By Richard LeComte
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Research accounts published in popular journals help to get information out to the public, particularly when the research explores under-examined areas of women’s health. So Michelle Martel jumped at the chance to see her research on how menstrual cycles affect ADHD symptoms written up in Scientific American magazine.
“I personally was excited about it, because I have a big emphasis on disseminating my work,” said Martel, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Psychology in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences. “My experience with Scientific American was really good; they sent me preprints and like ran everything by me to make sure that it was all accurate. I appreciated that.”
The article by Kelso Harper, “How Menstrual Periods Can Affect ADHD Symptoms and Treatment,” appeared in the May print issue and online in January. The article grew out of Martel’s report of preliminary findings at the U.S. Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress in 2024, which led the author to contact her. The article’s author notes that Martel hasn’t yet published her findings in a refereed journal.
“I gave a presentation at Psychiatric Congress on this topic as a keynote,” said Martel, who ran a preliminary study on the topic in 2018. “This article has been a long time coming in some ways, because she (the writer) started working on this back in October, and I sent her some of our preliminary work that is published as well as some of the preliminary findings and slides from the talk. Some version of this went online, and then we found out it was going in the print magazine.”
The article outlines Martel’s findings that ADHD symptoms — heretofore considered unchanging — fluctuated among 97 college women according to where they were in their cycle. Martel noted that drops in estradiol, the most prominent form of estrogen, seem to be a factor in the changes. Symptoms can include inattention and impulsivity.
"What's cool about our newest findings is that it challenges this long held notion that ADHD is a trait that's stable over time,” she said. “We found these changes in a small pilot sample of women without ADHD, which allowed us to get the large grant to study a larger population of women with ADHD.
“We found that ADHD symptoms actually fluctuate substantially in a clinically significant way across the menstrual cycle and are particularly high during the second half of the cycle. During the luteal phase, specifically right around and just after ovulation, and at the very end of the cycle, before menstruation begins or before bleeding begins as estrogen is declining, we see increases in symptoms.”
In advance of publishing in a refereed journal, Martel’s talk at the congress and the Scientific American article may encourage psychiatrists to begin considering altering drug doses given to women with ADHD during their cycles. Martel noted that one of the reasons she spoke at the Psychiatric Congress was to encourage psychiatrists to re-evaluate the prescribed doses of ADHD.
"These studies have dramatic assessment and treatment implications,” she said. “We should be paying attention to these things when we're doing assessments, and then also we may want to change our treatments or personalize our treatments based on where women and girls are at across their lifespan.”
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R01MH119119 and R01MH134859. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.