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Getting Assessed – Life Before and After my ADHD Diagnosis

By Roland Jung


 

Just Keep Swimming: Life Before and After my ADHD Diagnosis
Part 2- Getting Assessed

(For Part 1, click here.)

After going down this road of self-diagnosis, I decided it was time to take action. I went online and looked for a psychiatrist specializing in adult ADHD, and made an appointment. What you need to bring to the assessment will depend on the psychiatrist, but I was able to find some school reports and I brought them in.

I drove to his office and while I was in the waiting room, I was given a survey that asked me questions that pertained to ADHD. The survey was very similar to the self-diagnosis surveys I saw online, and I answered as truthfully as I could. After I finished the survey I was called into the office.

If you have never been in a psychiatrist’s office, they are just like the ones you see in the movies. The room is lined with bookshelves, filled end-to-end with literature on mental health. You sit on a large, cushy leather couch, and the psychiatrist sits across from you, legs crossed, clipboard in hand.

We talked. It was the first time I got to tackle this issue head on, to talk about things I’ve felt my whole life, things I’ve struggled with my whole life. I don’t want to be sensationalist and say that the experience was liberating, but there was definitely a sense of liberation. Based on my survey results and what I had told the psychiatrist, he diagnosed me as ADHD (Inattentive Type).

I had a lot of mixed feelings about the diagnosis. On one hand, I felt a sense of relief, that everything I had struggled with was not completely my fault. I was relieved that with this new self-awareness I could start learning how to work around my condition, and to build the life that I wanted.

But on the other hand… I was diagnosed with a condition, a condition best managed by medication. I did not even take vitamins regularly, and now I have to drive to a pharmacy every month to fill a prescription.

 

Part 3 will talk about my first year with ADHD

 

For Part 1, click here.