If you can remain focussed enough to complete an ADHD assessment, then you don’t have it.
There is currently a 5 year waiting list to be seen, which probably explains why private care is booming.
So self diagnosis is bad, and seeking a diagnosis is also bad. I know the Tories would prefer ADHD didn’t exist, and frankly I agree with them, but since I’m stuck with it I don’t think basic healthcare is an unreasonable request.
Friends of ours have self diagnosed their kid as autistic. He’s just a little shit that has never been disciplined. “Mummy loves you” is not an appropriate response to punching kids in soft play.
There’s a difference between self diagnosis and seeking help. Unfortunately, the state wants us to do neither.
It’s like that question about a tree falling in the woods and no one hears it.
If everyone self-diagnoses with ADHD and can’t receive any treatment, does it even change anything?
ITT: people who don’t give a fuck about those who are unable to get professional diagnosis / help for mental conditions due to underfunded health services, and instead accusing anyone who thinks they might have a mental health issue is making it up and/or is “just lazy”
Self diagnosing doesn’t require any NHS services……
Asking for help to deal with a condition, requires NHS services which they should be able to handle, they are just again trying to place blame onto the public for the NHS not being able to cope with anything.
I briefly worked in CAMHS for a bit and while I think it’s fine to self-diagnose.
The main issue is that, since waiting times are over 4 years, you keep telling yourself you have some form of Autism and when you finally have an assessment and you’re told different, it’s hard to grasp.
I saw way too many parents not accepting that they’re actually at fault for their kids behaviour, refuse to change and then pull them out of CAMHS to write to PALS on how wrong CAMHS was lol…
Let’s not gatekeep the help people desperately need.
At the risk of annoying substantial tracts of the internet, I’d propose 2 things are going on here.
Thing 1 – there is a definite uptick in people asking for assessment specifically for neurodevelopmental disorders right now. Assessment takes time and this puts a strain on the mental health section of the NHS
Thing 2 – the NHS is currently at a crisis point in funding and staffing which means it can’t respond to this demand. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that demand is there; I would say a healthy (pun almost intended) health service could deal with it without going to the point of collapse.
Unfortunately successive governments, but the current one in particular, have seemed to stick to the lie you can do more with less. A truly equitable health service can’t make efficiency savings in the way a business can, by refusing to deal with something that takes too long, is costlier than a standard service, or by making itself smaller if funds are tight.
Please don’t just focus on the point of this story in the Tomes being “I didn’t get believed when I thought I had a diagnosis”. I say again, if the NHS was in good shape it could manage the demand. Tinfoil hat firmly applied, it doesn’t feel accidental that it is teetering as private providers circle to offer “help” and open the door to ending Bevan’s dream of a service free to all at point of access.
[thank you for coming to my TED talk]
There are a lot of people on Tiktok and other social media apps who do pretend to have ADHD, autism, and a whole host of other mental illnesses because they think it makes them quirky and unique – r/fakedisordercringe is crazy.
They take it so far that they end up seeking an official diagnosis and then get mad when the doctors tell them they don’t have whatever it is they think they have.
Modern society has romanticised mental suffering and being the troubled archetype, some people are desperate to have something that makes them stand out in the crowd.
In 2014 I was told I would not be put forward for diagnosis because I could ‘cope as a capable adult as society’ (tell that to my ADHD finances that caused me to go bankrupt in 2015). So I took on a psychology degree, passed, and diagnosed myself. It’s not the same on paper but it has allowed me to understand myself better and while some people detest labels, sometimes labels help us understand the /why/ we do things, which make us better or more comfortable with the /what/ and the /who/.
People self-diagnose because they can’t get a diagnosis. Took me 10 years to be diagnosed. I suffered badly with no support, and now I have my diagnosis there’s still no support, and if I want more general mental health help because I’m completely fucked and depressed and suicidal because of a condition I should have been diagnosed and helped with in childhood there’s another five year wait. We haven’t even begun to look at ADHD which I also probably have, most autistic people do.
I’m fed up of people gaslighting people with mental health conditions.
I’ve had ADHD my whole life and it’s meant I’ve never reached my potential or done half of the things I wanted despite being intelligent and hard working.
Why is it every Tom, Dick and Harry an expert on mental health conditions and whether they do or don’t exist.
I notice people don’t say that about physical conditions like cancer do they?
I don’t actually broadcast my condition to anyone despite it being supposedly ‘fashionable’.
I ran an ADHD support group for 5 years and approx 70 percent were self diagnosed and out of that 70 percent I’d say 80 percent had ADHD. Some of them had other conditions alongside ADHD, such as autism and some had other mental health conditions.
The question is why are people self diagnosing themselves.. it’s because they’ve had poor mental health for years or decades and the NHS has done nothing to help them beyond handing out antidepressants and CBT … neither of these are going to counteract the debilitating symptoms of ADHD.
I have been diagnosed as a kid with Asperger’s came from abroad, never took those paper with me. I though how complicated it could be? I am in Scotland, I started the procedure in 2020, two months ago I have received a letter from local NHS Trust telling me that next step has to be postponed to early 2026. When I pressured them, I was told that there are 860 people ahead of me. Diagnostic team for adult autists works only for 4h a week on Tuesdays “because of funding issues”.
The problem is, at least with autism, is that we’ve gone from thinking that autism amongst non-learning disabled ppl as being very rare (like 1 in thousands) to more like 1-2% and that’ll probably increase given that we’re realising that it’s likely under-diagnosed in females too, but generally autism services haven’t been given the funding, hence we have 3 year waiting lists *just for assessment* in my previous Trust and a wasteland in services for anything beyond that.
On the plus side, younger ppl are more accepting and better educated wrt autism in my experience.
Self-diagnosis is not perfect and is not a replacement for a formal diagnosis. That said, you can use it as a starting point with your GP to see if you truly have ADHD/autism if you feel you are concerned. The obvious issue here is that seeing a GP can be hard and the waiting lists for a diagnosis are years long. People would not be self-diagnosing so much if they could see professionals more easily.
Considering it takes over 6 months on average before you hear back, I’m not surprised
My therapist and family therapist have both decided that I *might* be autistic. Nothing to do with me, man.
Maybe fund the NHS correctly Rishi?
​
I think the main problem with ‘so’ many ‘self-diagnosing’ ASD / ADHD is the fact LOTS of people have suffered throughout their entire lives with ASD / ADHD. Think of all the people born in the 90’s and early 00’s that went through school and work struggling like fuck thinking they were ‘normal’.
​
The services are overwhelmed because we failed so many fucking people for so many years. I finally got my assessment for ASD after waiting 4 years for the NHS and I’m trying to save up £800 for a private ADHD diagnosis.
​
The people aren’t the problem. The system is the problem. Rotten to the core.
Women my age weren’t really diagnosed with ADHD and the more I find out about how it presents in women, the more I think I have it but knowing how difficult it is to get a diagnosis due to waiting lists I haven’t sought any help, also there’s the oh you’ve spent too much time diagnosing yourself and it’s just because it’s an internet discussion that you think you have it factor that puts me off
I am 36 recently diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. Diagnosed in a neurology unit in a hospital after testing by a neuropsychologist. I self diagnosed first of all. Reality is all of us adults who got missed as kids are now self diagnosing as adults due to access to the internet and information. Probably around 6% of adults are neurodivergent. A large chunk of people. Also we self diagnose because most people and healthcare professionals are ignorant about autism and ADHD.
Jesus some of the people in this thread….
I don’t think people have any idea just how difficult is to get a diagnosis of either as an adult – in fact it’s a combination of luck (finding the right medical professional) and guesswork (because even the best ones have to make some guesses for adults).
The trouble is when we’re children, our symptoms are well presented. As we grow older, we both pick up baggage which gives us the symptoms from a different cause, and worse, we learn to work around the condition, often subconsciously, so we mask those symptoms.
This is why while the rate of diagnosis in kids has shot up since the conditions gained widespread recognition, the rate of diagnosis in adults is very very low giving rise to the false idea that they’re new conditions.
So yes, there’s a heck of a lot of people out there without a diagnosis who will never be able to get a diagnosis, but who would at 14 have been very likely to have received one had they been presented to modern doctors.
Doesn’t mean that you should take people on face-value when they say something, but it also means you shouldn’t dismiss it.
Wait til they start self diagnosing with commercial genetics tests.
I got diagnosed a month ago in my late 40’s after a three year wait.
I have had mild ADHD all my life, but it didn’t affect me much.
After a trauma event it went from mild to severe overnight.
My entire view point on it has changed I didn’t really believe in mental health prior to 3 years ago. But nowadays I can’t function properly,
Things that I used to find easy I can’t do anymore.
It’s not the things you’d expected it to interfere with either it’s basic things like looking after yourself, they just don’t seem to register.
I started medication 2 weeks ago and the difference is profound.
What I find strange about the system is some people you can clearly tell they most likely have ADHD with this group why don’t they do one of the simplified test for ADHD and move on to see if medication helps.
The group that are less obvious could then get through the detailed screening process faster.
I work within these services. Whilst access to mental health services is appalling (let’s be explicit that lack of funding is a huge factor) I think about 25% of people who have a diagnosis meet the threshold that ADHD significantly impacts their daily life. This isn’t to deny peoples’ identity (which mental health disorders seem to be very linked with recently), but that the interpretation of diagnostic criteria, I believe, has become broader.
There’s a few reasons for this, as others have said, starving NHS funding has resulted in a boon for private services. Private Services are, in my opinion, more liberal in their use of diagnostic criteria (would people pay £1k and tolerate not get a diagnosis?). Private Services now offer ‘tiered’ pricing services, starting with diagnosis and scaling up to include medicines and legal representation.
COVID is another factor. As backlogs were trying to be cleared there was significant use of remote consultation, relying heavily on second hand accounts of their needs & difficulties. The use of this style of assessment I believe is still in use in many areas.
The use of technology & screens is also a broader issue with attention regulation.
So this is a really difficult one, obviously people should be able to access the care they need and be diagnosed. However there does seem to be a worrying trend of people self diagnosing. This is potentially marginalising autistic people who by virtue of their disability are unable to communicate and will require 24 hour care until the day they die.
I’ve supported autistic adults in domiciliary care for the past 8 years, and my little brother is severely autistic. A lot of people with autism don’t have a voice, it can be an incredibly debilitating condition that can completely consume a person and their families lives, it’s much more than a mental health condition. I worry that with even more strain being placed on the system, people on the low functioning end of the spectrum will be ignored even more as the term becomes diluted by high functioning (or not even autistic) people self diagnosing.
I highly suspect I’m autistic to some degree but I add no point in a diagnosis. What are they gonna do, confirm what I thought then get back on with my life
29 comments
Ah, I sense a paradox.
If you can remain focussed enough to complete an ADHD assessment, then you don’t have it.
There is currently a 5 year waiting list to be seen, which probably explains why private care is booming.
So self diagnosis is bad, and seeking a diagnosis is also bad. I know the Tories would prefer ADHD didn’t exist, and frankly I agree with them, but since I’m stuck with it I don’t think basic healthcare is an unreasonable request.
Friends of ours have self diagnosed their kid as autistic. He’s just a little shit that has never been disciplined. “Mummy loves you” is not an appropriate response to punching kids in soft play.
There’s a difference between self diagnosis and seeking help. Unfortunately, the state wants us to do neither.
It’s like that question about a tree falling in the woods and no one hears it.
If everyone self-diagnoses with ADHD and can’t receive any treatment, does it even change anything?
ITT: people who don’t give a fuck about those who are unable to get professional diagnosis / help for mental conditions due to underfunded health services, and instead accusing anyone who thinks they might have a mental health issue is making it up and/or is “just lazy”
Self diagnosing doesn’t require any NHS services……
Asking for help to deal with a condition, requires NHS services which they should be able to handle, they are just again trying to place blame onto the public for the NHS not being able to cope with anything.
I briefly worked in CAMHS for a bit and while I think it’s fine to self-diagnose.
The main issue is that, since waiting times are over 4 years, you keep telling yourself you have some form of Autism and when you finally have an assessment and you’re told different, it’s hard to grasp.
I saw way too many parents not accepting that they’re actually at fault for their kids behaviour, refuse to change and then pull them out of CAMHS to write to PALS on how wrong CAMHS was lol…
Let’s not gatekeep the help people desperately need.
At the risk of annoying substantial tracts of the internet, I’d propose 2 things are going on here.
Thing 1 – there is a definite uptick in people asking for assessment specifically for neurodevelopmental disorders right now. Assessment takes time and this puts a strain on the mental health section of the NHS
Thing 2 – the NHS is currently at a crisis point in funding and staffing which means it can’t respond to this demand. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that demand is there; I would say a healthy (pun almost intended) health service could deal with it without going to the point of collapse.
Unfortunately successive governments, but the current one in particular, have seemed to stick to the lie you can do more with less. A truly equitable health service can’t make efficiency savings in the way a business can, by refusing to deal with something that takes too long, is costlier than a standard service, or by making itself smaller if funds are tight.
Please don’t just focus on the point of this story in the Tomes being “I didn’t get believed when I thought I had a diagnosis”. I say again, if the NHS was in good shape it could manage the demand. Tinfoil hat firmly applied, it doesn’t feel accidental that it is teetering as private providers circle to offer “help” and open the door to ending Bevan’s dream of a service free to all at point of access.
[thank you for coming to my TED talk]
There are a lot of people on Tiktok and other social media apps who do pretend to have ADHD, autism, and a whole host of other mental illnesses because they think it makes them quirky and unique – r/fakedisordercringe is crazy.
They take it so far that they end up seeking an official diagnosis and then get mad when the doctors tell them they don’t have whatever it is they think they have.
Modern society has romanticised mental suffering and being the troubled archetype, some people are desperate to have something that makes them stand out in the crowd.
In 2014 I was told I would not be put forward for diagnosis because I could ‘cope as a capable adult as society’ (tell that to my ADHD finances that caused me to go bankrupt in 2015). So I took on a psychology degree, passed, and diagnosed myself. It’s not the same on paper but it has allowed me to understand myself better and while some people detest labels, sometimes labels help us understand the /why/ we do things, which make us better or more comfortable with the /what/ and the /who/.
People self-diagnose because they can’t get a diagnosis. Took me 10 years to be diagnosed. I suffered badly with no support, and now I have my diagnosis there’s still no support, and if I want more general mental health help because I’m completely fucked and depressed and suicidal because of a condition I should have been diagnosed and helped with in childhood there’s another five year wait. We haven’t even begun to look at ADHD which I also probably have, most autistic people do.
I’m fed up of people gaslighting people with mental health conditions.
I’ve had ADHD my whole life and it’s meant I’ve never reached my potential or done half of the things I wanted despite being intelligent and hard working.
Why is it every Tom, Dick and Harry an expert on mental health conditions and whether they do or don’t exist.
I notice people don’t say that about physical conditions like cancer do they?
I don’t actually broadcast my condition to anyone despite it being supposedly ‘fashionable’.
I ran an ADHD support group for 5 years and approx 70 percent were self diagnosed and out of that 70 percent I’d say 80 percent had ADHD. Some of them had other conditions alongside ADHD, such as autism and some had other mental health conditions.
The question is why are people self diagnosing themselves.. it’s because they’ve had poor mental health for years or decades and the NHS has done nothing to help them beyond handing out antidepressants and CBT … neither of these are going to counteract the debilitating symptoms of ADHD.
I have been diagnosed as a kid with Asperger’s came from abroad, never took those paper with me. I though how complicated it could be? I am in Scotland, I started the procedure in 2020, two months ago I have received a letter from local NHS Trust telling me that next step has to be postponed to early 2026. When I pressured them, I was told that there are 860 people ahead of me. Diagnostic team for adult autists works only for 4h a week on Tuesdays “because of funding issues”.
The problem is, at least with autism, is that we’ve gone from thinking that autism amongst non-learning disabled ppl as being very rare (like 1 in thousands) to more like 1-2% and that’ll probably increase given that we’re realising that it’s likely under-diagnosed in females too, but generally autism services haven’t been given the funding, hence we have 3 year waiting lists *just for assessment* in my previous Trust and a wasteland in services for anything beyond that.
On the plus side, younger ppl are more accepting and better educated wrt autism in my experience.
Self-diagnosis is not perfect and is not a replacement for a formal diagnosis. That said, you can use it as a starting point with your GP to see if you truly have ADHD/autism if you feel you are concerned. The obvious issue here is that seeing a GP can be hard and the waiting lists for a diagnosis are years long. People would not be self-diagnosing so much if they could see professionals more easily.
Considering it takes over 6 months on average before you hear back, I’m not surprised
My therapist and family therapist have both decided that I *might* be autistic. Nothing to do with me, man.
Maybe fund the NHS correctly Rishi?
​
I think the main problem with ‘so’ many ‘self-diagnosing’ ASD / ADHD is the fact LOTS of people have suffered throughout their entire lives with ASD / ADHD. Think of all the people born in the 90’s and early 00’s that went through school and work struggling like fuck thinking they were ‘normal’.
​
The services are overwhelmed because we failed so many fucking people for so many years. I finally got my assessment for ASD after waiting 4 years for the NHS and I’m trying to save up £800 for a private ADHD diagnosis.
​
The people aren’t the problem. The system is the problem. Rotten to the core.
Women my age weren’t really diagnosed with ADHD and the more I find out about how it presents in women, the more I think I have it but knowing how difficult it is to get a diagnosis due to waiting lists I haven’t sought any help, also there’s the oh you’ve spent too much time diagnosing yourself and it’s just because it’s an internet discussion that you think you have it factor that puts me off
I am 36 recently diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. Diagnosed in a neurology unit in a hospital after testing by a neuropsychologist. I self diagnosed first of all. Reality is all of us adults who got missed as kids are now self diagnosing as adults due to access to the internet and information. Probably around 6% of adults are neurodivergent. A large chunk of people. Also we self diagnose because most people and healthcare professionals are ignorant about autism and ADHD.
Jesus some of the people in this thread….
I don’t think people have any idea just how difficult is to get a diagnosis of either as an adult – in fact it’s a combination of luck (finding the right medical professional) and guesswork (because even the best ones have to make some guesses for adults).
The trouble is when we’re children, our symptoms are well presented. As we grow older, we both pick up baggage which gives us the symptoms from a different cause, and worse, we learn to work around the condition, often subconsciously, so we mask those symptoms.
This is why while the rate of diagnosis in kids has shot up since the conditions gained widespread recognition, the rate of diagnosis in adults is very very low giving rise to the false idea that they’re new conditions.
So yes, there’s a heck of a lot of people out there without a diagnosis who will never be able to get a diagnosis, but who would at 14 have been very likely to have received one had they been presented to modern doctors.
Doesn’t mean that you should take people on face-value when they say something, but it also means you shouldn’t dismiss it.
Wait til they start self diagnosing with commercial genetics tests.
I got diagnosed a month ago in my late 40’s after a three year wait.
I have had mild ADHD all my life, but it didn’t affect me much.
After a trauma event it went from mild to severe overnight.
My entire view point on it has changed I didn’t really believe in mental health prior to 3 years ago. But nowadays I can’t function properly,
Things that I used to find easy I can’t do anymore.
It’s not the things you’d expected it to interfere with either it’s basic things like looking after yourself, they just don’t seem to register.
I started medication 2 weeks ago and the difference is profound.
What I find strange about the system is some people you can clearly tell they most likely have ADHD with this group why don’t they do one of the simplified test for ADHD and move on to see if medication helps.
The group that are less obvious could then get through the detailed screening process faster.
I work within these services. Whilst access to mental health services is appalling (let’s be explicit that lack of funding is a huge factor) I think about 25% of people who have a diagnosis meet the threshold that ADHD significantly impacts their daily life. This isn’t to deny peoples’ identity (which mental health disorders seem to be very linked with recently), but that the interpretation of diagnostic criteria, I believe, has become broader.
There’s a few reasons for this, as others have said, starving NHS funding has resulted in a boon for private services. Private Services are, in my opinion, more liberal in their use of diagnostic criteria (would people pay £1k and tolerate not get a diagnosis?). Private Services now offer ‘tiered’ pricing services, starting with diagnosis and scaling up to include medicines and legal representation.
COVID is another factor. As backlogs were trying to be cleared there was significant use of remote consultation, relying heavily on second hand accounts of their needs & difficulties. The use of this style of assessment I believe is still in use in many areas.
The use of technology & screens is also a broader issue with attention regulation.
So this is a really difficult one, obviously people should be able to access the care they need and be diagnosed. However there does seem to be a worrying trend of people self diagnosing. This is potentially marginalising autistic people who by virtue of their disability are unable to communicate and will require 24 hour care until the day they die.
I’ve supported autistic adults in domiciliary care for the past 8 years, and my little brother is severely autistic. A lot of people with autism don’t have a voice, it can be an incredibly debilitating condition that can completely consume a person and their families lives, it’s much more than a mental health condition. I worry that with even more strain being placed on the system, people on the low functioning end of the spectrum will be ignored even more as the term becomes diluted by high functioning (or not even autistic) people self diagnosing.
I highly suspect I’m autistic to some degree but I add no point in a diagnosis. What are they gonna do, confirm what I thought then get back on with my life