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Emotional relief like "I'm not a shitty selfish person after all and it isn't my fault". But if you employ a tonne of ADHD coping mechanisms and they work for

Emotional relief like "I'm not a shitty selfish person after all and it isn't my fault". But if you employ a tonne of ADHD coping mechanisms and they work for you it'll improve things a decent amount. I haven't tried CBT but it's a recommend approach. I'm trying (painfully slowly because it's not super interesting) to teach myself DBT to help with it too. Dx is only strictly required to get Rx but an additional benefit is they do a differential diagnosis so they make sure it isn't down to depression, anxiety, sleep problems, trauma etc. All of which can cause some of the same symptoms. There are a tonne of people who get diagnosed with depression and anxiety and the recommended treatments just don't work that well for them. Then they get diagnosed with ADHD, everything falls into place and they can get their life together so they're not anxious they're going to constantly screw things up nor depressed from shit life syndrome and the depression and anxiety go away.

live1999 6y ago
Yes, thankyou for mentioning the differential diagnosis stuff, it's definitely a good idea to rule other things out. :) I was wondering if I had ADHD; in all the online tests I score in the ADHD or borderline range. But it's just symptoms of my anxiety which is particularly bad at the moment. If I'd done the tests a year ago, the result would have been completely different.
- georgespencer 6y ago
  There are a range of interrelated symptoms and experiences (e.g. autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, anxiety), and part of the job of a good psychiatrist is to pick through these and make a determination. An analogy you might be experienced with: imagine you're a product manager and you want to make a customer service person in your company twice as efficient as they are today. If you ask the CS person what you should work on for them, they might be able to give you some direction, but they don't know the full range of possible things that you can do for them. E.g. they might think "Well, I've got to type emails to customers so it would be useful for me to have a new support ticket load on my screen as soon as I'm finished with the last one." But you -- an expert -- might say "We can actually auto reply to some of these emails for you using a canned template!" Self-diagnosing, and in particular self-diagnosing mental health and neuroatypicality issues, is a hard ask.

live1999 6y ago

Yes, thankyou for mentioning the differential diagnosis stuff, it's definitely a good idea to rule other things out. :) I was wondering if I had ADHD; in all the online tests I score in the ADHD or borderline range. But it's just symptoms of my anxiety which is particularly bad at the moment. If I'd done the tests a year ago, the result would have been completely different.

georgespencer 6y ago
There are a range of interrelated symptoms and experiences (e.g. autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, anxiety), and part of the job of a good psychiatrist is to pick through these and make a determination. An analogy you might be experienced with: imagine you're a product manager and you want to make a customer service person in your company twice as efficient as they are today. If you ask the CS person what you should work on for them, they might be able to give you some direction, but they don't know the full range of possible things that you can do for them. E.g. they might think "Well, I've got to type emails to customers so it would be useful for me to have a new support ticket load on my screen as soon as I'm finished with the last one." But you -- an expert -- might say "We can actually auto reply to some of these emails for you using a canned template!" Self-diagnosing, and in particular self-diagnosing mental health and neuroatypicality issues, is a hard ask.