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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Keep the list short and ask it plainly: epilepsy, psychosis, learning difficulties, head injuries, anything neurological. Some of it will matter for the picture, some will matter for what this family expects from services, and some will simply sit in the notes doing nothing. It costs about a minute inside an interview you were having anyway.
'God knows and you do not' (Quran 2:216). It is a fair posture for the questions whose relevance you cannot see yet.
البقرة
كُتِبَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرۡهࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكۡرَهُواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تُحِبُّواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ شَرࣱّ لَّكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ وَأَنتُمۡ لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’
Qur’an 2:216read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
There is good reason not to stop at one label. A national survey of United States children with a parent reported ADHD diagnosis found most of them also had at least one other mental health or developmental condition, so an assessment that closes after ADHD is likely to leave part of the picture out. That is about conditions in the child rather than in the relatives, so read it as an argument for a wide screen and not as proof that any particular family history predicts ADHD.
Larson K, Russ SA, Kahn RS, Halfon N. (2011). Patterns of comorbidity, functioning, and service use for US children with ADHD, 2007.. Pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If you only ask about the thing you already suspect, that is the only thing you will ever find.
Processing speed is the stubborn one. It shifts a little with repeated, rhythmically paced practice and hardly at all with explanation, so say that to a family at the start rather than when they are disappointed.
Carry the rough proportions into every ADHD assessment. Executive function difficulty in the great majority, coordination difficulty in around half, dyslexia in something like a quarter to two fifths. A workup that never asks about handwriting, sport or reading is not finished.
Find out what they have tried before that did not work. It saves everybody from a plan that failed this person two years ago.