The Great American ADHD Epidemic: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Diagnosis
So, here we are, America. Land of the free, home of the medicated.
Nearly 14% of working-age adults—adults!—now report having been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.
This is according to the latest research published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, which, if we’re being honest, is probably a thrilling read, assuming you can focus long enough to get through it.
Fourteen percent! Let that sink in.
That’s not just a few forgetful accountants losing their train of thought mid-spreadsheet.
That’s millions of grown-ups, men and women alike, clutching their prescription bottles and wondering if they’ve been pathologized or if, just maybe, modern life is an overstimulating hellscape and this is how human beings respond.
Now, of course, scientists like to explain things—terrible habit. And so they tell us, in their calm, clinical way, that this is not, in fact, a sudden mass collapse of human attention spans, but a trend.
You see, people have been getting diagnosed with ADHD for a while now—kids, mostly.
The squirmers. The ones who couldn’t sit still in a classroom without dreaming of the great outdoors or, at the very least, lunch. But something happened in recent years.
The little squirmers grew up, entered the workforce, and realized that, yes, they still hate paperwork. And meetings. And long emails. And whatever it is that Karen from accounting just CC’d them on.
And then someone—probably a therapist, probably exhausted—handed them a diagnosis and said, Congratulations! You’re not just overwhelmed. You have ADHD. Here’s some medication.
The Scientists Speak, If You’ll Listen
Our brave researchers—led by a Dr. Andrew S. London, professor of sociology and, one assumes, a man who has never once forgotten where he left his car keys—wanted to figure out just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
They dug into the 2023 National Wellbeing Survey, a massive online survey of 7,053 working-age adults who, against all odds, completed the questionnaire before getting distracted by TikTok. The survey asked a simple question: Has a healthcare professional ever told you that you have ADHD?
And, lo and behold, nearly 14% said yes. That’s a staggering leap from the paltry 4.25% estimate from 2012.
Now, the skeptics out there might be thinking, Isn’t it possible that ADHD has always been underdiagnosed, and we’re just catching up?
To which the researchers say: Yes, maybe.
Or perhaps, Isn’t it possible that society has become so unrelentingly fast, chaotic, and attention-hungry that anyone who can’t adapt to its impossible demands is being labeled as “disordered”?
To which the researchers say: Yes, maybe.
Or, Isn’t it possible that this is just another example of Big Pharma pushing pills on the unsuspecting public?
To which the researchers say: Okay, now you’re getting conspiratorial, but sure, maybe.
Who’s Got It? Who Doesn’t? And Who’s Pretending They Don’t?
Now, some fascinating things emerge when you break the numbers down.
Women, long dismissed as “just being spacey” or “overwhelmed,” are now getting diagnosed at higher rates than men. Take that, patriarchy.
Younger adults are significantly more likely to be diagnosed than their older counterparts, meaning either ADHD is a modern phenomenon or Boomers simply refuse to admit they have it.
Non-Hispanic white adults report higher ADHD rates than other racial and ethnic groups. Maybe they’re just more willing to admit it? Maybe they have better access to healthcare? Maybe ADHD loves Scandinavian DNA?
People with less education are more likely to have been diagnosed, which makes a tragic sort of sense, considering how much formal education demands the ability to sit down and focus.
And here’s a fun geographical tidbit: people in mid-sized cities (populations between 250,000 and 1 million) report the highest ADHD rates. Big cities are too chaotic for anyone to notice, and small towns are just boring enough that nobody needs stimulants to survive.
Are We More Distracted, or Just More Honest?
Dr. London and his team, diligent souls that they are, even compared their findings to another recent study based on the 2023 National Center for Health Statistics Rapid Surveys System—which, if we’re being honest, sounds like something run by NASA. That study estimated ADHD prevalence at 9.6% for working-age adults, lower than the 13.9% found in the National Wellbeing Survey but still significantly higher than past numbers.
So what does this all mean? Well, it could mean a few things.
We are, in fact, getting better at recognizing ADHD in adults.
We are over-diagnosing it because modern life is designed to drive everyone insane. Pick your favorite explanation.
Of course, the researchers have caveats. They always do.
The data is based on self-reporting, which means it relies on people remembering and accurately reporting their diagnosis.
The sample was drawn from an online panel, which means it may not be perfectly representative. And, as always, correlation is not causation, so we cannot, for example, conclude that TikTok directly causes ADHD. (Even if we suspect it does.)
So What Now?
Dr. London and his team hope this research sparks a greater interest in ADHD among adults, especially when it comes to its impact on jobs, relationships, finances, and mental health.
They also hope for better surveys, more gold-standard methodologies, and maybe—just maybe—some actual solutions beyond just throwing more pills at the problem.
In the meantime, the rest of us will continue to live in a world where attention is the most valuable and scarce resource, where distraction is the default mode, and where the line between having ADHD and just being alive in the 21st century gets thinner by the day.
So what’s the moral of the story?
There isn’t one. But if you read this far without checking your phone, congratulations. You may not have ADHD after all.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
References
London, A. S., Monnat, S. M., & Gutin, I. (2025). Self-reported ADHD diagnosis status among working-age adults in the United States: Evidence from the 2023 National Wellbeing Survey. Journal of Attention Disorders.