"Society tends to portray ADHD as either a blessing in disguise or something you should be ashamed of and try to overcome. But I want to change the conversation about ADHD—to shed light on the true, messy lived experience of my fellow ADHDers. The best and only way for me to do so is, in a word, write."
Drew Dakessian has freelanced for Verywell Mind since March 2023. She initially planned to pursue a career as a women's health blogger. Over time, though, Drew realized that her journalistic training, coupled with her identity as a woman with chronic and severe ADHD, might make her uniquely qualified to write about that disorder.
Drew Dakessian has a B.A. from the University of Oregon with a double major in newspaper and magazine journalism with minors in communication studies, English, and women's & gender studies and an M.A. in women, gender, and sexuality studies from Oregon State University with a concentration was gender and health justice.
Three months after starting graduate school, she delivered an original oral presentation, "The Treatment of Women with ADHD at OSU, PSU, and the U of O: A Diagnosis and a Prescription," at a symposium on health inequities that the university hosted. She also was the sole student member of a society dedicated to bringing a disability studies program to the school.
The title of her graduate thesis was "The Internet Usage Habits of Young Women with ADHD: Insights and Implications."
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