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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Several rating scales are in wide circulation for children and for adults, validated by different groups for slightly different purposes. Picking one you know well beats reaching for whichever is being discussed this year. And declining to judge a tool you have not used is the same discipline you would want applied to any claim about treatment.
We have knowledge only of what You have taught us (Quran 2:32). It is the angels who say it, which puts saying you do not know in reasonably good company.
البقرة
قَالُواْ سُبۡحَٰنَكَ لَا عِلۡمَ لَنَآ إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمۡتَنَآۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلۡعَلِيمُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ
They said, ‘May You be glorified! We have knowledge only of what You have taught us. You are the All Knowing and All Wise.’
Qur’an 2:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A study of a short adult ADHD self-report screener found it performed reasonably well at flagging people who might have the condition in an international clinical sample, and was clear that flagging is not diagnosing. Every instrument has a job it was tested for. Using one outside that job is where the trouble starts, and the validation study is where you find out what the job was.
van de Glind G, van den Brink W, Koeter MW, Carpentier PJ, van Emmerik-van Oortmerssen K, Kaye S, Skutle A, Bu ET, Franck J, Konstenius M, Moggi F, Dom G, Verspreet S, Demetrovics Z, Kapitány-Fövény M, Fatséas M, Auriacombe M, Schillinger A, Seitz A, Johnson B, Faraone SV, Ramos-Quiroga JA, Casas M, Allsop S, Carruthers S, Barta C, Schoevers RA, IASP Research Group, Levin FR. (2013). Validity of the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) as a screener for adult ADHD in treatment seeking substance use disorder patients.. Drug and alcohol dependence doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A tool whose limits you know gives you information you can actually trust.
Assessing a child's thinking used to mean a referral, a waiting list and a report some months later. Brief cognitive tools an ordinary clinician can run have changed that, and the gap between noticing something and having a plan can now be a session rather than a season.
When someone says they feel restless inside, ask what the restlessness wants. Restless to move, or restless to do one particular thing until it feels right?
If someone is about to send off a saliva kit to fill in the family history they never had, have a conversation first. These tests hand back more than health information, and they hand it back with nobody in the room.