ADHD Assessments
What is ADHD?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects children and adults. It is classed as a neurodevelopmental condition, meaning that it impacts the way that the brain grows and develops. It is thought to affect around 5% of the population.
ADHD can affect people in different ways. People with ADHD have difficulties with hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattention, and lethargy.
Hyperactivity and Impulsivity
Children with ADHD can have excess energy and struggle to remain seated for prolonged periods. They can appear to act without thinking and may struggle to think of others. They may struggle to wait their turn in conversations or games.
In adults, this tends to present as fidgeting or being restless. Adults can interrupt or talk over others and may struggle to wait for their turn to speak.
Inattention
People with ADHD can find it hard to keep their attention on things they find boring and struggle to concentrate for long periods, especially at school or work. In school, children with ADHD often get told that they could do much better if they worked harder.
Adults with ADHD can often be late for things and find it hard to judge how long activities will take. They may lose objects that they require and can have difficulties with memory.
People with ADHD can also hyper-fixate on things, meaning that they get very “into” something, and it is all they focus on. This tends to be quite short lived, however. A person with ADHD can have a hobby that they really want to do all the time, but then become bored with it, seemingly overnight, and lose all interest in doing it.
Lethargy
People with ADHD can often struggle with sleep, but not because they are worried. Because of this, they can be more sleepy or slow, and can feel like they are in a fog.
Not everyone with ADHD will experience all of these symptoms the same amount. People tend to have more hyperactive or more inattentive symptoms. People with inattentive type ADHD are often not diagnosed because they may not be hyperactive at all and so don’t fit with people’s expectations of what ADHD is.
What else might it be?
As you can see from the description above, many of the symptoms of ADHD are things that everybody has to some degree. If you aren’t experiencing these symptoms so much that they have a big impact on your ability to cope with daily life, it may be that you are just more energetic or easily distracted than other people.
It may also be that you have another condition that affects people in a similar way. Two examples of this are listed below.
Autism
Autism, sometimes called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), can also present in similar ways to ADHD, especially in younger children. While the brain processes involved are very different, from the outside it can be difficult to tell them apart. Both autism and ADHD can lead people to struggle with attention and memory. Some people with autism engage in “stimming”, repetitive movements with hands, feet, or toys that can be mistaken for the fidgeting sometimes seen in ADHD. However, people with autism tend to have a particular interest or behaviour that they spend all of their time thinking or talking about.
If you think you or someone you care about might have autism, and would be potentially interested in an assessment, please contact us directly to discuss this.
Attachment
Early traumatic experiences or attachment disruptions can also lead to similar presentations to ADHD. Children with such experiences are very prone to going into an anxious state of “fight or flight” if they feel unsafe. This can lead them to struggle to pay attention in school as they are aware of any sounds in their environment that may signal threat. They can also become angry very quickly and struggle to regulate their emotions. These children can also have a lot of excess energy that they need to get rid of through movement. This energy comes from an over production of adrenaline. For children or adults who have had these sorts of traumatic experiences, we would recommend therapy.
If you think you or someone you care about might benefit from psychological therapy, please contact us to discuss this.
How do I find out if I or my child has ADHD?
In the first instance, it is always best to go through an NHS service to get an assessment for ADHD. Aside from the obvious benefit of it being free of charge, NHS services are also able to prescribe medication directly. However, due to increasing demands, NHS services often have waiting lists of upwards of two years. It is also worth noting that medication tends to help people with ADHD to be calmer and more focused, but nothing more than that.
If you would like to look into a private assessment for ADHD, the first thing that you should do is check with your GP whether they would accept a private diagnosis, and whether they have the ability to prescribe medication based on one. Each county has different rules, and each GP practice has their own preferences. As such, it is important to make sure that there is going to be a benefit to getting a private assessment. For children, it is also worth checking whether the school is likely to accept a private diagnosis if you are hoping for additional support for your child.
If you are seeking a diagnosis to make sense of your experiences and are not looking for medication, this is less important.
Some private services will administer medications for ADHD as well. This can be costly however and is usually following a very expensive assessment period. At RRJ Therapy, we do not prescribe medication directly, as we believe that this should be done officially and cost effectively through the NHS.
How do RRJ Therapy assess whether I or my child has ADHD?
Children
For children, we will begin by having a brief free initial phone conversation with a parent, carer, or guardian to discuss your individual needs and worries. If you decide to proceed with this, we will then arrange to speak to your child for approximately half an hour to get to know them. We will then conduct a brief interview, usually around an hour, with a parent, carer, or guardian. This will be focused on your child’s developmental history. We will be looking for evidence of ADHD, as well as evidence of anything else that may better explain what is going on for them.
We will then send out questionnaire-based measures to be completed by a parent, carer, or guardian as well as somebody from their school that knows them well (teacher, teaching assistant, Special Educational Needs specialist etc.).
Once these have been scored, we will arrange a half hour conversation to discuss the findings.
We will then write a formal letter to your GP recommending whether or not your child meets the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and outlining areas that school may want to focus strategies to help support your child.
Adults
The process for adults is similar to that for children. Different measures are used. We will provide you with five measures to complete. One is to be given to somebody who knows you well, and one is to be given to somebody who knew you well when you were a child. The remaining measures are to be completed by you. One relates to symptoms you had as a child and one relates to symptoms currently. The final measure assesses the degree to which these symptoms impact your life.
How much does it cost?
We understand that seeking an ADHD diagnosis privately often comes from desperation to get help, and therefore do not believe that we should be charging more for this than is necessary. Accordingly, we have broken costs down into two parts.
The initial assessment costs £400. This includes an interview, administration and scoring of all necessary measures, and a brief summary discussion afterwards.
You then have the option for us to write a formal letter recommending whether you meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. This costs a further £400. We charge for this separately so that you can be assured that the report will only be conducted if it is going to be useful to you.
If you then feel that you would benefit from individual or family therapy in relation to this, we offer ongoing therapy at our usual rates. Please see Psychological interventions page for more information.
How do I arrange an ADHD assessment
If you would like to discuss this further, please contact us using the form or via email.
More information
There are a lot of good resources available for managing ADHD. The following links are some of the ones that we have found to be helpful for our clients.
NHS services
· Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - NHS
Videos
· ADHD Resources :: Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (canddid.nhs.uk)
o This is a nice series of NHS videos that have been put together to help understand ADHD.
Books
· ADHD 2.0 by Edward M. Hallowell, Dr. John J. Ratey | Waterstones
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