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ADHD Doesn’t Expire at 18: A Quick Map of Adult ADHD
A look at “Adult ADHD: A Narrative Review of Symptoms, Assessment, and Intervention Strategies” by Farra Anisa Rahmania and Dwi Fadhila (2026) For a long time, ADHD was pictured as a boy bouncing off the classroom walls. The assumption was that he’d grow out of it, like a pair of school shoes. Many adults now…
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The Missing Years: ADHD, Midlife and Menopause
A look at “Women, ADHD and the missing years” by Rachael Martin (2026) Picture a woman in her late forties who has spent decades holding it all together: job, family, ageing parents, a calendar like a game of Tetris. Then perimenopause arrives and the whole thing topples over. For a growing number of women, this…
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Cheating, Childhood and a Touch of Narcissism
A look at “Narcissistic traits as mediators in the relationship between parenting styles and nonconsensual nonmonogamy in university students” by Suany Pineda-Sandoval, Cesia Bustillo-Núñez, Hanny Gómez, Jennifer Chevez, Yeyson Sosa, Marta Kowal and Miguel Landa-Blanco (2026) We’ve spent a lot of this series on consensual non-monogamy, where everyone knows and agrees. This study looks at…
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Support at Work: Adjustments, Access to Work and Whether to Tell Your Boss
For many neurodivergent adults, work is where things get hardest. Open-plan offices, endless meetings, vague instructions and surprise deadlines can make an otherwise capable person feel like they’re failing. The good news? In the UK, you have rights, and there’s practical help available. What the law says Under the Equality Act 2010, a disability is…
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“Me Too”: When Should Therapists Share About Themselves?
A look at “Therapist self-disclosure: a systematic review and brief person-centered framework for clinical practice and training” by Danielle Jeffery (2026) Have you ever wondered whether your therapist is queer, neurodivergent, a parent, or has been through something similar to you? And whether it would help to know? Therapist self-disclosure, when a therapist shares something…
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Diagnosed at Last: What Good Therapy Looks Like for Late-Diagnosed Autistic Adults
A look at “Indicators of efficacious psychotherapy for patients with late diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder: how to create an effective neurodiversity-affirming therapeutic approach? A cognitive behavioural theoretical perspective” by Angelika Kleszczewska-Albińska (2026) Imagine spending thirty years thinking you were a slightly wonky horse, only to discover you were a unicorn all along. Relief? Certainly.…
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The Elephant (or Unicorn) in the Therapy Room: Why Research Forgets About Sex
A look at “Bridging the blind spot in psychotherapy research on personality disorders: a proposal for sexuality-related outcomes as indicators of therapeutic change” by Agnieszka Izdebska, Marta Elżbieta Szymańska-Pytlińska, Jerzy Bandel, Michał Marcin Sieński, Joanna Agata Franczyk and Monika Olga Jańczak (2026) When researchers test whether a therapy works, they measure all sorts of things:…
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What Reddit Reveals About Women and ADHD
A look at “Symptom expression and coping strategies in women-focused attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder communities: a comparative natural language analysis of Reddit” by Joohee Seo, Youngsoo Kim, Sohyeon Ryu, Sunjoong Kim and Lidia Zylowska (2026) If you want to know what living with ADHD is really like, you could read a diagnostic manual, or you could spend…
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Can a Chatbot Be a Therapist? AI, Autism and Language
A look at “A Framework for Context-Aware and Adaptive Large Language Models for Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapy” by Achhiya Sultana, Mohammad Shidujaman and Md Tarek Habib (2026) This paper comes from computer scientists in Bangladesh. It proposes using AI language models, the same family of technology behind tools like ChatGPT, to support autistic children who…
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Minority Stress Explained: Why It’s Not “All in Your Head”
If you’re LGBTQIA+, you may have heard well-meaning people say that queer people are “just more anxious” or “more sensitive”. The research tells a very different story. It’s not that something is wrong with us. It’s that living in a world that isn’t always kind takes a toll. Psychologists call this minority stress. What the…
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Does CBT for Adult ADHD Pay Off Years Later?
A look at “Long-term effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on the quality of life in adult ADHD” by Ravian Wettstein, Valentina Navarro-Ovando, Viktoria Janke, Ron Mathôt and Glenn Dumont (2026) Here’s a hopeful idea: maybe therapy skills are like planting bulbs. You might not see much straight away, but come spring, up they pop. An…
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Clearing the Fog: CBT and Mindfulness for ADHD and Cognitive Disengagement
A look at “Cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness-based cognitive therapies for adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and cognitive disengagement syndrome: a randomized controlled trial” by Leila Kamran, Seyed Mousa Golestaneh, Ali Pakizeh and Sooran Rajabi (2026) In “Head in the Clouds: Cognitive Disengagement, ADHD and Knowing What You Feel”, we met cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS): the dreamy, foggy,…
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Behind the Mask: ADHD, Masking and the Therapy Room
A look at “The mask and the self: Phillip Ellington explores ADHD and masking within the therapeutic encounter” by Phillip Ellington (2026) We tend to hear about masking in the context of autism, but many people with ADHD know it intimately too. There’s the internal mantra of “don’t interrupt, don’t interrupt”, the effort of sitting…
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#ADHDTok Under the Microscope: Coming Soon
A look at “Autism and ADHD social media short-form video content: A systematic review protocol” by Vasileia Karasavva and Amori Yee Mikami (2026) “Five signs you might have ADHD!” “Things autistic people do that nobody talks about!” If you’ve spent any time on TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, you’ll have seen videos like these,…
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Does ADHD Coaching Actually Work? An Honest Look at the Evidence
ADHD coaching is everywhere at the moment: on social media, in workplace wellbeing schemes and in more than a few glossy adverts promising to “unlock your potential”. As someone who offers it, I think it can be genuinely life-changing. But you deserve to know what the research actually says, not just what the marketing says.…
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Fleeting Attention: 270 Years of ADHD History
A look at “Historical development of ADHD from 1753 to 2026” by Farzad Salehpour and Francisco Gonzalez-Lima (2026) There’s a popular claim that ADHD is a modern invention, cooked up by pharmaceutical companies or caused by smartphones. This sweeping American review begs to differ. It traces descriptions of ADHD-like traits back more than 270 years,…
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Accept, Change or Treat? A Simple Map for Understanding Autism
A look at “The SPC model as a heuristic tool to better understand autism spectrum disorder and other structural diagnosis in psychiatry and psychotherapy” by Ludger Tebartz van Elst (2026) Autistic adults rarely walk into a therapist’s office saying “I’d like help with my autism.” More often they come because of depression, burnout, conflict at…