Take one of the more reputable questionnaires... they never require a login or anything. If you score high enough, see if you can get proper neuropsychiatric testing done. Really think about the questions and be honest with yourself… is easy to gloss over problems we have that we learned to compensate for, or be too eager to answer yes to everything if we’re just looking for an explanation for having a hard time at work, for example.
Some primary care doctors will refer you to get proper testing, but many will either ask you a subset of the questions you took on the questionnaire and say “yeah you have it,” or ask you nothing further and say “no you don’t have it,” depending entirely on their personal feelings on the matter. Testing isn’t cheap if your insurance doesn’t cover it but if you work in a knowledge field, being informed is an investment.
Medication, if it makes sense for treatment goes beyond controlling attention to tasks at a higher level — like not getting squirrel brain distracted trying to code. It also has much lower-level cognitive effects that I can’t directly perceive, but are completely obvious looking at my raw capability. A modest dosage of methylphenidate makes complex math problems that previously made me drop classes after putting in 20 hours per week of hyper-focused study time effortless. I don’t ‘feel’ smarter on it, or dumber off it— I can’t even perceive the specific threads of thought getting derailed in my normal state that make some cognitive tasks so difficult. The proof is entirely in my ability to do things that were incredibly difficult before.
Barring any of this, regular physical activity and good sleep have huge benefits. For some, it increases the dopamine enough to make medication totally unnecessary. I see dramatically worse results if I get super busy and drop sleep and gym visits staying up late working.
But seriously, getting medicated absolutely changed my
life.
The DSM-V criteria are also available on the CDC website.
Important notes: many of these symptoms, if acute rather than chronic, can be part of depression or anxiety which is suspected to be part of the dopamine deficit. If that’s true, you likely won’t get any neuropsychological testing because they’ll probably go away when you the base conditions. ADHD is something that would have been affecting you significantly since childhood. Also, other things can affect executive functioning like Autism Spectrum Disorder and Tourette’s (which usually manifests itself with ticks that don’t involve swearing loudly, despite its reputation in pop culture... they’re often not vocal at all.)
Some primary care doctors will refer you to get proper testing, but many will either ask you a subset of the questions you took on the questionnaire and say “yeah you have it,” or ask you nothing further and say “no you don’t have it,” depending entirely on their personal feelings on the matter. Testing isn’t cheap if your insurance doesn’t cover it but if you work in a knowledge field, being informed is an investment.
Medication, if it makes sense for treatment goes beyond controlling attention to tasks at a higher level — like not getting squirrel brain distracted trying to code. It also has much lower-level cognitive effects that I can’t directly perceive, but are completely obvious looking at my raw capability. A modest dosage of methylphenidate makes complex math problems that previously made me drop classes after putting in 20 hours per week of hyper-focused study time effortless. I don’t ‘feel’ smarter on it, or dumber off it— I can’t even perceive the specific threads of thought getting derailed in my normal state that make some cognitive tasks so difficult. The proof is entirely in my ability to do things that were incredibly difficult before.
Barring any of this, regular physical activity and good sleep have huge benefits. For some, it increases the dopamine enough to make medication totally unnecessary. I see dramatically worse results if I get super busy and drop sleep and gym visits staying up late working.
But seriously, getting medicated absolutely changed my life.