EVER have trouble remembering appointments or finishing a project once the challenging bits are done? Do you avoid tasks that require concentration? Are you fidgety after sitting still for long?

If you’ve answered “yes”, the World Health Organisation says that you may have adult ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

This may mean problems for your employer, says a new study. ADHD was thought to affect only children, but in the US it is now increasingly believed to persist into adulthood. Sceptics, though, suggest that the diagnosis is being stretched so that drug companies can sell even more behaviour-modifying drugs. Nevertheless, a new study by the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction claims that adult ADHD affects sufferers’ concentration so badly that they lose three weeks of work a year.

It says that the disorder also causes accidents and low job performance and suggests that it might be cost effective for employers to screen workers for ADHD and provide treatment.

The study of 7,075 workers in ten countries, in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, claims that an average of 3.5 per cent had ADHD. But workers in the Netherlands with ADHD actually showed improved job performance. The researchers couldn’t explain this, calling it a blip.

Maybe this shows what a loose diagnosis adult ADHD actually is. Symptoms resembling ADHD were first described in 1845 by Dr Heinrich Hoffman. But they weren’t thought a problem back when people were expected to do manual jobs or perform impulsive acts such as charging into gunfire.

Now that we’re expected to sit still and focus on organisational tasks, being fidgety can be a problem; sceptics say that this is why we are seeing an epidemic of ADHD diagnoses. Then again, being dull at your desk isn’t the best way to be creative or productive either.

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO