The Forums › Forums › I Just Found Out! › The Right Doctor › WHY bother with a assessment? › Re: WHY bother with a assessment?
Anonymous
Seconded. Trashman, your comments are thoughtful and useful to others. You have not wasted anybody’s time here. Your willingness to participate in this forum in spite of your difficulties is inspiring.
From the doctor’s perspective, there’s a problem. There is no blood test or X-ray that will confirm ADD. It has to be done based on what the patient reports. People can and will lie to get desirable drugs (like pain killers or ADD drugs). There is a strong illegal market for ADD drugs. They are bought and used by non-ADD high school and university students to enhance their academic performance. So the doctor has to do what he can to weed out people “faking” the symptoms then reselling their prescription meds. Part of that process is using old school records – if there’s evidence from a third party (like a teacher) from thirty years ago that you had this problem back then, that helps prove that you’re not faking it.
You’re right. A sensible person ought to recognize that the older we get, the more likely it is that we will no longer have living parents, and will have long ago lost track of our old report cards etc. If the doctor wasn’t willing to do an assessment without your school records or parents, he should have told you that at the beginning. Being jerked around like this is not helpful.
Getting diagnosed will be harder for those of us without living parents or school records – and in fairness making the diagnosis with certainty will be harder for the professionals seeking to help us. That said, I think you could benefit from being screened for ADD and other learning disabilities. Even if you aren’t requesting accommodation now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be necessary somehow or useful at some point in the future. There may be help available now, and breakthroughs in the future both in medication and in other therapies that could greatly improve your quality of life, but you might need a formal diagnosis to qualify for that help. I think it’s worth continuing to pursue this.
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