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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
So ask, before handing over another tool: how do you feel about the diagnosis itself? Sometimes the honest answer is that they still half hope it was wrong, and that is worth a few sessions of its own. Acceptance here is not a mood. It is a plain sentence: this is how my attention works, and these are the things I do because of it.
'I do not pretend to be blameless' (Quran 12:53). Joseph says something plain about himself without collapsing into shame, which is roughly the tone acceptance takes.
يوسف
۞وَمَآ أُبَرِّئُ نَفۡسِيٓۚ إِنَّ ٱلنَّفۡسَ لَأَمَّارَةُۢ بِٱلسُّوٓءِ إِلَّا مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّيٓۚ إِنَّ رَبِّي غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
I do not pretend to be blameless, for man’s very soul incites him to evil unless my Lord shows mercy: He is most forgiving, most merciful.’
Qur’an 12:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The barriers to admitting a difficulty are well described. A systematic review of stigma and help seeking found a small to moderate but consistent deterrent effect, with shame and fear of disclosure among the most commonly reported obstacles. A separate systematic review of why children and young people do not seek help added a preference for self reliance and limited knowledge about mental health to that list. Neither studied compensatory strategies directly, though both describe the feeling that makes them hard to use in public.
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
Radez J, Reardon T, Creswell C, Lawrence PJ, Evdoka-Burton G, Waite P. (2021). Why do children and adolescents (not) seek and access professional help for their mental health problems? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies.. European child & adolescent psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A strategy that feels like an admission of being different has to fight the person's own resistance every time it is used.
If the reluctance is really grief for a life that might have gone differently, treat it as grief rather than as poor motivation.
Ask for the most frightening moment of their life, then the next one down, then the next, until there is a scale running from one to a hundred. You get the ladder you needed, and they get something they did not expect: fear comes in sizes.
Executive function scales ask how the week actually went. That is often more use than an afternoon of testing in a quiet room.
Check the licensing before assuming you cannot afford a good instrument. Some come with permission to photocopy once you have bought the manual.