Live updates: Em Rusciano to spotlight ADHD at National Press Club as our experts answer your questions
National Press Club #NationalPressClub
Got a question about ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Join our expert panel as they answer your burning questions following Em Rusciano’s National Press Club address.
Follow our live blog for the latest updates.
1m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:34am
By Jessica Riga
What was the biggest challenge Em Rusciano faced when getting diagnosed for ADHD?
What was the biggest challenge when getting diagnosed? – Jess
Here’s Em Rusciano:
“GETTING DIAGNOSED! It is literally the least ADHD friendly process imaginable.
“It seems like every psychiatrist is booked out until the year 3000, and you have to hope that first your doctor and then the person who is testing you actually believe in Adult ADHD — yes, believe it or not some don’t…”
2m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:33am
By Jessica Riga
What are some of the best ways I can help a neurodivergent friend?
What are some of the best ways a neurotypical person can best support their neurodivergent friend? – Amy
Hi Amy, thanks for writing in.
Here’s what Professor Mark Bellgrove recommends:
Educate yourself to understand ADHD and its symptoms and how it presents. Be careful with your language so that you don’t unwittingly use stigmatising language. Be yourself and relax around them.
You can check out an ADHD language guide here.
5m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:30am
By Jessica Riga
Why is it so expensive to get an ADHD diagnosis?
Why is it so expensive to get a diagnosis? I had to pay over $500 for a 15 minute session with a psychologist, just to be told to wait 3 months before I can see a psychiatrist to get any treatment. I can afford it as I work full time but I fear for those more disadvantaged than me. – Oscar
Hi Oscar, thanks for your question. Here’s what Professor Mark Bellgrove had to say.
This is an ongoing problem. Psychiatrists and pediatricians and psychologists are all highly qualified professionals, so the fees are similar to what you might pay to see any other professional for a medical or psychological appointment. The waittimes are due to there being too few qualified professionals to keep up with demand. This is particularly true of adult psychiatry. This is something we are looking to address across the board, including upskilling GPs.
6m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:29am
By Jessica Riga
What advice would Em Rusciano give to someone who has just been diagnosed with ADHD?
What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone who has just been diagnosed with ADHD? – Lisa
Em Rusciano says to “be really curious about it.”
“For me if I don’t stay curious I get anxious. Research it, find others people like you online and in your life.”
8m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:27am
By Jessica Riga
Right, let’s start our Q&A!
We’ve got heaps of questions so far (thanks everyone!) so we’ll get to those now.
You can keep submitting your questions using the big blue button above.
And just as a reminder, here’s who is making up our expert panel:
15m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:20am
By Jessica Riga
Em Rusciano has performed to bigger audiences. Why was this speech so confronting?
Em is now answering some questions from the media in the room.
“This was terrifying, because when I am doing stand-up and on stage, people pay to be there. They have chosen me, these people haven’t!” she laughs.
“I hope today that perhaps it has reached one or two people that maybe work with some person with autism or ADHD or anything under that umbrella of neurodivergent people and maybe it will change the perspective of them and see the strengths and make things kinder and easier.”
19m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:17am
By Jessica Riga
Some thoughts from you on Em Rusciano’s speech
Sitting here crying while watching this. Thank you. – Marcus
Thank you so much Em for shining a light on what ADHD really looks like. It’s so important to have public voices like yours normalising it neurodivergence. – Corrine
I’m in tears. Having someone telling this story – her story, but also my story and the story of so many women – at the National Press Club is giving me all the feels. ADHD is such a stigmatised and often dismissed condition; this sort of event validating and making public our struggles is such a gift. Thank you Em, and the rest of the team. – Elissa
This is just a joy to watch. – Claire
I am so lost for words. Em ThankYou .this was beautiful, messy, honest, raw and I’m so grateful. After a diagnosis for a teen girl at 16 ( you are so right about health system, support and schools). To say it’s tough is so simplistic. At 52, my diagnosis now makes so much sense but the grief for loss is so profound. Just ThankYou. – Michelle
20m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:15am
By Jessica Riga
‘I wanted to make sure you get it’
“The reason that I eventually agreed to give the speech was that I wanted to make sure that all of you here today, and everyone watching from wherever you are, I wanted to make sure that you get it. That more people get it,” Em says.
“I have learned systems and strategies to survive in the world as it is, but my son and other kids like him cannot yet learn the same strategies. And maybe there never will.
“I ask you all, the next time that my son or another kid comes up to you and roars, don’t be alarmed on the ground to help. Don’t treat them like there is something wrong with them.
“Be bigger than that, be better than that.”
That’s it for Em Rusciano’s National Press Club speech, but she’s now going to take a couple questions from the media in the room.
THEN we’ll get into YOUR questions for Em and our experts.
So, what did you think of Em’s speech? Let us know!
23m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:12am
By Jessica Riga
Lots of you are relating to Em’s speech in our comments
Em, are you in my brain?
– Lee
Thanks for your comment, Lee!
25m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:10am
By Jessica Riga
If you think it’s hard getting an ADHD diagnosis, Em Rusciano gets it
Em Rusciano says getting diagnosed with ADHD is the least friendly ADHD process you can possibly imagine.
“Finding a doctor that you can actually get an appointment with, I had to ring three weeks in advance to see my GP. And what if your GP doesn’t necessarily believe in ADHD for adults?
“And then you have to try and get an appointment with a psychiatrist!”
She says in Australia it’s “nearly impossible” to get an ADHD diagnosis.
“I could have given a whole lot of speech about how broken our mental health system is,” she says.
28m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:07am
By Jessica Riga
Key Event
Em Rusciano on the grief of her ADHD diagnosis
“Speaking publicly about my postnatal depression in Perth certainly set me in the right path but up until my diagnosis, I always had the general feeling of being out of place and not in control of the way I walk through life.
She says being diagnosed with ADHD at 42 profoundly changed her core beliefs.
“I was forced to peel back a carefully constructed layer after layer times, it revealed the terrifying fragility.”
She also says she experienced grief.
“I felt a deep sadness. For that precocious, curious, and chaotic 10-year-old girl who desperately wanted to get things right, the girl who tried hard all the time.”
31m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:04am
By Jessica Riga
Em Rusciano discusses her experience with postnatal depression
There’s been A LOT of laughter throughout Em Rusciano’s speech, but discussing her experience with postnatal depression is where Em has started to choke up.
She says announcing she had postnatal depression on breakfast radio was one of the biggest turning points in her life.
“I was met with so much love and support from our listeners. And I told the absolute truth. I was radically honest about how I was feeling. I was completely myself and the sky hadn’t fallen in,” Em says.
“The person who been told to play a smaller version of herself on air, who have been told that she was too loud and too opinionated, the one who spent her entire life asking her true self, stop existing that day.”
36m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 3:00am
By Jessica Riga
Key Event
Why did so many people realise they might have ADHD during lockdown?
Em Rusciano says she can only speak for herself, but she says she was forced to face it because her usual routine had been taken away, which exacerbated her undiagnosed ADHD symptoms.
“I had built a house of cards of coping mechanisms that got smashed to the ground, and I took myself off to my doctor.”
She says lockdown forced a lot of us to turn to social media as our only means of connection.
“A lot of us started talking about our super-niche weird symptoms, exhausting things, and then when we found a whole community of other like-minded individuals, we flocked together and we made TikToks and Instagrams. Let us have that! And if some of you are so sick of seeing it, oh, imagine living with that.”
38m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:57am
By Jessica Riga
In case you’re wondering what AFAB means…
Em Rusciano has been using the term AFAB, so if you’re a bit confused, it stands for assigned female at birth.
Which means AMAB is assigned male at birth.
40m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:55am
By Jessica Riga
Em Rusciano addresses claims that ADHD is just ‘a fad’
Some of you might really relate to this next part.
Em Rusciano says when she told one friend she had ADHD he replied along the lines of: “Oh, God! Why does everyone I know suddenly have that. Eurgh! It’s all over Insta and TikTok. I’m so sick of it.”
“Are you, mate?” Em replies.
“There has been an uptick in late diagnosis of ADHD in women and the AFAB community in the last couple of years, so much in fact that many people have referred to it as a fad. To my face.”
To her face! Can you believe it.
43m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:52am
By Jessica Riga
Em Rusciano addresses the ‘symptom recognition bias’ of ADHD
Em Rusciano says “girls and people assigned female at birth are chronically underdiagnosed with ADHD.”
“Certainly when I was at school, it was only the boys who would get picked up and diagnosed.
“There was a symptom recognition bias that developed towards the hyper, disruptive behaviour which boys with ADHD tend to exhibit. Girls and AFAB people typically have different symptoms, those associated with the inattentive subtype of ADHD, like shyness, inattentiveness, day-dreaming, perfectionism, pleasing.”
She adds that people of colour and other marginalised communities are also underdiagnosed as they don’t fit the stereotypical ‘white hyperactive schoolboy disrupting the class.’
47m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:48am
By Jessica Riga
Em Rusciano on being considered ‘not neurodivergent enough’
Em Rusciano says when she was first diagnosed, she was accused of not being “neurodivergent enough”
“Because I, apparently, appeared to be living a life in an unimpaired way,” she says.
“If only people could see what went on in my head. People are very good at masking. It’s why we’re exhausted all the time.”
She says the term is complex and nuanced.
“I certainly don’t understand the challenges that other neurodivergent people go through, but I just want to remind everyone it’s not a competition and it’s not a race, any of us asked to be in.”
50m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:45am
By Jessica Riga
‘Being neurodivergent isn’t something to be fixed or cured’
“I have learned that the concept of neurodiversity is a really complex one,” Em says.
“Those who believe in it, feel that neurological differences should be recognised and respected as a social category.
“Like ethnicity or sexual orientation, that being neurodivergent is part of who a person is and not something to be fixed or cured.”
52m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:43am
By Jessica Riga
Key Event
‘For once in my life, I aced a test’: Em Rusciano
“So as instructed, I went to have my iron and hormone levels checked and my brain tested as well and I got 2 out of 3. My iron levels from at an 11 — that’s not great. And the neurobiological testing showed that I was really ADHD,” Em says.
“I now know that low iron is common in people with ADHD, especially in those of us who menstruate and anaemia makes your ADHD symptoms worse, especially in the two weeks up to your cycle starting.
“For once in my life, I nearly aced a test. I got a near perfect score in the ADHD exam. I even missed answering a few questions because I got distracted.”
53m agoWed 24 Aug 2022 at 2:42am
By Jessica Riga
Key Event
ADHD and the shame surrounding it
“I’ve since learned that women and assigned female at birth, people with undiagnosed ADHD experience anxiety and depression at a higher rate than the rest of the population,” Em says.
“Why? Because of the shame that consumes them when they can’t keep up with what society expects of them. We spend a lot of time overcompensating, trying and mostly failing to do it all, which is an exhausting concept for anyone.”
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