in your life right now. ADHD is commonly thought of as a disorder of hyperactive, behaviorally troubled boys. Yet, it afflicts many girls who are often overlooked because they tend not to be as hyperactive and have fewer behavior problems.
In fact, although females have ADHD in high numbers, males are diagnosed three to four times more than females. Missing ADHD in females can have devastating lifelong effects on their health, mood, relationships, career, and finances. Females with ADHD suffer more than 7 times the risk for both antisocial and mood disorders, three times the risk for addictive disorders, and twice the risk for anxiety disorders than those who do not have ADHD. Additionally, they have a higher risk for eating disorders, such as bulimia and obesity. But there's good news—you are NOT stuck with the brain you have!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. |
| 0:07.0 | Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. |
| 0:13.0 | Hi, I'm Tanna Aman and I'm here with my amazing wonderful husband, Dr. Daniel Aman. |
| 0:19.0 | Greetings again, we're so excited that you're with us. |
| 0:22.5 | Today we're going to talk about ADD in girls and in women. It's something very near and dear to my heart |
| 0:30.1 | because my wife has ADD. Which I did not believe for the record. I thought it was nonsense when I met him. |
| 0:36.3 | She believes it now because it's true. |
| 0:39.4 | And several of my daughters have it. And ADD and girls and women is often not diagnosed |
| 0:48.0 | because they're usually, usually not a big pain in the neck like boys are. |
| 0:55.8 | So boys tend to be diagnosed because they can be more hyperactive, more impulsive. |
| 1:00.7 | They bring a lot of negative attention to themselves, but girls and women often are not diagnosed |
| 1:08.3 | because they tend not to be hyperactive or maybe not even terribly |
| 1:12.7 | impulsive, but they have trouble with focus, they can't have trouble with organization |
| 1:17.7 | and distractibility. |
| 1:19.5 | And so they underachieve for their potential and it can be chronically frustrated. |
| 1:25.9 | Well, let's talk about why they might not have some of those classic symptoms that boys |
| 1:29.9 | have of being impulsive and some of the other things. |
| 1:33.5 | And what I learned was that it's because, and not that I suffer from this, but they have |
| 1:39.0 | a lot more anxiety. |
| 1:40.7 | And so the anxiety, that high level of anxiety, keeps them from acting out. |
| 1:45.0 | So I wrote a book once called Unleash the Power of the Female Brain. |
| 1:50.0 | And in it, I talk about the female brain actually has some very specific strengths. |
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