WOMEN and girls in Scotland are missing ADHD diagnoses amid “decades of underfunding,” a professor has argued.

University College London research found that between 2000 and 2018, men across the UK were 3.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with the condition than women.

But a new study co-authored by professor Helen Minnis, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, suggests the explanation for the disparity could lie in methodology, not nature.

Professor Minnis said: “There’s a lot of speculation about whether girls mask more.

“The clinical measures that we use to diagnose ADHD just were perhaps not really designed to be thinking about girls, so we need to be better at identifying ADHD in girls at a younger age.

“We have really excellent clinicians in Scotland, and it’s so frustrating that the services are so stretched that often they are just seeing emergencies.

“I think there’s real will from the Scottish government, the problem is that there’s been decades of underfunding.”

Welcoming the study, a Scottish government spokesperson said: “We will continue to engage with all stakeholders on these issues.”