‘Finally’: Abbie Chatfield reveals adult ADHD diagnosis

Influencer and radio host Abbie Chatfield has revealed she’s “finally” been diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 26.

Abbie Chatfield has revealed she’s “finally” been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at the age of 26.

The influencer and former The Bachelor star confirmed the news this week on her Hot Nights with Abbie radio show, before going into further detail on her Instagram Stories about the months-long process.

ADHD is a mental health condition that can involve problems with attention, focus and concentration; hyperactivity, impulsive behaviour, irritability and restlessness — but can be difficult to pinpoint because its symptoms are “common to a wide variety of disorders”, Queen’s University Associate Professor of Psychology, Allyson G Harrison, explained in a piece for The Conversation last March.

“Self-reporting of ADHD symptoms on questionnaires has up to 78 per cent false positive rate for ADHD diagnosis. Symptoms alone are not enough to diagnose this disorder,” she added.

Abbie Chatfield has revealed she’s “finally” been diagnosed with ADHD. Picture: Instagram

“There is something that’s — not wrong — but is different, that can be fixed.” Picture: Instagram

Chatfield said of her own symptoms that she’s “unable to sleep a lot” because of her constant flow of thoughts, and often forgets where things are, as well as going through periods of “hyperactivity”.

“My whole anxiety is feeling that I’m always behind on something — you know, like on holiday, and you think you’ve forgotten something very important? That’s my feeling at all times,” she told her co-host Rohan Edwards.

“[Getting a diagnosis] it’s kind of like, I’m confirmed. There is something that’s — not wrong — but is different, that can be fixed.”

She’ll now “go on medication, the psychiatrist said that I can listen to podcasts, and there’s lots of different coping mechanisms that I can research”.

The most difficult part, Chatfield explained on both Hot Nights and her social media, was the process of getting a diagnosis — with the 26-year-old pointing out it’s one that’s “inaccessible” to many.

Talking about her own experience, she said she’d paid her personal assistant to spend an entire day securing an appointment with a psychiatrist for her — and while she managed to get an appointment within a matter of weeks, at first there had been none available for “18 months”.

“This is with me paying someone to spend a day dedicated to finding me an appointment of any time with any psychiatrist in any region,” Chatfield said, adding it cost her “around $700”.

“I’m very privileged to be able to do that. It was really f**king expensive.

“It’s ironic that the ADHD diagnosis, you have to plan something 18 months in advance or you have to spend a whole day concentrating on one, long, boring task and have an appointment that you’ll probably forget about.”

Dr Patrick Concannon — a paediatrician of 41 years who specialises in ADHD and serves on the board of ADHD Australia — previously told Triple J there’s a lot of undiagnosed ADHD — 2.5 per cent of the adult population would fit the criteria, and currently 0.1 per cent are being treated as adults.

Dr Concannon added that medical professionals were also getting better at recognising how ADHD presents differently in people beyond the stereotype of a young boy.

“They’re hyperactive or impulsive, they have short attention spans, they can have emotional learning problems, and that’s the presentation that is the classic one,” he explained.

“We now know that there’s a large group of people who have a slightly different ADHD … we call it the inattentive variety.”

For a long time, females who had this inattentive kind of ADHD fell through the cracks — meaning they might not find out for years.

“They usually don‘t present with behaviour problems initially, at least, but they present with difficulties with learning, difficulties with organisation time management, they have trouble maintaining and developing motivation,“ he said.

“They can then of course, with this sense of negative self image, they‘ll often then start to see themselves as failures.”

Chatfield echoed the sentiment, saying that “a lot of women have different symptoms to men when they’re younger, so they go undiagnosed for a longer time”.

“A lot of women get diagnosed in adulthood, and their symptoms will get confused with anxiety and depression,” she said.

Originally published as ‘Finally’: Abbie Chatfield reveals adult ADHD diagnosis