Julia Morris was moved to disclose a recent diagnosis during Monday night’s episode of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!
The 56-year-old host revealed she was diagnosed with ADHD in July, 2024.
She said it was not something she felt compelled to share publicly until Julia witnessed 2025 contestants Sigrid Thornton and Geraldine Hickey discussing their own experiences of being diagnosed later in life.
Speaking to her co-host Robert Irwin, Julia said ‘comics are very very honest but even I have not talked about being diagnosed in July last year.’
‘I have not talked about that publicly,’ she added. ‘At 56, it’s super confronting.’
Julia said it’s ‘taken an intense journey’ for her to try and connect all of her past experiences, behaviours and specific incidents to ADHD – and to understand how all those things are linked.
Julia Morris was moved to disclose a recent diagnosis during Monday night’s episode of I’m A Celebrity …Get Me Out of Here! Pictured with co-host Robert Irwin
The 56-year-old host revealed she was diagnosed with ADHD in July, 2024
‘It’s taken an intense journey to try and find… that’s not me being pushy or a show off or any of that sort of stuff,’ she said.
‘It’s not a hyperactivity thing. The hyperactivity is inside your brain. It’s not an inattentive thing. It’s all inside your brain.
‘It’s just the way the brain works.’
Julia told Robert she felt compelled to share her own story, however briefly, because, ‘There will be children and adults sitting at home watching and going, “Oh God, I think that way”.’
According to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), Australian girls and women are less frequently diagnosed with ADHD than men primarily because of ‘gendered stereotypes’ about what ADHD looks like.
Women tend to have more internalised symptoms of ADHD, like being disorganised, daydreaming, and having difficulty focusing – which are more easily missed.
The RANZCP also notes that it is common for females with ADHD to mask and hide their symptoms.
Sigrid Thornton, who entered the South African jungle on Sunday night,’ was speaking to her fellow camp mate Geraldine Hickey, during Monday night’s episode when she shared her own diagnosis has been ‘a source of shame.’
She said it was not something she felt compelled to share publicly until Julia witnessed 2025 contestants Sigrid Thornton and Geraldine Hickey discussing their own experiences of being diagnosed later in life.
‘This is a source of my shame actually, is not really being able to follow through with the people I care about, not my family, but my friends,’ Sigrid said to Geraldine, as the pair discussed some of the ADHD symptoms that often affect women.
The Man From Snowy River star, 65, said doctors had only diagnosed her with ADHD ‘about three or four months ago’.
The veteran Aussie actor said that for most of her life, she’d believed behaviours which are in fact symptoms of ADHD, were personality quirks, or her own failures.
‘Because I’ve had a very busy life for a long, long, long time, because I’ve had a sort of public life as well, there has always been a lot of different strands and demands and I thought, “well that is just it, that is all it is” and “I can’t sort of keep up.”
ADHD is considered a ‘neurodevelopmental’ disorder that is believed to impact one in 20 Australians.
‘It always caused me terrible embarrassment that I couldn’t keep up with all of those demands and I think that was very much to do with AD(HD),’ the Wentworth star continued.
‘I just had to let things drop but I would let something drop and then I would think about it every single day with guilt. It was a big burden … you can see, it was a big burden.’
Geraldine also suffers from ADHD, and was diagnosed a few years ago.
Welling up, Julia said she ‘loves hearing hearing those women talking about ADHD on the television.’
Robert nodded his head and listened as his co-host explained.
Julia related to Sigrid’s ‘exact’ example of forgetting to reply to messages from her friends for long stretches of time.
‘And I loved hearing Sigrid talk about her friends,’ she said.
‘Oh my God, the amount of friends I’ve got that have gone by the wayside ‘cause they just gave up on ever getting a return message [from me].’
‘So it’s great to hear some of those things talked about. I think it helps.’
