Too Busy or ADD?

It surprised exactly no one that your brother was diagnosed with ADD (now more commonly referred to as ADHD): He was always fidgeting, disrupting class and tearing up the room. Compared with him, your parents thought you were easy. In the 1980s and 1990s, eight times as many boys as girls sought help for ADHD, says J. Russell Ramsay, PhD, co-director of the Adult ADHD Treatment and Research Program at the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania.

Why it might be ADHD: There tends to be a strong genetic component to the disorder, so if one person in a family—like your brother or your son—is diagnosed with it, there's a 25 to 35 percent chance that any other family member has it, too. Since 2012, the greatest increase in usage of ADHD drugs comes from adult women. As more females are diagnosed, experts are learning more about how ADHD affects them: In childhood, for instance, girls are likely to be more inattentive and distracted—not necessarily the human mini-tornadoes we tend to picture.