PMDD and ADHD: how often they show up together

In a UK survey and a Dutch one on PMDD and ADHD, women with ADHD screened positive for provisional PMDD more often than comparison groups. But these were one-time questionnaires about past cycles, not the daily ratings over two cycles a diagnosis needs, and recruitment may have pushed the rates up. So how often they truly occur together is unknown.

What the PMDD and ADHD studies actually measured

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, is diagnosed from daily symptom ratings kept over at least two menstrual cycles. That matters for everything that follows. Broughton (2025), Dorani (2021) and Groenman (2026) each asked people once, by questionnaire, to recall their premenstrual symptoms. Not one of them followed anyone day by day across two cycles. That's why this article says people screened positive, never that anyone was diagnosed.

So what Broughton and Groenman measured is provisional PMDD: a positive result on a screening questionnaire. Dorani's team describe theirs as only an indication of PMDD. It hints at PMDD, but it isn't a diagnosis. Broughton's team point out that looking back like this tends to produce false positives, so some people they counted may not meet the full criteria. Groenman's team add that their questionnaire can't map the monthly pattern of PMDD and isn't meant for diagnosis.

There's a second problem: overlap. Groenman's team note that some PMDD symptoms look a lot like core ADHD traits. Broughton's team say they couldn't separate PMDD from ADHD, depression or anxiety simply getting worse before a period.

How ADHD was known differs between the studies, too. In Broughton (2025) and Groenman (2026), people told the researchers whether they had ADHD, and nobody checked it. In Dorani (2021), the women were patients at an adult ADHD clinic, so their diagnosis came from the clinic. Keep both points in mind whenever you see a figure for how often the two go together. Whether ADHD symptoms themselves change across the month is a separate question, covered in ADHD and the menstrual cycle: what we know.

How often did women with ADHD screen positive for PMDD?

Broughton (2025) ran an online survey of 715 people in the UK aged 18 to 34, all assigned female at birth. Some said a clinician had diagnosed them with ADHD. Others scored above a cut-off on an ADHD symptom questionnaire. Provisional PMDD showed up in 31.4% of those who reported an ADHD diagnosis, compared with 9.8% of the comparison group without ADHD. The group who met the questionnaire cut-off screened positive even more often, and the rate was highest among people who also reported a clinician's diagnosis of depression or anxiety. Among those who screened positive, symptoms looked much the same with or without ADHD, except that the ADHD groups more often reported trouble sleeping.

The authors say they deliberately recruited lots of people with ADHD, and that the survey's description, which mentioned mood changes across the cycle, may have drawn people who felt it applied to them.

Dorani (2021) studied 209 women aged 18 to 71 who were patients at an adult ADHD clinic in the Netherlands. A high share gave answers pointing to PMDD, and older women answered from memory. The authors compared this with a general-population study from other countries and said it seemed high, but they didn't test the difference and warn against leaning on it. They also say their results can't show whether this is specific to ADHD or shared by women with psychiatric conditions in general. For why ADHD in women can go unrecognized in the first place, see ADHD in women and girls: why it can be missed.

Why the rates in one study varied so much

Groenman (2026) surveyed 199 women aged 20 to 40 in the Netherlands who weren't using hormonal contraception, and who said for themselves whether they had ADHD, autism or neither. Women in the ADHD group screened positive for provisional PMDD far more often than the comparison group.

The catch is how people were found. The participants came from two separately recruited samples. Most were from a study advertised as being about premenstrual experiences; a smaller group came from a study about sleep. Women without ADHD or autism in the premenstrual study screened positive at a rate close to the ADHD group's. Those in the sleep study almost never did. The authors put this down to how people were recruited, including the wording of the ad and possibly social media algorithms. They say their PMDD rates aren't reliable, while still saying the size of the group differences suggests real premenstrual difficulties in neurodivergent women.

Broughton's team raised the same recruitment concern about their own survey. That's why no single percentage in this article should be read as the answer. The true rate is still an open question, and an open question isn't a settled answer either way.

Try this today: If mood changes before a period ever feel severe, write one sentence about what happens and bring it to your next appointment with a clinician.

Severe mood symptoms before a period are something to take to a clinician. Only a clinician can diagnose ADHD or PMDD, and only a clinician can talk through what might help.