Study: The ADHD connection
Women with ADHD are much more likely to experience severe premenstrual symptoms than women without ADHD, according to a 2025 study of 715 UK women in the The British Journal of Psychiatry. Here are 3 key findings:
Women with ADHD are far more likely to have PMDD
Women with ADHD experienced premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) at much higher rates than women without ADHD. About 31.4% of women with a clinician-diagnosed ADHD had PMDD symptoms, compared with only 9.8% of women without ADHD.
Among women identified as having ADHD by symptom screening (not necessarily formally diagnosed), a whooping 41.1% met the criteria for PMDD.
Put simply, women with ADHD were roughly 3 to 4 times more likely to experience PMDD than women without ADHD.
ADHD + depression or anxiety raises risk even higher
The risk of PMDD was highest in women who had both ADHD and either depression or anxiety. Women with ADHD and a diagnosis of depression or anxiety had about a 4.53 times greater risk of PMDD compared with women who had none of these conditions.
Even women with ADHD alone (without depression or anxiety) still had around 3 times the risk of PMDD compared to those without ADHD, especially when ADHD was identified through symptom measures. This matters because ADHD, depression, and anxiety often occur together, so many women with ADHD fall into this highest-risk group.
ADHD symptoms matter even without a formal diagnosis
Women who scored high on ADHD symptom questionnaires had similarly elevated PMDD risk, even if they had never been formally diagnosed with ADHD. In other words, the link between ADHD and PMDD is strong whether ADHD is recorded in the medical chart or only visible through symptoms. This is important because many women are underdiagnosed or diagnosed late with ADHD, often due to gender bias or symptoms that are misread as anxiety.
The authors wisely argue that clinicians should routinely ask about premenstrual mood symptoms in women with ADHD traits (diagnosed or otherwise).
READ THE STUDY: Broughton, Thomas, et al. “Increased Risk of Provisional Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) among Females with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Cross-Sectional Survey Study.” The British Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 226, no. 6, 2025, pp. 410–17, https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2025.104.
