How did YOU find the help you needed? What's your story?

[Anonymous]

I’d like to take a straw poll of folks here. Some specific questions answered if you all wouldn’t mind…

1. How did you first find out about ADHD?

2. How and where did you find a clinician to diagnose you? (Website? Word of mouth?)

3. What type? (Psychiatrist? Psychologist? G.P.?)

4. How long did you have to wait between first referral and a first appointment? Anything happen in between?[This one I’d really like to know.]

5. What exactly was the diagnostic process like? (Questionnaire? Brain Scan?) How long did it take?

6. How long afterward to get a prescription? (If you went that route…)

7. Any specific counseling or coaching? Did you have to go elsewhere?

As many specifics as possible would be appreciated. Whatever you’re comfortable with. Your answers could help others who are just getting started. Looking forward to your replies.

Thanks to all.

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[Anonymous]

1. I found out a very hard way. Long story short, my marriage was in bad shape becuase of the symptoms of ADHD not being treated. My wife is a sociologist and works close with psychologists who reccommended a book to her to read. I was a beaming example of a lot of what it had to say.

2. Where I live there is NOT a lot of info./resources for Adult ADHD. So I did a lot of research and contacted our local mental health divisions, who contacted a registered psychologist who did some initial testing. 4 hours worth. And then from her initial diagnose’s I contacted a great phsychiatrist by the name of Dr. Quinn. He diagnosed me. This was a good 4 month journey.

3. See above.

4. Nothing happened inbetween. A lot of Dr.’s in Saskatchewan,(canada) do not know about Adult ADHD. yes they are getting educated as I learnt from my family Dr. But I was lost, no one to communicate with, no one to connect to or share with or get ideas/help from. That’s why I love reading these forums.

5. Lots of tests/questions, computer and written tests.

6. My phsyciatrist gave me a choice to either try medication right away or not. We tried 2 different drugs(samples) and did more tests while I was on them to see the difference. I was on a perscription 1 week after I was diagnosed.

7. No, no counseling for the first year. That was my downfall. Hopefully someone learns from this and they get coaching ASAP when they are diagnosed. It helps so much. But I am currently doing mine through a registered social worker who has training.

– Only one piece of advice that I can give, which might be hard for some to do is this…Don’t get down, it might take a while to get an appointment, or fix a problem or adjust a rutine. But you have to try and be strong to get past the emotional roller coaster that you will be on or are on at this moment. I am a very VERY lucky guy to have a wife who loves me and as helped me through this and still continues to support me. I hope everyone finds someone who they can lean on at points.

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[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply, Kush. Hearing others’ stories is so important here.

I was worrying that no one was going to answer.

A 4 month wait? Yikes! About 2 months in for me so far. Still waiting.

Anyone else? PLEASE?

You could really help others…

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[Anonymous]

@Bobcat665,

I’m just at the beinging of my journey, but I’ll fill in as much as possible. As things progress I’ll update ok.

1. I kinda fell into this backwards. My youngest son was indentified with ADD inatentive, and both my wife and myself have been working on getting support for him within the classsroom. The school board tested him in grade 3 but we didn’t feel that he was suffering from just ADD. After no success we finally were forced to go the private route for more testing. Turns out he also has a moderate learning dissability as well. Newly armed we set about researching things that would help my son cope with his ADD (his LD is very similar to ADD). When we found this site, we knew we had hit the jackpot. While watching the video, the penny dropped. I was like that too. I took a day or two to get the nerve up to do the online test, but when I did I scored high enough to convince me that I needed to get tested as well.

2. Given that me youngest son was ADD, we took another look at my oldest son and felt that we needed to have him accessed too. We used the same psychologist as with my youngest boy. During the first accessment appointment I spoke to the Dr. and asked if he knew of anyone that dealt with adult ADD and he offered to test me as well. I know lots of members here have had bad experiences with their Docs but this man has been an absolute god send. Without him I feel that we would out in the weeds so to speak.

3. Psychologist.

4. Because we had used him already we only waited a few weeks from first phone call to first visit (my oldest and me). Even with my youngest I still remember that we waited maybe a month tops. There was a time period of a few months (Jan. to May) until we actually phoned to book the appointment so lets call it four months total. Did anything happen during this time. Hell yes! It was like someone walked up and handed me a list of all the things that never quite panned out in my life and written on the bottom was “because you have ADD!!!!!”. I was mad at my mom and teachers. This was uncalled for, they didn’t even test regularly for this during that time. I’m 45 yrs old now, and ADD just didn’t get the attention back in the 70’s. To them I was just a daydreamer who often zoned out in class (hence the name so_calvin). This thankfully lasted just a few weeks, but it was replaced by depression. For a couple of months I just stopped living my life. I went to work, ate and slept and hid out in cyberspace playing an online game. This was a few months of my life gone for nothing, and I’m still really not sure how I came back to the real world.

5. The Dr. had me and my wife do a questionnaire (Conners Adult Long – self and observers). This confirmed I did have it. Because we kinda tacked me onto my son’s appointments there is some more testing that can be done to better identify subtype and such. These I’ll be getting done next January, because I need to wait till then for benifits to reset. As of right now time spent has been about an hour. This was both filling out the questionnaire and an interview with the Dr. Given what I know of the process that my sons went through there should be a couple more hours to come. I’ll need to get back to you as I go through it.

6. No meds yet. This is one of the areas we need to explore more. As above I’ll update as I progress.

7. No coaching yet. The good news is that given the experience with my sons I’ve been able to use tactics we have been working on with them. Of course there is this forum as well, I check back regularly and consider this a valuable use of cyberspace.

Sorry for the length of this (Why do ADDers write posts that are soooo long?), hope you find some of this helpful.

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[Anonymous]

Thanks so_calvin.

I was getting a little itchy about this thread languishing and sitting empty without a response. I would have felt stupid about trying to bump it.

Anywho: We all hear a lot about adults getting a Dx because of their kids, eh? I couldn’t imagine having kids of my own. My own life is hard enough to manage, nevermind having to take care of a wife and kids. *A shout out to all ADDers who manage it anyway!*

Anyone else care to share?

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[wolfshades]

HI Bobcat.

1. Not sure how or why, but one day I found myself on this website and was absolutely amazed at what I read. Everything in my life that I thought was “usual” for everyone in life, wasn’t. I saw the list of symptoms and went through the online test here, and was just blown away by the matching of behaviours and symptoms. So….

2. I saw my GP and asked for a recommendation. She asked me a few questions and agreed I should get assessed, so she gave me a referral to an organization that does the full range of tests, which are given by….

3. a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a psychometrist. (Hadn’t ever heard of a psychomestrist before)

4. I believe I waited about four months or more from the time of the referral until the time I got into get the testing done. I’m still not done with that yet, as I have yet to see the psychologist, after which I have to come back and see the psychiatrist one more time for the final report.

5. Lots and lots of questionnaires. Some free-form questions and a lot of ticky-box questions – which I know will get fed into a program for analysis. Took me about three-four hours, between answering the questions and being interviewed by the psychiatrist and psychometrist. Even discovered a few other behavioural things during that time that were indicative of ADD that I hadn’t heard about. Like, as a toddler, always wandering off around the neighbourhood and scaring the hell out of my mother. That’s fairly common (or at least that’s what she told me).

6. I’m not fully diagnosed yet, but the psychiatrist asked me if I was at all opposed to medication. I said “no”. I’m actually looking forward to being able to get some medical assistance so that I can actually meet my potential. Right now I’m way too scattered and unfocused.

7. Again, not yet diagnosed, but I’m guessing since they have a psychologist on staff that I’ll be offered counselling, which I plan to accept (eagerly).

Hope this helps, and good luck with your diagnosis. I know how frustrating it is to finally realize that you might have ADD and have to wait so very long to find out for sure.

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[Anonymous]

wolfshades,

Nice to hear from ya!

I’ve been following your comments for a while. You’re becoming quite a presence here.

Just found out a few months ago? Wow. As I’ve said before, I’ve known about the ADD thing for about 20 yrs. American TV news shows, talk radio, print, internet, etc. It sux to know about ADD for that long and not be able to do much about it.

Wandering around the neighborhood as a toddler? That’s a new one to me!

Anyway, thanks a lot!

Who’s next?

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[purlgurl]

1. How did you first find out about ADHD?

I have known of it since I was a kid, when my cousin was diagnosed (the stereotypical little boy presentation). I had several male friends in high school who had been diagnosed as kids. I have worked with kids with disabilities (among them, ADHD) for the past 4 years.

2. How and where did you find a clinician to diagnose you? (Website? Word of mouth?)

I had hit rock bottom with another episode of depression. The night before an appointment with my new therapist, it struck me that I might have ADHD. She said that sounded like a possibility, so I made an appointment with my family doctor – had been seeing him since 2007.

3. What type? (Psychiatrist? Psychologist? G.P.?)

G.P. made a tentative diagnosis, followed by Psychiatrist’s dx.

4. How long did you have to wait between first referral and a first appointment? Anything happen in between?[This one I’d really like to know.]

Saw the therapist for the first time on July 4, 2009. Got an appointment with my family doctor on July 14, at which point, he prescribed me Ritalin SR as a bit of an experiment (basically, if I noticed that my focus was better, which it was, right away, that would point to ADHD as a probable diagnosis). Saw GP again on July 30 and August 20 to manage meds (and also got labwork done including ECG), and saw psychiatrist for the first time on September 2. Prior to that appointment, I’d been mailed a bunch of questionaires to fill out myself, and have my spouse/parents fill out.

5. What exactly was the diagnostic process like? (Questionnaire? Brain Scan?) How long did it take?

With my G.P., it was a verbal discussion, followed by Ritalin prescription. For the psychiatrist, it was a bunch of pre-filled questionnaires, detailed verbal history, and then another symptom inventory during our appointment (Brown’s ADD rating scale, I think?). This was scored, and the results reviewed with me on Sept 9, at which point a diagnosis of ADHD-Combined was “confirmed”.

(I should note that I am really not a super-genius with dates – my husband got me using Google Calendar, so I was able to look back at last summer .

6. How long afterward to get a prescription? (If you went that route…)

See above – I had a prescription from my G.P. immediately.

7. Any specific counseling or coaching? Did you have to go elsewhere?

Throughout the school year, I saw a counsellor at the college. This was generally very helpful, although I think I still have some ADHD issues to sort out. A friend also served as my “coach”, mainly helping with academic stuff.

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[purlgurl]

I guess that further relevant information was that there was always something a bit “weird” about me, and I’ve experienced major disorganization basically since I was old enough to have stuff. I had two psychological (IQ) assessments (“gifted” student), and was diagnosed with major depression when I was 16 (I’m 29 now), but no one ever suggested that I might have ADHD (in spite of disorganization, impulsivity, failing out of multiple post-secondary programs, etc.) until I thought of it myself last summer.

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[Anonymous]

1. How did you first find out about ADHD?

I was diagnosed in 1967 at age four. This was prior to beginning school which is unusual but I had a pretty determined mother who just KNEW that there was SOMETHING. When I was around three, she decided that she would hold me until I wanted to get down. She broke before I did. What I find interesting is that as an adult, I can’t stand to be held for long. I’m a hugger but I have some limits. The official diagnosis in 1967 was Minimal Brain Dysfunction. I was medicated with Ritalin… and virtually every other drug that became available or popular. 90 day trials were popular back then and I got quite the cocktail. Once I hit puberty, I was taken off medication entirely because it had supposedly gone away.

I went back to school as an adult in 2003. I was re-diagnosed then with ADHD through six hours of full spectrum testing that included Executive Functioning as well as standard ADHD tests. I was put on Adderall.

2. How and where did you find a clinician to diagnose you? (Website? Word of mouth?)

I don’t know how Mom found the pediatrician who made the first diagnosis (history plus EEG). The doc that ratified the 1967 diagnosis was with our local county hospital. (I’m in the US)

3. What type? (Psychiatrist? Psychologist? G.P.?)

My first doc was a Pediatrician, my next diagnosis was with a Psychiatrist, my GP currently manages my medications.

4. How long did you have to wait between first referral and a first appointment? Anything happen in between?[This one I’d really like to know.]

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer. I know my Mom had to search in order to find someone who would even look harder at me. I was able to get in to see the Psychiatrist within a week of requesting the referral. My GP didn’t even bother waiting on anything- he’s known me both as a patient and as the partner of a patient. He has a good grasp on ADHD and recognized me long before I asked him to manage me on medication. I feel very blessed.

5. What exactly was the diagnostic process like? (Questionnaire? Brain Scan?) How long did it take?

The original diagnosis was cemented with EEG. Hyper kids do tend to have a specific abnormality on an EEG. We have greater difficulty achieving deep sleep states. For me, that did not change with adulthood.

The second diagnosis was six hours of testing in a windowless room.

6. How long afterward to get a prescription? (If you went that route…)

As a kid, they started Ritalin at around five. As I said, the scrip changed fairly frequently as different meds were trialled. Ritalin worked best for me. As an adult, I saw the psychiatrist about a week after testing and walked out with a scrip for Adderall.

7. Any specific counseling or coaching? Did you have to go elsewhere?

I have chosen to do talk therapy over the years but it took a long time to get willing to do that. I had sought treatment for whatever was wrong with me in my late teens, early twenties- if it wasn’t ADHD, it was SOMETHING- and played anti-depressant roulette. I finally got sick of trying and refused to speak with anyone who had the ability to diagnose or prescribe. Outside of online forums, I am not seeing anyone but wish to start. My biggest challenge is finding someone who understands ADHD along with end stage caregiver challenges (my partner has terminal cancer)

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[Author]

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