Danika Today, I feel defeated.
I am so upset, angry, and tired. It’s hard to believe how much ignorance, lack of awareness, and lack of care still exist within the healthcare system in Quebec—and across Canada.
Disabled people should not be allowed to fall through the cracks and be denied proper care, especially when we know how dangerous that is. Fighting for our rights, for access to the services we pay for, should not be optional—it should be the baseline.
When disabled people turn to private clinics because the public system has failed them, they should be believed when they describe symptoms that are well-documented in scientific literature. Neurological symptoms should not be brushed aside simply because they do not match a stereotypical male presentation, or because the woman in front of them is not taken seriously.
A woman with ADHD and autistic traits who seeks help from a private clinic—because the public sector is inaccessible—should not have her symptoms reduced to “just anxiety,” especially when every aspect of her life is being negatively affected. ADHD is neurological. If a practitioner is not trained to address it, the next step should be referral to the appropriate specialist—such as a neurologist—not dismissal. Neurological testing should not be refused when a patient with neurological issues asks for it. A patient should not have to spend hours of their life while on medical leave searching through medical research just to get basic treatment. It should not take a pharmacist saying, “no more medication until testing is done,” for providers to stop pushing prescriptions.
If a clinic accepts a patient into its program, it has a responsibility to ensure continuity of care, especially during staff changes. They should not make their clients pay membership fees without ensuring ongoing treatment is available. A patient requesting and paying for documentation of their ADHD, and how they are disabled by it, should be able to trust the clinic to provide valid and complete paperwork without needing to check whether it was properly filled out to government standards. And if mistakes happen—because we are all human—that’s normal. But the clinic should take responsibility for fixing those mistakes so the patient can receive proper documentation.
A clinic advertising ADHD services should be able to recognize and treat ADHD presentations in women—including the common co-occurring conditions. If they cannot, then they are also unequipped to recognize ADHD in girls, which means those children will continue to be misdiagnosed or dismissed. That means they should not be allowed to offer ADHD services at all. Continuing to do so while overlooking these realities is misogynistic and ableist.
A private clinic specializing in ADHD cannot afford to overlook autistic traits, or fail to recognize autistic burnout—especially when screening tools clearly show them. Anxiety, in these cases, is often a natural consequence of untreated burnout and unsupported ADHD. To dismiss it all as “just anxiety” is not acceptable. And yet, in my personal experience, this is what happens.
I feel angry not only for myself, but for all women with ADHD in Canada who are denied care because of systemic negligence. This neglect doesn’t just harm individuals—it harms society. People with ADHD can be thriving employees and contributors when properly supported. But without recognition, accommodations, or treatment, they experience chronic stress that can lead to disability and work loss.
This needs to stop.
Together, we need to raise our voices. We need to call out the leadership in our health departments when we experience neglect from professionals. We deserve our rights to be respected. We deserve to be seen. We deserve to be treated with dignity, within our capacities—not forced to crawl just to survive because neurodivergence is still dismissed as “laziness” or a “caprice.”
