I'm reluctant to blame anything besides increased awareness for any increase in diagnosis.

I didn't discover that I had it until I was almost 40, and I'm sure many others my age STILL don't realize that they have it.

I think a bit part of it is that it's simply become harder to live with ADHD and for it to stay under the radar in your life. Rare is the person who can survive in the modern world purely on their wits. It demands that you persevere at jobs, careers and relationships over long timespans, and against an onslaught of things which have been relentlessly developed and refined over generations with the express purpose of hijacking your dopamine system and interfering with your free will.

AFAIK, ADHD is something you're born with. The things you list make it more difficult to live with ADHD, but they don't create it.

I blame that the world, especially work, is more unforgiving of ADHD traits. Scatterbrained-ness isn't as much of a deal in agriculture (where you usually can course-correct in time, I'd imagine) or monotonous factory repetition (of course it probably really sucks for ADHD-Hs for... well... monotonous repetition), but definitely is in an office environment. Also so many things now prey on your attention in constantly developing ways (all the ads trying to sell you things, just about every online service, streaming services, social media) that it scrambles even NT peoples' brains, so of course it only makes it harder for ADHDers.

People caught on that girls and women can have it too and that they can be better at masking than anticipated. Nobody bothered to check me when I had all the symptoms for all my childhood and adolescence. It took me connecting the dots after age 30 to get the diagnosis.

• larger percent of people going for diagnosis
• better & more reliable diagnostics
• understanding that men arent the only ones susceptible to adhd
• understanding that adhd doesnt present identically across all populations
• better awareness in general of neurological differences