To think most online adult ADHD diagnoses are bullshit?

[OptimismvsRealism]

(I have ADHD btw.)

I know it can manifest in different ways but all these neat ladies organising multiple events a day and keeping a perfect home do not have it. They just paid £600 to Adhd-4-u and (to everyone's suprise !) came out with a diagnosis.

I don't think anyone these days can accept that life is hard and they just have a mediocre intellect.

I never tell anyone about my diagnosis now because it's embarrassing to be lumped in with the buy your own amphetamine prescription brigade.

I think the market should be regulated as there are a lot of unscrupulous practitioners out there.

Its to help you not fall apart when you hit the menopause.

Hormonal changes are triggers for women who are ND completely falling apart.

An online diagnosis of anything is not reliable. Properly, real life, qualified professionals are the ones to diagnose.

But why would they bother?

1 they get paid either way
2 they risk losing their licence to practise
3 why would they risk the above

Also why is no one ever reporting these dodgy professionals and clinics?

Every time someone pops on here to say this not a single person has ever reported it. Why?

I am genuinely pissed off that my health condition has been rendered embarrassing by the wild west of online special snowflake diagnosis mills! Sorry if this upsets you.

But how does KNOWING you have ADHD help with hormone changes at menopause? I'm lost at that.

If they do not diagnose ADHD they get unhappy customers.
Why would they risk losing their licence? ADHD diagnosis in adults is based on self reporting.
Who would report them and on what basis? You do need proof of medical violations.

Exactly. Even if a patient turns around and says aha I don't have it at all how is that proveable?

This is the first exactly how I feel
I am certain I could get a diagnosis if I wanted one.

My disorganisation and lateness has been a standing joke with anyone who knows me since I was a kid. I am late for everything all the time and I lose everything all the time. I start so many tasks and never finish any of them etc etc. I am very fidgety. I lack patience and get told off for interrupting people.

But I function to a very high level in a job that plays to my strengths. I can multi task very well and I passed all my exams by staying up and cramming last minute. I still pull all nighters the day before work deadlines having procrastinated until the last minute. I am really good at what I do so people put up with my lateness and disorder and continue to employ me. At work I have a great secretary who organises me. I wish I could have one for home too.

I don't get why having managed to get to my late 40s just assuming this is my personality I would suddenly need a diagnostic label. We don't have labels for people who have lifelong poor memory function or poor spatial awareness. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses in their cognitive profile. It should be only 3-4% of adults who would meet a diagnostic threshold but suddenly it does feel like a whole lot more than that.

@ThePure do you have children, if you don't mind me asking? I feel like I might be a bit more able to accept my fate the way you do, and say oh well this is just me I have to work around it. But now I have 3 children... one of them is showing early signs of having ADHD himself so I feel a responsibility there to properly address this issue. They wake up at 6am (doing all nighters/cramming til 4am therefore no longer works for me). They finish school at 3.45 - it's unbelievably frustrating that I have an entirely wfh remote role where I am my own boss, and yet I piss about all day half starting tasks and not getting through a to-do list, and then feel stressed at pick up time, or can't spend time with them after work and have to have wrap around care that I wouldn't otherwise need. It's frustrating that I forget something vitally important every time we go somewhere (all their swimming costumes on a swimming excursion last weekend). I used to be able to cover my inefficiency with late finishes at work (if anything looking more dedicated), but I can't do that now. After i've wrangled them into bed after the 85th story at 8pm, I have 2 hours to see my husband and then ideally I need to be in bed at 10pm to function well the next day and not snap at them and lose my shit! And for the past 4 years I have been massively failing at that, and that is why I may now finally seek a diagnosis. Not because I couldn't somewhat succeed as my old self but because it seriously does not serve me to be her anymore and after 4 years of struggling away trying to be different, trying to be more disciplined, etc, I think I either need to quit work or admit defeat and seek diagnosis.

I don't know? Maybe you could access benefits which then mean you can access further help eg heating, pension credit and so on?

I have two kids who are now teens
I don't think DD shows any signs. She is more like her dad calm and organised. She has started to organise me!
DS is certainly mega fidgety in an annoying way and disorganised like me but he seems to be doing OK at school (as did I) so I think he will get away with it.

When they were younger I guess I just assumed I was crap at being a mum and rolled with the fact that I frequently forgot stuff and was late. I've always been the higher earner and DH does a decent amount of parenting so I guess he mitigated some of my crapness. Breastfeeding and baby led weaning meant not having to remember to take bottles/ baby food. I consume a lot of caffeine and have a high tolerance of minimal sleep. I can recall having to buy new swimming stuff on at least one occasion because I'd forgotten it and coats/ wellies.

In fact being menopausal is starting to be the thing that is making me cope less well. I am finding I have less energy and tolerance of late nights now. I am hoping to be able to cut down my work hours in the next 5 years.

I have abysmal spatial awareness. Struggle to park, appallling sense of direction eg will get lost in a small office I have visited before. I am pretty sure I was dyspraxic as a child but learnt strategies to handle it. Can't catch a ball, can't walk along a bench, that kind of thing.

I am not sure how helpful an assessment and label is to people?

I have abysmal spatial awareness too so probably a bit of dyspraxia as well. I was always terrible at any sport that required hand eye coordination and never got picked for any teams at school and again my inability to find my way around and getting lost are the butt of family jokes eg I can't find my way around the town I've lived in for 20 years. Can't draw for toffee. Can't assemble flat pack furniture

Fortunately I have a really excellent memory that people remark upon and good verbal and analytical abilities and emotional intelligence and it turns out those can take you a long way.

People are different. What does neurodiverse even mean? I used to take it as a polite way of saying autistic but now it seemingly applies to lots of people. Surely everyone has different cognitive abilities.

I was diagnosed privately as an adult (in an actual in-person clinic, if that matters) by three professionals with decades of NHS diagnostic experience between them.

It absolutely wasn't just on the basis of self reported symptoms.....my husband submitted very detailed written information and completed various lengthy questionnaires, I provided statements from friends and relatives relating to childhood and also evidence from years ago from my school. There was also the direct observation of my behaviour during the assessment sessions (yes, multiple).

I am also currently awaiting NHS assessment for related /commonly co-occurring types of neurodivergence, and have many relatives diagnosed with autism and ADHD on the NHS, if that helps to convince anyone that I didn't just make this all up for benefits or as an excuse for being a bit mediocre (I unfortunately feel the need to say that after reading many responses in here!

Private clinics charge a lot of money and also in my experience have screening tests/initial introductory appointments before someone is put through for a full assessment.... is someone gets through the initial screening and is prepared to pay up to £2000 for the assessment (not for the diagnosis!) then of course there is a very high likelihood of the diagnosis being given....they must be pretty certain to pay so much and there must be enough evidence to get that far. The experience was also DRAINING and very soul-destroying......I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through it if they didn't really feel the need to!

My reason for wanting a diagnosis, for those who have wondered (and it is a diagnosis and NOT a label FFS!) was to save my life, frankly! Older close relatives have died way before their time directly due to what was SO clearly undiagnosed ADHD......impulsive, risk-taking behaviour, additions due to self medication with other substances..... my own life was starting to increasingly spiral and I genuinely felt I was starting to go the same way they did. I was aware by then that various relatives of mine had been diagnosed (several on the NHS) and the genetic links and similarities to myself and my own struggles seemed blindly obvious.

I was born in at a time when there was absolutely no hope of being diagnosed as a child (as a girl especially!) but in hindsight it is just so, so obvious. I was just given a whole load of other negative labels as a young child, rather than my correct diagnosis, and I'm sure many women of a similar age have experienced the same thing.... hence many people looking into assessment now (especially if their children start getting diagnosed).

I genuinely believe the medication is life-saving for me, and no I wasn't prepared to wait four plus years on the NHS for it (which was what my GP told me the wait would be) in case my ADHD killed me in that time! I'm not being over-dramatic there either.... the impact on ADHD (undiagnosed/untreated especially) on life expectancy is grim stuff, as seen clearly in my own family. I am quite prepared to wait for assessments of wider, related neurodivergence on the NHS, because that doesn't threaten my health and wellbeing in such a similar way.

Threads like this make me feel so upset and embarrassed to share my private diagnosis with anyone, as there is clearly SUCH a lot of judgement and misinformation. One day I might learn not to click on such things, as they can be SO upsetting to read (emotional dysregulation can be a massive part of ADHD, along with rejection sensitivity)....

I won't be able to cope emotionally with coming back to read any replies, so PLEASE nobody response and tag me.....I just felt that I had to at least try and tackle some of the rampant disinformation and judgement that I have read here......

And yes I have diverged from the original post, but I am not simply responding to that, but to many other comments I have read in the thread as a whole.

I do also know several people who did online assessments (that is, interviews with professionals over Teams type calls, not just an online quiz!) for ADHD, one through the NHS interestingly! But with the private ones too, there were initial screenings, people's partners/parents were interviewed and/or provided evidence...... it isn't just self-reporting!

It is. The standard is fill in a form, yeah get third party comments if you want but many don't require it, 45 minutes to an hour online. Boom.

Prescription stimulants most certainly don't. They might make a non ADHDer stay awake longer, but they have no effect on performance (whereas the effect in ADHDers is very large).

I think that the only thing making ADHD look embarrassing here, is you

You clearly have some issues still to work through regarding your diagnosis which is fair enough. It's not ok to come here and patronise anyone (most people) that do not share your opinion though

I am a non-online diagnosed ADHDer. I am often called super organised. My house is like a show home most of the time. It has to be this way. I learnt how to cope with myself, after 40 years of being undiagnosed, by running the tightest ship possible. If one thing isn't put away/organised/dealt with immediately, then the wheels come off the whole thing. I've spent a fortune on storage so every single, tiny thing has it's own place. I have very strict routines for myself. The amount of alarms and calendar reminders are insane but it's the only way to keep myself in check. That in itself is exhausting but it's better than the absolute chaos that I had in my 20s and 30s

I do believe that I have missed opportunities because of my ADHD, I know that there's going to be more. I don't blame my ADHD. I don't think that it's a bad thing though, I love how my brain works. Not so much of a fan of the OCD symptoms that come with it but they are another thing that I have learned to control

Yes, there are people out there that claim they have ADHD, mostly with only a self diagnosis but I just roll my eyes internally and carry on. Anyone that truly cares about me, and/or ADHD in general, are usually happy to have a conversation and can understand how it affects me and makes me different to them. I trust that they have the intelligence and understanding to see the difference between those that do have ADHD and those that are desperately trying to find an excuse for their own failings

Some points of yours are possibly valid but have been lost in this conversation thanks to your attitude

Now I'm heading back to the pile of items to put on Vinted that have been gathering dust/cobwebs/who knows what else in the corner of my dining room for approx 4 months because if I don't sort them out before my daughter gets back from holiday then I do not doubt that she'll carry out her threat to burn them

@FuckKnowsMate no, because the reason I wasn't diagnosed is because my parents couldn't do the form and I couldn't say with certainty if I experienced some of the features before aged 8, so the psychiatrist said if I don't remember it's a "no", so I didn't meet the childhood criteria.

Those who are saying that psychiatrists won't diagnose what isn't there don't know how the diagnostic criteria works. It can be adapted to fit whatever narrative suits. If they think they can get you to pay for medication through them then it's worth them looking for evidence. It's what they're not asking, as much as what they are asking.
I don't know a single person who hasn't received a diagnosis when they have been privately assessed. We frequently see people with personality disorders (now known as complex emotional needs) who go on to get private ADHD or autism diagnosis. Job done, they now don't have to do any work on themselves, or talk about their trauma.

You could say the same about depression, generalised anxiety disorder, OCD or any other condition for which there are no biomarkers or signs that can be observed in diagnostic imaging. I don't know why ADHD is being singled out in this regard. It's very puzzling.

emotional dysregulation can be a massive part of ADHD, along with rejection sensitivity

You mention there 2 more things that bother me. I don't know? Now I'm beginning to wonder what's what. But nobody enjoys rejection?

Everybody urinates, but if you're doing it all the time and it is disabling you it's probably a disorder.

In the same vein, nobody likes rejection, but if you experience sensitivity to rejection, perceived rejection and criticism and you have a strong emotional response, it triggers the fight or flight reflex, or it's disproportionate to the context of the rejection, then it's probably a disorder.

Rejection sensitivity disorder is just one symptom that isn't always present but is in many cases of neurodivergence where emotional regulation is impacted because of physiological differences within our amygdala.

People are not desperately wanting to be diagnosed with depression, GAD or OCD, paying privately to get diagnosed with these conditions or posting on social media about these diagnoses like they do with ADHD. It is indeed very puzzling.