Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Nearly everything on the ADHD list can show up inside a bipolar presentation, and the reverse is not true. So the shared features settle nothing, and the distinctly manic ones carry all the weight.
Put your attention on episodic elevation, grandiosity and a genuinely reduced need for sleep. Those do not belong to ADHD on its own, so they tell you something. Fast talk, restlessness and losing the thread belong to both, so they tell you very little however striking they are in the room. Knowing which is which saves a lot of circling.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'How can those who know be equal to those who do not know?' (Quran 39:9). Trained noticing is not the same as a strong first impression, and this is the sort of distinction it exists for.
أَمَّنۡ هُوَ قَٰنِتٌ ءَانَآءَ ٱلَّيۡلِ سَاجِدࣰ ا وَقَآئِمࣰ ا يَحۡذَرُ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةَ وَيَرۡجُواْ رَحۡمَةَ رَبِّهِۦۗ قُلۡ هَلۡ يَسۡتَوِي ٱلَّذِينَ يَعۡلَمُونَ وَٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَعۡلَمُونَۗ إِنَّمَا يَتَذَكَّرُ أُوْلُواْ ٱلۡأَلۡبَٰبِ
What about someone who worships devoutly during the night, bowing down, standing in prayer, ever mindful of the life to come, hoping for his Lord’s mercy? Say, ‘How can those who know be equal to those who do not know?’ Only those who have understanding will take heed
Qur’an 39:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of adults who came to services for another psychiatric problem found ADHD sitting unrecognised underneath surprisingly often, partly because the symptoms overlap with other diagnoses and partly because people are not always good witnesses to their own attention. It is a narrative review rather than a study of diagnostic accuracy, so read it as clinical argument. The overlap it describes is precisely what makes the shared features such weak evidence.
Barkley RA, Brown TE. (2008). Unrecognized attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults presenting with other psychiatric disorders.. CNS spectrums doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A feature only helps you tell two things apart if it belongs to one of them and not the other.
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
Ask about food two generations back. What the parents were like about it, what the grandparents were like, what the rules were at the table.
Damage to the front of the brain can produce something that looks a great deal like ADHD: poor impulse control, blunted judgement, a person their family says has changed.
Strategies for ADHD are visible. A timer on the table, a list on the wall, an alarm going off in a meeting. If someone has not yet made peace with having ADHD, each of those is an announcement, and it will quietly get dropped.