To wonder if I actually have ADHD after all?

[FlipsFlops]

I was diagnosed with ADHD last year at a private clinic after getting nowhere with the NHS. I did a fair bit of research and went to a named psychiatrist who specialises in treating ADHD and went in with an open mind not necessarily expecting a diagnosis.

Somewhat to my surprise I was diagnosed very quickly (I'd filled in lots of very lengthy forms before my assessment and off the back of that was told I was a clear cut case), and strongly encouraged to try medication (I haven't yet).

It's taken a bit of courage to tell family and friends - some have been supportive, some a bit sceptical ("but you seem completely normal?" "yeah I've seen all those TikTok videos too").

I still struggle a bit accepting the diagnosis and am prone to beating myself up about it (it's not ADHD, I'm just lazy, don't try hard enough, etc...).

Then I've seen this BBC news report today about the "ADHD private diagnosis scandal" suggesting people are being diagnosed by private clinics who don't actually have ADHD.

ADHD: Private clinics exposed by BBC undercover investigation - BBC News

Have I just been taken in by all the TikTok nonsense (even though I don't use TikTok) and exploited by an industry trying to sell me expensive drugs?

Or do I have a genuine neurological condition that's being called into question by journalists looking to turn everything into a some kind of scandal?

I don't honestly know what to think any more.

Thank you so much @Robinni. I SO want to succeed and I really do try very hard despite the struggles. I hope one day I might manage to be less hard on myself and find ways of dealing with it.

Well I watched the panorama documentary and honestly I’m quite angry about it. As far as you could tell, from what little information was shown), the private clinics shown didn’t look great, and there definitely sounds like there’s valid concerns about some private diagnosis.

But I thought the overriding impression that the show gave to an uneducated observer was that anyone could watch a few TikTok videos, think “ooh yes I’m a bit untidy and tap my foot a bit’, book an appointment and get diagnosed with ADHD.

i’ve spent my entire life wondering WTF is wrong with me and why I can’t just be “normal” and messing up my own life and those around me. And the NHS wouldn’t even put me on their (incredibly long) waiting list.

So I think I feel more assured in my own diagnosis but quite despondent that it’s going to fuel other people rolling their eyes and dismissing me. It’s taken a lot of courage for me to tell other people and I’m now wishing I’d kept it to myself.

Are you sure she's not having symptoms of early hypomania?

Mine manifested in being very anxious throughout primary with insomnia. Like your daughter in high school until 16, when I had a depressive episode.

Just considering it since you have bipolar II as well.

I had all of these symptoms too. Bipolar II diagnosis with "a lot of ADHD traits."

Like you, I constantly needed to repeat at uni for not handing stuff in though got very high or distinction marks when I did.

Work is a lot easier, provided I've been there less than a year. I've been at my current place just over a year to get a mortgage approved (currently waiting for offer) and finding it a struggle.

Once I get near 9 or 10 months and know the processes I feel too bored and start to get depressed. I still get perfect scores on assessments but find admin a million times harder than before.

I work as a contractor / consultant so need a lot of change. I get paid a lot more than an employee to take the risks.

I've only ever managed to study again (year long course) by doing it on top of full time work, so I had the pressure and lack of time to make it more exciting.

Actually they are pretty subjective.

But more importantly they include “and are not the result of a different mental health disorder.”

If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. And if all you can do is assess for adhd then different mental health disorders may look like adhd.

Can you give me an objective test for a neurodevelopmental condition? The criteria for adhd and autism don’t include any objective measures?

Thank you! My instinct is that she isn't, but my greatest fear is that she will develop Bipolar and it can present so differently in children/teens so I have asked myself the same. I did even wonder if I could approach the GP and get her into the system faster by querying her 'symptoms' as possible adolescent hypomania, but I am not sure it ticks the boxes enough and I feel the ADHD looking stuff is definitely the big problem. I don't want to risk a misdiagnosis.

Given my history (they suspect I developed bipolar symptoms around the age of 8/9) any psychiatrist seeing her will have (should have) ?bipolar at the forefront so I should get an assessment of that when we see them.

I picked a smaller clinic rather than the big well-known private providers for ADHD and did a lot of background research on the people we are seeing to make sure they are a good match in terms of specialist interests and experience.

I think if she does have bipolar it'll be caught early and that will help massively.

I was diagnosed correctly until I was 28. Being treated with SSRIs made it worse.

A few years after diagnosis I was in remission and have generally stayed in it.

She's lucky she'll have support and education from you on how to manage it, what to avoid etc. She can live a pretty normal life if she does.

@Hillarious
Your not missing anything.
I've had a few operations under the NHS and have researched the surgeon's beforehand and all of them also work at private hospitals, some even doing private patients in NHS hospitals.

I was told if they only did NHS patients they couldn't afford to live on the wage paid.

I believe they have recently developed a blood test for ASD that is 95% accurate. Being trialled at the moment.

Fair enough. There is a cost of living crisis, of course. We're all having to tighten our belts.

I honestly don’t know but at what point do the characterises of ADHD just stay as a variation of “normal” because so many people are this way? What even is normal?

@FlipsFlops I'm glad you feel more assured in your diagnosis. I haven't watched the show yet; I will later - it is problematic in that, whatever the drawbacks of their investigative method the questions they raise will persist. It makes quite a bizarre contrast with the recent spate of programmes about ASD where private diagnosis was not an issue that was commented on.

@Sakigake so much of what you wrote is familiar to me - the absolute discomfort of facing a task or an essay, sitting sobbing because I cannot start the job even though the deadline is looming and the only way to feel better is to finish the job, and the impossibility of having that understood or even overcoming the shame enough to start talking to someone about it. I'm sorry you are feeling so down - you are absolutely not worthless or lazy. It is very, very impressive the way that you've persevered and you have been working so hard.

@DeadSea95 what you say about work is familiar to me too. I lasted almost a decade with an employer, most of that time doing work I was drastically overqualified for - by having lots of pregnancies! I was so bored by work, I couldn't make myself meet the deadlines any more, and if we hadn't had another child each time I would have quit or been fired... after maternity leave it was a reset and a challenge again for a while... definitely not healthy coping though.

That one will be dead interesting...

And given that ADHD is known to be hereditary it does make me wonder where we will be in a few years from now.

The boy who was raised as a dog by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz is another great book which looks at the overlap between signs of trauma and adhd/asd.

Yes, classic case of private medicine hindering NHS.
So often the genuine, needy patient has to wait longer because doctors are spending time on lucrative private work.

Thank you @Righthandman, and I’m also sorry you understand ❤️

Re doctors working privately - NHS operating theatres have a finite capacity, including all the other HCPs who make up the operating team. Even if doctors did work purely for the NHS, the number of operations wouldn’t necessarily increase.

The frequency of the operations* that should say.

So not yet then? Is that 95% sensitivity or specificity?

Interesting. Isn't there something about MRI scans too? Sure I've heard about them for a few years but don't think they're actually used?

@Robinni thanks for answering. I find all of this stuff pretty interesting. I guess I can go along with the idea that there would be enough NT people in samples for drug trials, for instance, as to make the ND folks irrelevant to the outcome. I guess things like anti-depressants are fairly hit and miss anyway.

I am curious about frequency within populations though - I've heard 3-5% for ADHD, and somewhere I've heard a guesstimate of up to 20% but I can't remember if that's ASD or ND in total. But all these are questionable because it's never clear if they're based on current diagnosis rates or estimates of missed diagnoses or...

My personal feeling is that it could well be at least 20% of the population for all forms of ND, and that it may well have been a pretty consistent rate in the population for a long time. I think you're right about assortive mating and the question is the ease and amount of individual input into finding a suitable partner historically. I recognise what you say about finding yourself in a group of friends and partners and children who are all ND once we realised what we were looking at. I would guess that there would have been an uptick in the percentage of ND in the population around the time that universities stopped being the preserve of celibate theologians, as that would give both a reason for congregating and 'permission' to reproduce at the same time. But I think it's certainly easier to find one another now with increased movement globally.

I'm not sure what you say about medics is correct. Maybe not a large proportion but I think I'd still argue that the percentage of ND medics is likely to be higher than the percentage of ND in the general population. Some will have better people/coping/masking skills than others. I guess I think ND alleles can come to a high frequency in certain subsets of the population. There is something very interesting happening, for instance, in terms of the kind of people who are attracted to all the jobs around computer animation, and the number of Pixar movies that deal with disability and/or 'difference'...

‘Couldn’t afford to live on the wage paid’ for a consultant psychiatrist??? I presume they mean to they standard they wish! Whether or not you think £80K to over £110K is sufficient, it is still two to three times what other people manage to live off including the majority of people working for the NHS or nurses in private hospitals.

Unfortunately this is the kind of ignorance we're up against.

I've found you do have to be careful who you talk to about ADHD. There's a lot of misunderstanding, sensationalism, and people pinning their own ideological perspectives to the anti-adhd mast. Only you and your doctor know if you have it or not, and how you deal with it is your choice alone.

Medication can help a lot, as can occupational therapy and talking therapies - going undiagnosed for many years can bring its own complications about how you feel about yourself and your life which is necessary to work through.

Good luck on your journey.

ADHD is real. If you lived with it, you would know it.

for a consultant psychiatrist???

@Shelefttheweb
Re read my post three times now and can't see where I wrote consultant psychiatrist