Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
If you are being assessed for attention, say something about your mood and your worry as well, even if nobody asks.
Anxiety and low mood sit alongside ADHD often enough that a thorough assessment will go looking for them anyway. But shame is quiet, and years of falling short teach people to present the tidy version. Half a sentence is enough to open it: I have been low for a long time, or the worry gets in my way more than the distraction does.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Call on Me and I will answer you (Quran 40:60). Asking is invited there rather than merely tolerated, which makes speaking up about the rest of it a little easier.
وَقَالَ رَبُّكُمُ ٱدۡعُونِيٓ أَسۡتَجِبۡ لَكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَسۡتَكۡبِرُونَ عَنۡ عِبَادَتِي سَيَدۡخُلُونَ جَهَنَّمَ دَاخِرِينَ
Your Lord says, ‘Call on Me and I will answer you; those who are too proud to serve Me will enter Hell humiliated.’
Qur’an 40:60read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A national survey of US children with a parent reported ADHD diagnosis found that most also had at least one other mental health or developmental condition. An assessment that stops at ADHD is therefore likely to be describing only part of what is going on. The figures are parent reported and from one country, so take them as a sign that co-occurrence is common rather than an exact rate.
Larson K, Russ SA, Kahn RS, Halfon N. (2011). Patterns of comorbidity, functioning, and service use for US children with ADHD, 2007.. Pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
What goes unmentioned goes untreated, and the mood is often the part causing most of the pain.
When not to
If you are having thoughts of ending your life, say that first and say it plainly, rather than saving it for the end of the appointment.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
One man put his lamps on a timer so the room would go dark at eleven and send him to bed. It worked for a few nights. Then he simply carried on in the dark. A cue can tell you the time. It cannot make you stand up.
Find out what they have tried before that did not work. It saves everybody from a plan that failed this person two years ago.
When someone says their heart races on their medication, ask whether it ever did before they started. It is the cheapest question you have and it usually sorts the answer out.