First of all, I am not certain I have ADHD. I do recognize myself in a lot of attitudes, hardships and little things, and it’s impacted my life for too long now.
I can’t afford to go on like this anymore. Who should I go to? How long does it take for me to recieve a diagnosis and how expensive will it be? If I’ll have to take meds, for how long and how expensive are they in your experience?
Thank you all in advance
Damn, it was that fast? Everything ive heard is like a 6+ month ordeal with multiple appointments (which leads me to not even trying)
It was legitimately that fast. I acknowledge my experience may well be atypical.
I procrastinated on it for ages as well, having trouble mustering enthusiasm for starting a six month or more journey for a diagnosis.
My FIL recently passed, and he had a terrible track record of not addressing his medical problems in a timely manner. So I figured, fuck it, why not look into it. I already had an annual physical scheduled in the next week, so I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in verifying with BCBS that my specific plan covered ADHD. Luckily it did. So then I asked my primary care doc about it.
Going into my visit with the psychiatrist, I was fully expecting to need several visits over the space of a few months for an official diagnosis, so I was very surprised after the questionnaires were done that she stepped out (maybe to score against reference? idk), stepped back in, told me I was formally officially diagnosed, and time to talk medication for it.
Who knows, maybe it ordinarily does take a few visits but I scored that well (or that poorly) that additional visits would’ve been superfluous. She did note, with the barest hint of a chuckle, that I paused one of my answers so I could lean over to another chair in her office and straighten out the rug that had gotten bunched up underneath.
It worked out far better than my worst case scenario,
Tap for spoiler
which would’ve been along the lines of “Mr Superduperpirate, you don’t actually have ADD, ADHD, or autism. You’re just a lazy shitbag who needs to pull his head out of his ass and stop being such a whiny little bitch.” Which I know sounds crazy. Any doc outside the military who spoke to a patient in such a rude manner would hopefully face severe enough consequences to dissuade them from doing so.