Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Find out what they have tried before that did not work. It saves everybody from a plan that failed this person two years ago.
Most people arriving for an assessment have been trying things for years: apps, alarms, lists, an early night, a course somebody recommended. Repeating one of those without knowing it already failed costs months, and it quietly confirms the belief that nothing will ever help. Ask early, and ask what happened rather than whether they stuck at it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Conduct their affairs by mutual consultation (Quran 42:38). Consultation means the other person's experience is part of the decision rather than a courtesy before it.
وَٱلَّذِينَ ٱسۡتَجَابُواْ لِرَبِّهِمۡ وَأَقَامُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَمۡرُهُمۡ شُورَىٰ بَيۡنَهُمۡ وَمِمَّا رَزَقۡنَٰهُمۡ يُنفِقُونَ
respond to their Lord; keep up the prayer; conduct their affairs by mutual consultation; give to others out of what We have provided for them
Qur’an 42:38read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review with indirect comparison found few head to head trials of medications for adults with ADHD and no clear single winner, so first choices rest largely on indirect evidence. Where the general evidence cannot choose for you, what this particular person has already tried carries real weight. The review covers medication rather than everything else people attempt, though the reasoning transfers.
Peterson K, McDonagh MS, Fu R. (2008). Comparative benefits and harms of competing medications for adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review and indirect comparison meta-analysis.. Psychopharmacology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A person's own record of what did not work is information you cannot get anywhere else.
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
A distracted person can be brought back with a nudge. Someone who has gone elsewhere cannot, and the difference shows itself in a couple of seconds.
Hyperactivity and impulsiveness almost never turn up alone. When restlessness appears with no attention difficulty beside it, that is a reason to ask what else might be going on.
When something did not get done, find out which half broke. Did they not know what to do or when? Or was the plan fine, and the moment for doing it came and went?