According to Nature magazine, the genes associated with ADHD have actually declined: it was the dominant neurotype 50,000 years ago!

If you think about it, that should be obvious: the ability to quickly make sense of complex and changing information would be an asset when scanning the horizon for saber-toothed tigers, but is a "disability" when trying to concentrate in an open-planned office.

Science says there is a very high correlation between people with ADHD and people with allergies such as asthma and rhinitis (hayfever), with some even attributing some ADHD symptoms to inflammation of the brain. However, correlation is not causation: it might explain some symptoms, but not the neurotype itself. (I still have ADHD, even when medicated.)

The trigger for me to seek my own diagnosis, well into my forties, was a meme about "I have a system."

So many of us have done so well for so long by performing to societal expectations at the expense of our underlying health. Everything is harder for us, but we have a system (e.g. an alarm set to remind us to eat lunch), and we go unnoticed until the pandemic permacrisis finally strips away the veneer and we seek help for anxiety so severe that it can't be hidden any more.

Our parents and grandparents were not so lucky: they were just "mad", "bad", or "weird", unless they were rich, and we called them "eccentric".

Personally, I can trace ADHD traits back at least 100 years in my family, and autism about the same in another family branch.

None of this is new, we're just acknowledging reality for the first time.