My interest in this topic is rooted in both personal experience and years of working in primary health care. Like many women, I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life. That diagnosis reshaped how I understood my own history and it gave me a keen awareness of the patterns I had been witnessing for years in my clinical work as nurse and midwife.

Much of that work took place within the Australian Nurse Family Partnership Program, where I supported First Nations mothers from pregnancy until their child turned two. Continuity of care over such a long period created space for deep relationships to form. Mothers shared their childhood memories, adolescent challenges, and the realities of parenting. I often met multiple generations within the same family, and across these stories I began to see recurring themes: self-doubt, shame, coping strategies that had developed in response to years of feeling misunderstood, many women experienced trauma, and some shared comorbidities.

I advocated fiercely for these women, writing support letters, helping them navigate complex systems, and walking beside them as they sought assessment or diagnosis. Some were successful, but many encountered significant gatekeeping. Symptoms were dismissed, previous diagnosis were rarely reconsidered, and vulnerable women were often left without the support they needed. Misdiagnosis and dismissal were not isolated events; they were patterns.

Although I loved my work and the families I supported, I could only walk alongside a small caseload at any given time. The similarities in their experiences, combined with my own diagnosis, compelled me to look deeper. This led to my final Master of Primary Maternity Care project, where I conducted the literature review that ultimately became this paper. Roslyn Donnellan-Fernandez was my supervising professor and she supported me both in my writing and in the publication process.

With both sadness and excitement, I stepped away from clinical practice and into academia as an Associate Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Southern Queensland. I made a quite promise to the mothers I had supported: that I would continue this work through research, to connect the dots, to amplify their experiences, and to help improve the understanding and awareness of health professionals working with women across the lifespan.

This paper is one step in that journey. My long-term goal is to contribute to greater health equity for vulnerable women and for those living with neurodiversity. I am now planning to pursue a PhD, driven by the same commitment that began in those homes, sitting beside mothers who deserved to be heard, believed and supported.

Read the full paper here, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12905-025-04123-1