This was an extremely meaningful datapoint for me in feeling "seen". One of the steps was to ask my mother to fill in a survey recalling how she experienced me as a child.
When I told my mother it was for ADHD diagnosis she laughed, and said, "You didn't have ADHD. You just liked to run around. In my experience 10% of kids are just wired that way."
Cue the psychiatrist telling me that ADHD prevalence is now thought to be around around 10%.
A good psychiatrist will not diagnose you with ADHD unless you have it, and they will not sit on the fence and say "maybe" if they believe you have it. Mine was emphatic with me.
> Apparently people with ADHD usually drastically underestimate their own symptoms, which is why a third-party perspective is important
Absolutely! The way people experienced me was totally different to the way I thought that they did.
This is very true. And it's not even just due to lack of access to mental health care as a child: everyone over a certain age will have grown up before "ADHD" was a recognized disorder, and thus couldn't have been diagnosed with it no matter what their symptoms were.
When you're a kid it's not that bad cos you have structure provided for you and little to no responsibility. You're just a constant pain in the ass. That's why it's named after all the things that piss people off about it and not named after what the lived experience is like or how it affects us internally. When you're an adult and you are responsible for structure and getting things done and holding down job it can silently and slowly crush you. It's a much bigger problem once you're an adult.
Not as much with inattentive-subtype. Then you just spend lots of time reading and are somewhat disorganized.
Until you get to adulthood.
The initial appointment is probably going to be an in-depth interview with the specialist, coupled with filling out some self-assessments and, possibly, getting somebody who knows you well to fill out an assessment as well. (Apparently people with ADHD usually drastically underestimate their own symptoms, which is why a third-party perspective is important.)
After I got diagnosed, the specialist gave me useful advice, learning materials and resources, including recommendations for psychiatrists to reach out to for treatment. This is pretty important because a combination of psychiatric treatment with learning new skills, coaching... works better than only doing one or the other.
If you can afford it or it works well with your insurance, I would highly recommend reaching out to a specialist instead of (or in addition to) talking to a normal doctor.