Why So Many Nurses with ADHD or Autism Are Burning Out (And What Actually Helps)

If you're a nurse and you've been wondering why work feels so much harder for you than it seems to for your coworkers, you're not imagining it. A 2025 study out of Sweden looked specifically at nurses with ADHD and autism, and the results put some numbers behind a lot of what I hear from clients every week.

Here's the TLDR; Researchers surveyed 99 nurses who had been formally diagnosed with ADHD, autism, or both. What they found wasn't exactly shocking to anyone living it, but it was still pretty big. Nurses had high workloads with low support from managers. There was a weak sense of community with coworkers, and perceived health that landed noticeably below average.

This part truly caught my attention as a therapist who specializes in neurodiversity and has lived experience: satisfaction with patient care stayed high across the board. These nurses aren't struggling because they're bad at nursing. Instead, people (especially women) are struggling because the systems around them weren't built with their brains in mind.

What the Research Actually Found

The study, published in Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, focused on a specific slice of the nursing workforce that almost never gets studied. Most of the participants had ADHD only. A smaller group had autism only, and another group had both.

Here are a few findings worth thinking about:

More than half the nurses in the study had taken extended sick leave for mental health reasons at some point in their careers. Some were still on leave when they filled out the survey.

Over 60% said they planned to leave their current job or the nursing profession entirely within five years. Compare that to general nursing populations, where intention-to-leave numbers run closer to 20%.

More than a third hadn't told their manager about their diagnosis at all.

There was a clear link between inattention (a core ADHD trait) and how overwhelming the workload felt. The more someone struggled with organizing tasks and staying on top of things, the more crushing the quantitative demands of the job felt to them. This held true even after researchers controlled for whether someone had an ADHD diagnosis, an autism diagnosis, or both. In other words, the trait mattered more than the label.

For nurses with more autistic traits, especially social anxiety, perceived health tended to be lower. Nursing is a job built on constant social interaction. Reading a room, managing a family's expectations, working shoulder to shoulder with a rotating cast of colleagues. That's a lot to ask of a nervous system that processes social information differently.

Why This Hits Different If You're a Nurse

Nursing already asks a lot. You're expected to be organized, empathetic, quick on your feet, and calm under pressure, often all at once, often during a twelve hour shift with no real break. If your brain works differently than a neurotypical brain, that baseline difficulty gets multiplied.

A lot of nurses with ADHD or autism don't find out until later in life. Maybe you got through nursing school on caffeine and sheer willpower. Maybe you've always felt like you were working twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up, and you chalked it up to being disorganized or too sensitive. That's a common story, especially for women, who are diagnosed with ADHD far less often and far later than men. Your success in school led you to mask some of your struggles.

Does any of this sound familiar? It’s not a character flaw, or laziness, or something where you need to “try harder".” Rather, it's a mismatch between how your brain works and how the workplace is structured.

The Part Nobody Talks About: Masking

One detail in the study really jumped out at me. More than a third of the nurses hadn't disclosed their diagnosis to their manager. That number probably reflects something a lot of my clients describe: the fear that being honest about ADHD or autism at work will change how people see them. My clients share their worries about fewer opportunities, quiet judgment and being treated as less capable, even when the work itself is going fine.

So instead, a lot of nurses mask (literally and emotionally). They push through disorganization without asking for help or they script small talk in the break room. They white-knuckle through sensory overload on a loud, chaotic unit. Masking works, for a while but it's exhausting, and it's one of the biggest drivers of burnout I see in session.

What Actually Helps

This is where I want to be honest with you. No amount of therapy is going to fix a broken staffing model or force a hospital to redesign shift structures overnight. That's a systemic problem, and the researchers behind this study are right to point out that employers need to do better.

However, there's real work that happens in therapy that makes a difference, even inside an imperfect system.

Understanding your own brain. A lot of adults come to therapy after years of assuming they were just lazy, disorganized, or too much. Getting a clearer picture of how ADHD or autism actually shows up for you, not the textbook version, but your version, changes how you talk to yourself. That shift alone reduces shame in a big way.

Building systems that actually fit you. Generic productivity advice rarely works for ADHD brains. We work on strategies that are built around how you actually function, not how a planner app assumes everyone functions.

Untangling the anxiety from the ADHD. Chronic overwhelm at work often turns into anxiety that sticks around even on your days off. Therapy helps you tell the difference between "this is my ADHD" and "this is anxiety I've picked up from years of feeling behind," because they need different tools.

Deciding what to disclose, and to whom. There's no universal right answer here. Some clients decide to talk to their manager. Others decide not to, for good reason. Either way, it helps to make that decision on purpose instead of by default.

Processing burnout without minimizing it. If you're one of the many nurses who's already taken leave, or you're circling the idea of leaving the profession altogether, that deserves real space. Not a pep talk. Real space to figure out what you actually want.

You Are NOT the Problem

If you've spent years wondering why the job feels heavier for you than it seems to for everyone else, this study is one more piece of evidence that you're not the outlier you think you are. The workplace wasn't built for the way your brain works, and that's a structural issue, not something personally wrong with you.

Therapy can't redesign the hospital floor plan, but it can help you stop carrying blame that was never yours to begin with, and it can give you tools that actually make sense for how you think.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ADHD common among nurses?

Research suggests ADHD rates in adults run higher than most people assume, and nursing's demanding, fast-paced environment can make undiagnosed ADHD more noticeable. Many nurses aren't diagnosed until adulthood, often after years of attributing their struggles to personality rather than neurology.

Can autism go undiagnosed until adulthood, especially in nurses?

Yes. Autism often looks different in adults, particularly women, who tend to mask symptoms more effectively than they're given credit for. Many people don't get diagnosed until a major life stressor, like the demands of a nursing career, makes masking harder to sustain.

Does therapy help with ADHD-related burnout?

Therapy won't change your work environment, but it can help you build coping systems suited to your brain, process the shame that often builds up around ADHD, and figure out sustainable next steps, whether that means staying in your role or making a change.

I think I might have undiagnosed ADHD or autism. Where do I start?

A conversation with a therapist is a reasonable first step, especially one who specializes in ADHD in adults. From there, you can talk through whether a formal evaluation makes sense and what kind of support would actually help day to day.

Ready to Talk to Someone Who Gets It?

If you're a nurse (or work in any high-demand field) and you're exhausted by feeling like you're falling behind no matter how hard you try, you don't have to figure this out alone. I work with adults across New Jersey, virtually, and I specialize in ADHD, anxiety, and burnout in high-pressure careers.

Schedule a free consultation with Perspectiva Counseling and let's talk about what support could actually look like for you.

Source: Hedlund, Å., & Jordal, M. (2025). What about neurodiversity among nurses? A cross-sectional exploration of work environment and health among nurses with ADHD and/or autism. Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, 80(3), 1287-1295.