Insights on ADHD diagnosis, treatment, research, and living well with neurodiversity.
If you have ADHD, there's a better-than-even chance you also deal with anxiety. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), up to 50% of adults with ADHD meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder, and up to 60% of children with ADHD experience clinically significant anxiety symptoms. These aren't just two conditions that happen to coexist — they interact in ways that make each one harder to manage.
Medication remains the most evidence-backed first-line treatment for ADHD — but roughly 20-30% of people with ADHD don't respond adequately to stimulants, and many others experience side effects that limit their usefulness. For this group, and for parents who prefer to exhaust non-pharmacological options first, nutritional supplements have become an area of genuine scientific interest.
Self-advocacy — knowing what you need and being able to ask for it — is one of the most practical skills a person with ADHD can develop. And yet it's rarely talked about in the same breath as medication or therapy, even though it shapes almost every part of daily life: the classroom, the workplace, healthcare appointments, and relationships.
ADHD doesn't disappear when you enter the workforce. For many adults, the workplace is actually where ADHD symptoms become most disruptive — especially in environments that demand sustained focus, tight deadlines, and constant context-switching. The good news is that ADHD in the workplace is now better understood than ever, and there are evidence-based strategies that genuinely help.
Lying and stealing in children can be alarming for parents, but before responding with punishment, it helps to understand what's actually driving the behavior. For many children — particularly those with ADHD — these behaviors aren't about moral failure. They're often symptoms of impulse control difficulties, unmet emotional needs, or developmental patterns that are entirely typical for their age.
Performance anxiety is one of the most common and least talked-about experiences that people with ADHD deal with. Research estimates that 25–40% of people with ADHD experience significant performance anxiety — more than twice the rate seen in the general population. The combination of ADHD's executive function challenges and the anticipatory dread of "getting it wrong in public" creates a particularly difficult feedback loop.
ADHD and anxiety disorders co-occur at rates that clinicians have described as "the rule rather than the exception." Depending on the study and diagnostic method, 50–60% of adults with ADHD also meet criteria for at least one anxiety disorder. Understanding how these conditions interact — and how to distinguish them when they occur separately — is essential both for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment planning.
Exercise is one of the most consistently evidence-backed non-medication interventions for ADHD — and yet it's still underused in most treatment plans. The research here isn't preliminary or anecdotal. Multiple randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses have now confirmed that regular physical activity produces meaningful reductions in ADHD symptoms, particularly in attention and impulse control.