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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Use it the way it was meant to be used. Review it as the child grows instead of filing it as a fixed fact about their brain, and think about how you explain it to parents who will go home and read about prognosis at midnight. Saying the uncertainty out loud usually arrives as relief rather than as one more worry.
'Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true' (Quran 17:36). A category designed around uncertainty deserves to be held as an uncertain thing.
الإسراء
وَلَا تَقۡفُ مَا لَيۡسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلۡمٌۚ إِنَّ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡبَصَرَ وَٱلۡفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ كَانَ عَنۡهُ مَسۡـُٔولࣰ ا
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these
Qur’an 17:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Diagnostic categories move over time. A clinical review of autism notes that recorded prevalence has risen substantially, driven in large part by wider recognition and changed diagnostic practice rather than by a change in children. Alongside that, a systematic review of stigma and help seeking found a small to moderate but consistent deterrent effect on getting help, with shame and fear of disclosure among the most commonly reported barriers. Neither settles what DMDD is, and both are reasons to handle a childhood label carefully.
Hirota T, King BH. (2023). Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review.. JAMA doi
Clement S, Schauman O, Graham T, Maggioni F, Evans-Lacko S, Bezborodovs N, Morgan C, Rüsch N, Brown JS, Thornicroft G. (2015). What is the impact of mental health-related stigma on help-seeking? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies.. Psychological medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A category chosen partly to reduce harm is a working description, and treating it as more than that closes questions that should stay open.
None of this is a reason to withhold a diagnosis a child clearly meets, since vagueness carries costs of its own.
Eating that runs away from you, and eating you cannot stop once it has started, turn up alongside ADHD more than people expect. Usually it is doing a job rather than proving a weakness.
An ADHD diagnosis usually arrives with two extra words attached: which presentation it is, and how severe. Both are descriptions of what gets in your way, not a grade you were awarded.
The family history is not the warm up before the real assessment. Give it proper time and it will often tell you more than any single rating scale in the folder.