"Why is a generation of women only now discovering they have ADHD? In Nowhere Girls, a journalist weaves her personal story with a broader investigation into the rise of ADHD diagnoses, and explores the transformative power of finally coming to understand your own brain. When freelance science journalist Carla Ciccone became a mother, she realized she might need to finally see a therapist. Sure, she had struggled to hold down a job for most of her adult life, but she'd always made it work. But "making it work" wasn't going to cut it now that she had a human being to raise. Months into therapy, at age thirty-nine, Carla was officially diagnosed with ADHD, and she learned that she was far from alone: the number of women Carla's age who were being diagnosed with ADHD had more than doubled in recent years. In the U.S., the rate at which women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four filled ADHD medication prescriptions rose 344 percent between 2003 and 2015, with similar trends in Canada and the U.K. Worldwide, Google searches for "ADHD women" started climbing in April of 2020 and haven't come back down since. In Nowhere Girls, Ciccone recounts her experience living for decades with undiagnosed ADHD and examines the rise of diagnoses and the women who were "nowhere" -- left out of the pages of medical research that should have included them. She looks back at the classrooms of the 1990s, where mostly little boys unable to sit still were diagnosed with ADHD, shifts her gaze to the hormonal upheavals of adolescence and their unique effects on the neurochemistry of girls, and then examines her own chaotic entrance into motherhood and her desire to do right by her daughter. Throughout, she explores the science and cultural history of ADHD and considers how the hundreds of thousands of women now being diagnosed can revisit their own personal histories and navigate their way towards a steadier, happier adulthood. Written with humour and heart, Nowhere Girls is a revelatory book about a historic gap in women's health and an empowering balm for women who recognize themselves in these pages"-- Provided by publisher.