Jessica McCabe built How to ADHD from one simple fix
Jessica McCabe built How to ADHD because she kept losing notebooks, phones, and notes on living with ADHD. She chose YouTube as the one system she could not misplace. That personal fix became a 1.94-million-subscriber channel, a book, clinical partnerships, and a major mental health media brand discussed at VidCon 2026. Mashable caught up with the creator at VidCon 2026 for its Creator Playbook series, tracing how a private catalog of coping strategies turned into one of the internet's most trusted ADHD resources.
Key Takeaways
- McCabe started How to ADHD after realizing YouTube was the only place she could reliably store ADHD research she kept losing in notebooks and on phones.
- About a decade later, the channel has 1.94 million YouTube subscribers, 100,000 TikTok followers, a published book, and a second book in progress.
- Chief science officer Dr. Patrick LaCount now reviews every video, earning the channel YouTube's Health Shelf badge as a trusted provider.
- What began as a peer-to-peer community evolved into a full team, new content formats, and a shift toward one-to-many support after motherhood rewired her focus.
- McCabe spoke at the World Confederation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists Congress the day before VidCon, underscoring her reach beyond creator culture.
Why did Jessica McCabe start posting on YouTube?
McCabe told Mashable she lost notebooks, phones, and was even capable of losing "her own head," according to her mother. Whenever she wanted to revisit helpful articles, research, or her own notes on strategies for living with ADHD, she lacked an organizational system that made the information easy to find or remember.
Then she noticed a pattern. "Anytime I wanted to show people this one really funny video on YouTube, I could find it. So I was like, YouTube. I won't lose YouTube," she said. Thus, How to ADHD was born — not as a business plan, but as a workaround for the disorganization that defined her daily life.
That origin story fits neatly into the Nostalgia: Then & Now lens: a channel that began as a personal filing cabinet now shapes how millions understand neurodivergence. For the full interview, see Mashable's Creator Playbook feature.
How did a personal ADHD journal become a global brand?
About ten years after those first uploads, McCabe is no longer just cataloging tips for herself. She has 1.94 million subscribers on YouTube, 100,000 followers on TikTok, a book called How to ADHD, and a second book in progress. The day before Mashable spoke with her at VidCon 2026, she gave two presentations at the World Confederation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists Congress alongside doctors and research fellows in psychology and psychiatry.
Mashable describes her as both a mental health creator and a verifiable force in the global mental health community. The channel's evolution mirrors a broader shift in online media: what starts as a solo experiment can become infrastructure — complete with editors, producers, community managers, and clinical review — if the audience need is real enough.
How did McCabe keep the science accurate while posting every week?
Early research meant Googling questions like "I have ADD. What does that mean?" and discovering that the term had shifted to ADHD and that executive function — not just focus — was involved. Commenters eventually pointed her toward Google Scholar and PubMed, and researchers began offering help.
Today, Dr. Patrick LaCount serves as chief science officer and reviews everything before publication. That process helped earn the channel YouTube's Health Shelf badge, marking it as content from a trusted provider — a standard McCabe said is not universal across mental health channels. Before researchers joined, she channeled perfectionism toward accuracy but held a non-negotiable Tuesday publish deadline, a pace she later admitted was unsustainable when scripts grew longer and topics grew more complex.
What did the early How to ADHD workflow look like — and what broke?
McCabe originally planned to test one organization or cleaning strategy per week on camera. She quickly learned that cycle was not realistic. Instead, she settled on a repeatable format: introduce the problem, explain it, introduce the solution, explain it — filmed against a blue wall with graphics added later.
Speaking off the cuff failed because she was, in her words, "very hard to edit." Outlines caused her mind to go blank under pressure. As an actor who struggled to memorize lines but excelled at cold reading, she printed scripts in 36-point font on a whiteboard and developed the channel's punch-in, punch-out editing style to hide glances at the text. Those happy accidents became signature production choices.
When did she hire a team — and what did motherhood change?
Team-building started informally. Her then-boyfriend, an editor, added graphics while McCabe still waited tables; she hired him full-time before she could go full-time herself. After that relationship ended, she met collaborators at VidCon and eventually hired specialists — including someone to organize her digital files and a community manager who had volunteered on Discord for years.
Creator Dani Donovan recommended a recruiter who found their current producer, a hire McCabe wishes she had made sooner. She now prioritizes soft skills like collaboration and feedback over pure technical ability. Motherhood brought another inflection point: maternity leave, a brain "rewired" by new parenthood, and hyperfocus that no longer matched the old talking-head format. The channel responded with skits, home filming, and projects like inviting Cas from Clutterbug to reorganize her house.
How does McCabe balance audience connection with creator burnout?
McCabe began as a peer learning alongside her community. As the channel grew, responding to every comment and direct message became impossible — Facebook messages alone could pile up faster than she could reply. She evolved from one-to-one support toward content that speaks to shared struggles at scale, a shift she described as painful but necessary.
She is now launching one-on-one coaching sessions that will also be shared online so broader audiences benefit. Her hope for the mental health creator space is more partnerships between people with lived experience and researchers disseminating evidence-based information — not just "this worked for me," but "this works for many people, and it worked for me." She pointed audiences toward creators like Therapy in a Nutshell, Dr. Tracey Marks, and Daniel from The Aspie World.
What does VidCon 2026 tell us about where creators like McCabe are headed?
Mashable's sit-down at VidCon 2026 explored how the channel moved from a place to catalog personal findings into a full-fledged business. McCabe's trajectory — from losing her notes to presenting beside psychiatrists — shows how niche personal storytelling can graduate into professional mental health infrastructure without losing its relatability.
For viewers who discovered ADHD content during the platform's first wave of explainer channels, How to ADHD is both a time capsule and a living manual. The blue wall may be gone, but the core insight remains: sometimes the best system is the one your brain will actually use.