Understanding ADHD in Adult Men
Learn how ADHD affects men from focus and impulsivity to anger and relationships. Understand symptoms, diagnosis, and effective treatment options.
Research shows that ADHD can involve challenges with emotional regulation, making it harder to pause before reacting.
What Is ADHD?
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a developmental condition with symptoms that begin in childhood (even if not recognized during childhood) and often persists into adulthood.
ADHD manifests through challenges with managing attention and concentration, controlling impulses, staying organized, and finishing tasks. In childhood, hyperactivity often presents as having a hard time staying still and feeling the need to constantly move around, whereas in adults it may present more as an internal feeling of restlessness, rather than overt movement.[1]
ADHD symptoms can show up in a wide variety of areas:
- Struggling to focus at work, on projects, or zoning out during conversations with friends, colleagues, or partners.
- Feeling disorganized such as losing things (like keys or tools), missing deadlines, or forgetting commitments at home or work.
- Feeling restless or needing constant activity, like pacing, fidgeting, or taking on too many tasks at once.
- Acting impulsively by rushing into decisions, interrupting, or spending money without thinking it through.
- Getting frustrated easily and snapping at others (co-workers, partners, or kids) or feeling easily overwhelmed by stress.
How Common is ADHD?
- ADHD in children: A study in 2016 found an estimated 6.1 million US children aged 2–17 years (9.4%) currently had an ADHD diagnosis.[2]
- ADHD in Adults: ADHD affects roughly 4–6% of the adult population globally.[2,3,4]
- Adult men: Men are diagnosed with ADHD at a higher rate than women during both adolescence and adulthood. One comprehensive study in the U.S. found that among adults aged 18–44, roughly 4% of men were diagnosed with ADHD compared to 3.2% of women.[5]
Why ADHD Is Sometimes Missed or Diagnosed Late in Men
- Cultural Stereotypes: Boys’ hyperactive behaviours are sometimes flagged early as ADHD, but in many cases, they’re dismissed as “typical boyishness”, which can delay diagnosis, particularly if hyperactivity doesn’t cause major disruptions at school. On the other hand, men who grow up with symptoms like struggling to focus or feeling disorganized may be overlooked altogether, since they don’t fit the stereotypical image of the “hyperactive boy with ADHD”.
- Adolescence vs. Adulthood Patterns: Hyperactivity often decreases with age, leaving less obvious symptoms (e.g., disorganization, difficulty maintaining concentration, boredom) that persist beyond childhood. For men whose childhood symptoms weren’t disruptive enough to trigger referral, these subtler adult symptoms can be missed without careful screening.
Impacts of ADHD in Adult Men
ADHD has two main categories of symptoms. The “AD” stands for “attention deficit”, which means struggling with focus (or inattentive symptoms), while the “H” stands for “hyperactive”, referring to restlessness and impulsiveness (hyperactive symptoms).
While many men experience a mix of both, understanding the differences helps explain why ADHD may impact daily life in very different ways for some people, and why it may go undiagnosed, unnoticed, or untreated.[6]
Restless and impulsive (hyperactive)
Struggles with focus (inattentive)
Behaviour
Fidgets, difficulty sitting still, feels “driven by a motor”.
Often appears to be procrastinating, slow to get things started, can appear to be “lazy” to others.
Attention / Focus
May attend well to stimulating or exciting tasks but gets fidgety; impulsively shifts activities (e.g., “I could focus if I wanted to, but I can’t sit still long enough or need more stimulation.”)
Struggles to sustain attention, easily distracted by external stimuli, difficulty completing tasks, forgetful, wandering mind (e.g., “I want to pay attention, but my mind keeps slipping away to other things.”)
Impulsivity
Interrupts others, blurts out answers, struggles to wait for their turn, takes risks without thinking.
Less overt impulsivity; may procrastinate or avoid tasks requiring sustained effort.
Organization
May start many tasks but leave them incomplete, jumping to the next.
Frequently loses items, forgets instructions, poor time management, struggles with planning.
Social presentation
Can seem loud, disruptive, restless.
May seem quiet, withdrawn, “off in their own world”.
Academic / Work impact
Disruptions in class/workplace, conflict with authority, inconsistent performance due to impulsivity.
Missed deadlines, careless mistakes, incomplete work, underachievement despite ability.
Trajectory into adulthood
Hyperactivity may lessen but restlessness, impulsivity, and risk-taking often persist.
Difficulties with inattentiveness (focus, organization, follow-through) usually persist and can cause chronic functional impairments.
While challenges with attentiveness of hyperactivity may be more prevalent than the other in any person, it’s most likely that someone with ADHD will experience a combination of symptoms.
Anger and Irritability
Many men with ADHD report experiencing anger that feels hard to control. Research shows that ADHD can involve challenges with emotional regulation, making it harder to pause before reacting.[7] For some men, anger may flare up in traffic, at work, or in relationships, and then fade just as quickly. While these outbursts may be brief, they can still cause lasting strain with partners, family, or colleagues.
Because men are often socialized to view anger as more acceptable than sadness or anxiety, ADHD-related emotional struggles may appear outwardly as irritability or aggression, even when the underlying issue is frustration, stress, or feeling overwhelmed.
If you want to learn more about techniques you can use to manage anger, check out our course:
ADHD Diagnosis in Adults
Our Self-Check Suite features a screening tool for ADHD. Though not diagnostic, it can help you to gauge how much ADHD symptoms may be impacting your daily life.
A more formal diagnosis can be made by a mental health professional, and requires:[8]
- At least five symptoms (in inattentive or hyperactive categories) among those aged 17+
- Symptom onset before age 12
- Evidence of impact in multiple life domains or settings
- Symptoms not better explained by another condition
Treatment and Management: What Works
Medication
- Stimulants (e.g., methylphenidate, amphetamines) remain the most widely used and effective short-term treatments.
- Despite their name, stimulants don’t work by increasing your stimulation. Rather, they work by increasing levels of certain chemicals (neurotransmitters) in your brain called dopamine and norepinephrine. These neurotransmitters play important roles in your ability to pay attention, think, and stay motivated.
- Non-stimulant medications (atomoxetine, viloxazine, guanfacine, clonidine) offer options when stimulants aren’t suitable.[9]
Psychotherapy
Therapy is commonly used to help manage symptoms of ADHD, typically in conjunction with medication.[10]
Psychotherapy can help you:
- Improve time management and organizational skills
- Learn how to manage/reduce impulsive behaviour
- Develop better problem-solving skills
- Cope with past academic, work, or social failures
- Improve self-esteem
- Learn ways to improve relationships with family, co-workers, and friends
- Develop strategies for managing emotions (e.g., anger) better
- Address other mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, or substance misuse, that often co-occur with ADHD
References
- ADHD in Adults: An Overview. (2024, October 8). Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/articles/adhd-across-the-lifetime.html
- Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd
- Williams, O. C., Prasad, S., McCrary, A., Jordan, E., Sachdeva, V., Deva, S., Kumar, H., Mehta, J., Neupane, P., & Gupta, A. (2023). Adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a comprehensive review. Annals of medicine and surgery (2012), 85(5), 1802–1810. https://doi.org/10.1097/MS9.0000000000000631
- Soreff, S. (2022, March 31). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). MedScape. https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289350-overview#a6
- Kessler, R. (2006). The prevalence and correlates of adult ADHD in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163(4), 716. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.163.4.71
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). (n.d.). Table 7, DSM-IV to DSM-5 Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Comparison – DSM-5 Changes – NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/
- Jakobi, B., Arias-Vasquez, A., Hermans, E., Vlaming, P., Buitelaar, J., Franke, B., Hoogman, M., & Van Rooij, D. (2022). Neural correlates of reactive aggression in Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.840095
- Diagnosing ADHD. (2024, October 3). Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/diagnosis/index.html
- Wakelin, C., Willemse, M., & Munnik, E. (2023). A review of recent treatments for adults living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. South African Journal of Psychiatry, 29. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v29i0.2152
- General Prevalence of ADHD in Adults – CHADD. (2025, July 31). https://chadd.org/about-adhd/general-prevalence-adults/