Forbes: Adults With ADHD

Dec. 2 -- A growing population of adults is being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Bosses and workers are seeking ways to cope.

On a Friday evening in September Deborah Hoyt, a 46-year-old chief financial officer of a fund-raising organization in Atlanta, sat at her desk frustrated with a financial analysis, still tackling other tasks. "My brain was in total meltdown," says Hoyt. She gave up 15 minutes later, only to walk through a fog of self-doubt on Saturday. She could not get the numbers swirling through her head to make sense. Finally, early Sunday morning, with Saturday Night Live on in the background, the pencil hit paper.

This kind of frustrating paralysis followed by flashes of insight is common for Hoyt. Five months ago she was diagnosed with adult attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), an affliction that hits 3 percent to 7 percent of U.S. adults. Hoyt now takes one pill a day, a potentially addictive stimulant called Concerta, to help her run the finance and administrative functions of a 50-person company. "I'm working on many things at one time," she says, echoing the mantra of the afflicted.

Read tips on dealing with ADHD.

ADHD, long associated with boys who say and do whatever comes to mind, has been recognized among adults only in the last 10 years. The people who make a career of treating this problem will tell you that only 20 percent of adults with ADHD know they have it. (The disorder used to go by the shorthand ADD, but ADHD is now its official name.)

As with children, adults with ADHD range from the mildly affected, inattentive employee who needs constant reminders to keep from missing deadlines and meetings to the severely inattentive hyperactive who flies out of the office in a tantrum. Without treatment the acutely afflicted fail to divide work from home life, winding up losing both their jobs and marriages.