Attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a term used by psychological practitioners to describe difficulties with inattentiveness, difficulties concentrating, hyperactivity and impulsivity. People may also experience rapidly fluctuating and overwhelming emotions, impatience, restlessness, and disorganisation. This can impact people in many areas of life, including managing everyday tasks, work, and personal relationships.
ADHD tends to be ‘diagnosed’ as one of three types:
‘Predominantly inattentive’
‘Predominantly hyperactive’
‘Combined presentation’
For these difficulties to be formally diagnosed as ADHD they must meet certain criteria. This requires a specialist ADHD assessment to be conducted.
ADHD Assessment
An ADHD assessment is an opportunity to meet with a psychologist to understand your experiences. The focus will be on understanding how and why these difficulties developed, what maintains them, how they can be helped, and in what way they may be considered strengths. Your psychologist will also tell you if your difficulties meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD. Recommendations for what might be helpful for you to do next will also be discussed (whether you meet criteria for ADHD or not). You will receive a written report summarising the assessment.
It is important that a general mental health assessment is conducted first, then followed by a specialist ADHD assessment. This should be done by a mental health professional that has extensive experience of working in adult mental health so they can accurately identify ADHD, distinguish it from other types of difficulties, develop an understanding of this with you, and provide recommendations. This is more thorough than only telling you ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to whether you ‘have ADHD’.
What to Expect
Firstly, a psychologist will speak with you briefly by telephone to discuss your reasons for considering an assessment and agree a plan with you. If you agree to attend an assessment this will then take place over two 60-90 minute meetings. The psychologist will speak with you about your concerns and how they have affected you over time. They may also ask you to complete questionnaires, share school reports for them to review, and speak with someone who knows you well (e.g. a relative, partner, or friend). There will then be a final meeting to discuss the assessment outcome and recommendations. Referrals may then be made for psychological therapy and pharmacological therapy (medication).
Assessment meetings can take place in person or online, and your psychologist will discuss your preference with you.
Next Steps
If you think an ADHD assessment may be useful for you, please contact our team on hello@thehousepartnership.co.uk or call us on 020 7248 2975
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Behavioural experiments are planned activities based on experience, experimentation and observation, undertaken in and between CBT sessions. They are thought to be the most powerful contributor to CBT's success and the reasons that CBT shows such low relapse rates.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is a cognitive behavioural model of psychotherapy which shuns the classic Western psychiatric concept of 'disorder' in favour of a view of the normal human mind tending towards destructive cognitive and emotional processes.
Though it has been proposed that food issues such as extreme dieting, anorexia and bulimia are on the rise and influenced by media pressures, analysis of texts about and by many of history's key figures suggests that these problems have been around for centuries.
Mindfulness, though it draws influence from ancient Buddhist tradition, is fast becoming an essential part of a range of non-religious psychological therapies and helping people with a wide variety of physical and emotional concerns.
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