ADHD: What Your Treatment Experience Can Teach Research

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

ADHD treatment is personal in a way few treatments are: which medicine, which dose, at what time of day, how it affects sleep, appetite and mood, and what else helps alongside it. It can take several tries before something fits, and some people are only diagnosed as adults, after years of explanations that did not fit. That lived experience, recorded carefully, is exactly what research on ADHD in adults needs more of.

How many people live with it

A global study estimated that, adjusting for the world's population in 2020, the prevalence of persistent adult ADHD was 2.58% and that of symptomatic adult ADHD was 6.76%, translating to 139.84 million and 366.33 million affected adults. In other words, well over a hundred million adults have ADHD that began in childhood, and more have its symptoms as adults.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on ADHD describes how treatment is meant to be followed, and each step leaves a record:

• Rating scales: standard symptom and adverse effect rating scales for clinical assessment and throughout the course of treatment. A series of scores shows how treatment is working over time.
• A medication review at least once a year, to decide whether medication should continue, and every change of medicine or dose in your prescription history.
• Heart rate and blood pressure before and after each dose change and every 6 months, and weight every 6 months in adults.
• A sleep diary: NICE asks clinicians to monitor changes in sleep pattern, for example with a sleep diary, and adjust medication accordingly.

If you have your assessment report, rating scales or prescription history, they turn your account into data research can use with confidence. If you do not, ask your clinic for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete ADHD story with a year of the records the guideline lists comes to about $108 per licence on the benchmark today. With four rating-scale results and 60 entries of a sleep or symptom diary added, it comes to about $297 per licence, because repeated, validated scores and day-by-day notes are measured data that shows which treatments work for whom. Every line and its source is on the ADHD page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, including how long it took to get a diagnosis, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every medicine and approach you tried. You can add your assessment report, prescriptions and diary pages as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. If you are the parent of a child with ADHD, you can share their story for them. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.