this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
75 points (98.7% liked)
ADHD
9705 readers
5 users here now
A casual community for people with ADHD
Values:
Acceptance, Openness, Understanding, Equality, Reciprocity.
Rules:
- No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments.
- No porn, gore, spam, or advertisements allowed.
- Do not request for donations.
- Do not link to other social media or paywalled content.
- Do not gatekeep or diagnose.
- Mark NSFW content accordingly.
- No racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, or ageism.
- Respectful venting, including dealing with oppressive neurotypical culture, is okay.
- Discussing other neurological problems like autism, anxiety, ptsd, and brain injury are allowed.
- Discussions regarding medication are allowed as long as you are describing your own situation and not telling others what to do (only qualified medical practitioners can prescribe medication).
Encouraged:
- Funny memes.
- Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
- Questions on confusing situations.
- Seeking and sharing support.
- Engagement in our values.
Relevant Lemmy communities:
lemmy.world/c/adhd will happily promote other ND communities as long as said communities demonstrate that they share our values.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This answer is for the USA.
A health care professional is going to ask you questions from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). There are 9 symptoms for each kind of ADHD. If you have five of one or the other, you have ADHD. The difficult part is, everyone does these things sometimes. The question is, do you do them often, and does it have a negative impact on your life. A mental health provider is going to have more training on evaluating you than a general practitioner. When it comes down to it though, anybody can ask the questions, you have to give the answers.
I scheduled a physical with my GP and figured I'd get to take care of everything at once. Unfortunately that's not how the helthcare system works. The doctors don't like to combine multiple ailments into a single visit, because they can't bill them that way. So I left with a referral to psych. I haven't gone yet and still don't have a diagnosis. If you're going to go the GP route, make a specific appointment for an ADHD diagnosis. Make sure to ask beforehand if your GP feels comfortable giving the diagnosis and, if you're interested, prescribing meds. If you don't ask, your GP is likely to wait til after you've paid your copay to tell you that you'll need to see a psych specialist.
I've seen many online self-assessments that use some version of the DSM questionnaire that you've mentioned. I have a hard time committing to a binary answer to an open question so these are always a nightmare for me. My answer is usually something more like "sort of" or "depends" and I get very stressed out that I'm not being truthful or accurate. I've found ways to manage my symptoms out of necessity over the years and I think that might skew my answer to some of the questions also. I still usually end up answering "yes" to five of them, but that seems like I'm on the cusp. I just feel like a list of 9 written questions lacks nuance and that's why I was hoping to hear that a more holistic approach would be part of the diagnosis process.
My experience is that psychiatrists have never just asked me "do you experience X", going through those specific DSM symptoms, but instead they'll administer some kind of questionnaire that asks a significantly larger number of more specific questions that give you some sort of score at the end. The score is then used to determine whether or not you rank highly in certain symptom areas, which can then help the psych better understand your symptoms and whether or not you qualify for a certain diagnosis.
They may ask you to get other people, who are close to you but can be more objective, to answer the questions.
Have you seen Lucky Number Slevin? There's a great scene where Ben Kingsley says, "The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle."
I'm saddle shopping. I have an evaluation scheduled tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.