In my clinic, I often work with high-powered professionals who are struggling with procrastination, inattention, difficulty engaging and lack an ability to focus or prioritize. My clients tell me how it impacts their quality of life, affects their ability to complete tasks, manage their time and even maintain relationships.

If you type all these symptoms into ‘Doctor Google’, you’d get back a pretty quick digital diagnosis: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, better known as ADHD.

Although it seems that ADHD is everywhere, the actual prevalence of formally diagnosed ADHD in Australian adults remains relatively low, between six-to-eight percent of the population. Instead, it’s the demand for a diagnosis of ADHD that has blown up.

A surge of self-diagnosis

According to the Australian Psychological Society, requests for ADHD assessments have surged by 350 percent in the last few years, and the number of prescribed medications has more than doubled in the past five years. It doesn’t mean ADHD is on the rise, it just means more people are hunting for a diagnosis. And sometimes they’re getting one.

We’re familiar with Doctor Google and the stress and anxiety it can erroneously inflict. But there’s a new digital ‘doctor’ on the block – Doctor TikTok. On TikTok, #ADHD has garnered more than 36 billion views.

Celebrities like Abby Chatfield, Paris Hilton and Robbie Williams have also shared their own experiences with the condition. This collision of social media engagement and celebrity spotlighting has driven a wave of self-diagnosis and increased demand for assessments.

Due to the soaring demand for a diagnosis, wait times for assessments in many parts of the world have blown out to a year, sometimes two. Some people are forced to travel interstate or pay costly fees to access private doctors.

There are limited appointments and limited medical professionals who can prescribe the life-changing medication, and this soaring demand is making it more difficult for those who are truly debilitated by the condition, including children and their families.

The zeitgeist’s disorder

Trending diagnoses isn’t a new phenomenon. In the 1990s, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), became the flavor of the month.

People still casually drop into conversation that they’re ‘so OCD’ when what they mean is they’re neat freaks. They’ve never actually experienced the distressing intrusive thoughts that characterize the disorder.

If we go even further back to the 18th century, gout was the trendy condition to have because it had suggestions of overconsumption – a status symbol in aristocratic circles. ADHD is undergoing a similar PR transformation. No longer the ‘naughty boy’ syndrome, ADHD is now being seen as the reason people are being held back.

Throw in a good dose of social contagion and confirmation bias and the result is a tidal wave of self-diagnosis, appointments for professional assessments and people streaming their findings to their online audience.

In my clinic, I work with many high-powered professionals who have been recently diagnosed with ADHD, some who are waiting to be assessed and others who aren’t on the ADHD diagnosis pathway.

What I have observed is the behaviors of people with a diagnosis and those without are remarkably similar and they’re all struggling with the same thing – disorganization, forgetfulness and procrastination. These symptoms aren’t exclusive to ADHD.

A better alternative

We are living in the most digitally connected time in history. We are bombarded with information, notifications, marketing – they’re all demanding our attention. But our brains haven’t evolved to cope; we are still operating with the same biological hardware that we had prior to smartphones, emails, social media and endless doomscrolling.

Our concentration isn’t just determined by our neurobiology, it’s influenced by mental load, stress and environmental factors. We’re also prone to reverse engineer our diagnoses – meaning if we believe we have ADHD, we will seek out information that confirms it and fall into the confirmation bias trap.

The reality is stress, poor sleep, anxiety, burnout or information overload – all of which are at an all-time high – can also result in difficulty concentrating, procrastinating and forgetfulness.

People with ADHD can really struggle, and for those people an expert diagnosis with a treatment plan is crucial. But with or without a diagnosis, we can all find mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises, time management strategies, physical activity and time outdoors helpful, and they’re all strategies most of us can employ in our lives.

In this era of digital self-diagnosis, and a hyperawareness of conditions thanks to trending diagnoses on social media, it’s important to remember that not all struggles equal a clinical condition. And the associated surge in people seeking a diagnosis is blowing out wait times for doctors for the people who truly need to see them and access treatment.

So we should be asking ourselves – are we all ADHD, or are we just living in an attention-saturated world that is driving us to distraction?

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.