ADHD Roadmap - "All Things Assessment." Pt.3

So what are the differences between struggling with hyperactivity and impuls ivity and actually having ADHD? This is an important question and in this video on my series on managing adult ADHD, we're going to talk about assessment, how folks are diagnosed with ADHD and some tips. And if you think you have ADHD, what are the next steps you could take? Now I want to say this is one of those videos that it's really important for me to offer this disclaimer. And that is I'm going to be sharing a lot of the different symptoms of ADHD.

And like I mentioned before, whenever we do this as mental health professionals , just like the web MD effect I call it, when we read symptoms of any disorder or condition, our minds could start going to thinking and having anxiety that, oh man, I must have this because again, you can relate with a lot of symptoms of almost any disorder. So the disclaimer here is if you watch this video, you're not diagnosed with ADHD and you think, oh my God, this is me, I have this, I have ADHD, don't do that.

Go ahead, see a professional and I'm going to share with you some ways in which I recommend to go about doing that. As I mentioned before, a lot of ADHD assessment is centered around children. Now we're getting better at that because adult ADHD is so impactful and we're gaining so much more of an awareness on it. So I thought the next best thing that we can do is actually go through the different sets of symptoms and just list them out so you know and have a little bit more context into what ADHD is and how it's classified.

So I'm going to go ahead and admit something to you. My least favorite part of content creation is what I'm doing right now and that is filming. It is so hard for me to remember what I want to say and when I'm put on the spot, it's really difficult for me to get the words out, it's taken a lot of practice, I 've gotten better at it, I've learned some different techniques. But the reason I'm telling you this is it could be so frustrating. A lot of folks with ADHD can get frustrated really easy on minor things.

Often our minds work so quickly and if we can't catch up or others can't catch up, it could get frustrating. People with ADHD often struggle with working memory. This is a key feature. So that is why either remembering lines or remembering what I'm trying to say can be so difficult and sometimes doing even a shorter clip like this can take multiple multiple multiple times and I'm saying that because I'm going to give myself a little accommodation here and I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to grab my laptop and I'm going to read the symptoms off so I don't have to do this 10,000 times and freak out.

Alright so here are the diagnosable symptoms of ADHD under the two categories of inattentiveness and hyperactivity now I shortened them a little bit just to grab the main point and make it a little bit easier to understand. So here we go for inattentive symptoms, fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes, two, has trouble holding attention during tasks or play activities, three, does not seem to listen when spoken to directly, four, struggles to follow through on instructions and complete tasks, five, has trouble with organization, six, avoids dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort, seven, loses things necessary for tasks or activities, eight, easily distracted, nine, forgetful and daily activities.

Alright let's go ahead and talk about the hyperactive symptoms of ADHD number one, fidget with hand or feet or squirms in their seat, two, leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected, three, runs or climbs excessively in situations where it's inappropriate. Now for that one that is a great example on how historically and often ADHD is assessment is focused on children so I just wanted to say that, number four has trouble playing or engaging in leisure activities or quietly, leisure, leisure, I don't know if it depends where you're at.

Number five I believe is always on the go as if driven by a motor, next talks excessively and others are blurts out answers before questions have been completed or has trouble waiting their turn or interrupts and intrudes on others. Next I want to go through some symptoms that may not be in the DSM because again in my belief in the belief of many other professionals how we do it right now is not perfect . There are a lot of symptoms, a lot of things that people with ADHD struggle with that are not in the DSM and again because it's often child centric.

So here are some symptoms that he identifies that I've seen as well in the research and I have experienced myself too sometimes. So number one is time perception problems, noticing that you experience difficulty with perceptions underestimating the time needed to complete a task or overest imating the time to complete a task. Number two rejection sensitivities and people with ADHD may be hypersensitive to criticism rejection. This can lead to feelings of low self-esteem and can interfere with social relationships.

Number three emotional abilities so kind of up and down emotions so rapid and intense mood changes that can occur. These changes can be triggered by minor events and can be difficult to control. Number four I mentioned this right before here is deficits and working memory and that means like if I gave you ten numbers to remember you would probably have more of a difficult time than someone without ADHD. So that working memory can be really important for certain tasks. Five sleep problems you know it's that sleep problems is difficulty falling asleep waking up frequently during the night and having trouble getting up in the morning are common with individuals with ADHD.

Some other quick ones difficulty with task initiation poor sense of time which we kind of mentioned impulsivity but he notes that impulsivity can take many forms besides just waiting your turn interrupting others but also making impulsive decisions. This is an interesting one which is sensory sensitivity. I think I mentioned before or I'm going to mention that ADHD and autism are very comorbid so you're more likely to have ADHD if you have autism both those neuro developmental disorders so that is a key one for folks with autism but also people with ADHD can often have that sensory sensitivity like loud noises bright light certain textures can impact their ability to focus and cause discomfort.

So I feel I'm on a good role here and for the next part of this video I'm going to talk about actually getting assessed and what that looks like and it could be a little bit complicated but I'm going to break that down for you but I'm going to continue using my laptop and read what I wrote to make it a little bit easier and more clear. So first we do a comprehensive assessment and that's just like doing a medical history, a physical exam, a review of symptoms. Now not every provider is going to do it the same way but quite similar to what I do in therapy I do a pretty comprehensive history not just looking at the symptoms.

So the psyche valve which looks at a review of behavior, mood, abilities they do interviews with your family co-workers this is a really extensive process for diagnosing observations in different settings such as home, school, at work, observations of behavior in the assessment like attentiveness or thought process. I remember when I went back and I read my assessment I found it interesting cause when I was reading what the psychologist wrote I probably recommend you don't do this but I was too curious.

Anyway he talked about how when I was in the assessment I was looking around a lot maybe as you can see in these videos sometimes I don't know if I say talking circles but sometimes I could go into little tangents I usually come back to what I was meant to say which I'll do right now but anyways that is a key feature of an ADHD assessment is actually observing the person in the assessment can give you very valuable information. Now psychologists use a variety of tests to diagnose ADHD one of those is the counters rating scale and this is interesting because you answer a set of questions right related to ADHD and the symptoms but then they also give it to someone close in your life and sometimes it's a teacher for a kid I did it with one of my best friends and it 's sometimes interesting because her perception he was actually pretty different than mine so that was kind of interesting but the psychologist takes that and they have to do their best to say all right which of these is going to be more accurate right so they have their own ways of doing it and I'm not a psychologist so I can't say in too much detail but I know that is what they do behavior assessment system for children we talked about that how that works with kids and behavior rating inventory of executive functioning the brief so these are all different test the batteries and so we're just breaking these down so you could have a better idea continuous performance that's which is commonly used to assess attention and impulse control with suspected ADHD this one was tough so this is one I did and basically it's a computerized test it takes 20 to 30 minutes which the participant is asked to sit in front of a computer screen and focus on a central point a series of stimuli such as letters or numbers will appear randomly on the screen or a dot within a box is the one I had and you're supposed to hit a button as soon as you see a certain target now that's like every time the dot is in the box click the button or every time it's out of the box and they switch it up on you oh my god you have to sustain focus for 20 to 30 minutes it is brutal so the test measures the individual's ability to sustain attention resist distraction and control impulse responses and for me that was tough now it's important to know that getting an ADHD assessment can be difficult so I want to give you some quick advice tips and some tools to do that for example doing a search on psychology today I recommend doing that for a therapist they have a list of people who can help with ADHD because you could use different search terms it's kind of like searching for a car we say leather seats and a V8 engine or whatever right you could use that with ADHD and it'll pull up providers like I mentioned before the people who typically do it are psychiatrists and psychologists sometimes a nurse practitioner depending on the state so Google is a great search tool to find clinics near you ones that say they focus on ADHD but a lot of providers especially psychiatrists are able to do that and psychologists so I recommend doing a search using those tools but just know it could be difficult because right now with more ADHD awareness more people are going to get assessments now there's been some criticism of people like me who make content about ADHD because of the reason I mentioned before whenever we talk about symptoms people start running they think they have it however a lot of the people who learn about this information actually go get assessed which is what they should do therefore I think it is a benefit to learn about this and not bury your head in the sand right the worst thing that you could do is just say oh bye I learned about this on social media I have ADHD but I don't know what you're going to go do from there the most important thing is that you get an assessment which a lot of people are doing so that's one of the reasons why it could be hard that's an example of tangential speaking one little off-cough ADHD thing so providers are full there's just a lack of psychiatrists there's a lack of people able to do it so it's okay to get on a waiting list but again things like what I'm doing with you right now because eventually at the end of the day when you get that assessment and they tell you you have ADHD right the first thing is getting on medication which is one of the most common forms of treatment for ADHD but also doing these skills so in the meantime you could always utilize these skills and it's helpful for a lot of people so again at the end of the day if you could relate with this or you know someone else you can maybe you already have ADHD this isn't the most pertinent video for you perhaps but always go see a professional don't take matters into your own hands and we'll see you at the next video and you're probably wondering what is that video so probably I should mention that and that is breaking down the ADHD problems talking about how symptoms come up in people's lives how that affects folks and what ADHD is most correlated with those negative outcomes I keep talking about we're going to break those down so be sure to tune in and learn about it.