Sarah Hayden is among a wave of women whose ADHD is being diagnosed well into adulthood, which researchers say is a diagnostic “correction” – not a TikTok trend – and is helping people to love themselves. By Wendy Tuohy Sarah Hayden and pony Teddy, one of her equine-assisted psychotherapy animals for her work treating neurodivergent young people. Credit: Chris Hopkins Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
When Sarah Hayden was diagnosed with ADHD, aged 48, many things fell into place. For one, she understood her uncanny ability to do a vast volume of things at once, and why she easily gets bored. Like many women diagnosed in midlife with one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders , she also began to understand the battles she faced as a girl.
“I shed quite a few tears and kind of looked back on my life and how I really struggled at school,” says Hayden, a social worker and equine-assisted psychotherapist who works with neurodivergent girls and is a mother of five, foster mother of 55, and the new mayor of Golden Plains Shire in Victoria. “I forgot everything, lost everything, never handed in assignments because, though I’d been in the class, I didn’t remember anything about them and wondered how other kids knew this was due. “I drifted from friend group to friend group and couldn’t sustain friendships.
And it was really difficult in the years post-leaving school, I just kept going from degree to degree. This happened no.
