BENGALURU: Prerana Chowdhury, a 21-year-old medical student, had always struggled with symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but found ways to manage it until she started college. “Everything started getting more difficult. I started falling back on studies, and I stopped doing almost anything,” she says.
While trying to get back on her feet, she started seeking out ADHD content on social media. “Because of social media, there was this realisation – ‘Oh wait, that is a thing? I thought I just had to shut up and work harder,’” she says, “I was watching a lot of therapists on Instagram reels talking about dealing with emotional burnout, handling workloads, and prioritising tasks. I’d also look up tips on Reddit by other people who had ADHD which helped me a lot. I started going to therapy as well.”
ADHD is a developmental disorder marked by symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity. People with the disorder often struggle with maintaining attention, sitting still, completing tasks, and regulating emotions, which often impedes their day-to-day functioning.
Surprising trend
According to mental health practitioners in the city, Chowdhury’s experience is not an isolated incident. The number of people aged 18 to 25 seeking an ADHD diagnosis has grown exponentially in the last three years, a drastic change from pre-pandemic years when schoolchildren were the main demographic.
“Around 20 to 30 people come to me every month and most of them would have looked up information on social media and self-diagnosed ADHD. Among those who are above 20 years of age, approximately 60 per cent of them actually do have ADHD. There may be at least a four to five-fold increase in adult ADHD diagnosis rates after the pandemic,” says Dr Naren Rao, a city-based psychiatrist specialising in ADHD.
Psychologists attribute this to a combination of increasing mental health awareness, better medical understanding of adult ADHD, and the effects of the pandemic. Dr Eesha Sharma, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at NIMHANS, explains, “If a person with ADHD needs to move around, work for five minutes, gossip for 10 minutes and then come back and do more work – these systems that assisted them with managing restlessness and attention disappeared overnight. This shift made people question why they’re having trouble when others seem to be managing. They start reading about it, and the self-diagnosis and other consultations start.”
Social media’s role
Most content showing up on social media feeds is of individuals sharing their struggles with ADHD or tips to manage symptoms. “Adolescents and young adults find it easy to identify with these influencers and view themselves in the same light,” says Dr Sharma. This does not mean that the adolescent or young adult is imagining their troubles because of social media. “If a person is healthy, and well adjusted in their academic and social groups, then there should not be a reason to identify with something that explains their difficulty. It may or may not be ADHD but there is certainly a concern that needs to be addressed,” she says.
Gauri Nair, a 21-year-old professional who was diagnosed with ADHD in high school notes that many of her peers share this experience. However, she says that the content they are watching often does not show the full picture. “They sometimes frame ADHD as quirky or even a positive thing without considering that there are a lot of difficult things and negative experiences that come with it,” she says.
Exercise caution
Mental health professionals advise exercising caution with self-diagnosis. “Distress drives people to seek explanations and mass media is a space for explorative understanding of the sufferer. However, the experience that is causing distress, usually inattention, may have other explanations apart from ADHD.
There are high comorbidity rates of ADHD with other developmental disorders, anxiety and depression. So it’s important to have a medical expert guide you in this self-exploration,” says Dr Venkatesh Babu, a psychiatrist and founder of a health-tech company, Compathy Health.