What Is ADHD?
ADHD is a condition that affects adults, teens, and children. Adults with ADHD have difficulty focusing, organizing, and procrastinating which can wreak havoc at work and at home. At work it might cause a delay in meeting deadlines, problems with co-workers or even job termination. At home it can often cause conflict with one’s spouse or other family members.
For teens and kids ADHD can result in inattention in class, difficulty with homework, poor grades, or sometimes being left back. For teens or adults taking standardized tests such as SAT, ACT, LSAT, ADHD can affect performance. A proper diagnosis with ADHD testing can grant extra time on exams allowing for someone with ADHD to perform at their true potential. Behavioral Health of NY provides a thorough neuropsychological evaluation and treatment for your ADHD.
Types of ADHD
There are three major types of ADHD:
Combined type
This is the most common type of ADHD, characterized by both impulsive/hyperactive behaviors and inattention/distractibility.
Predominately inattentive type
With this type of ADHD, a person most commonly struggles with paying attention. Predominately inattentive type was previously known as attention deficit disorder (ADD) but has been since redefined as a type of ADHD.
Predominately hyperactive-impulsive type
The least common type of ADHD, a person with impulsive/hyperactive type ADHD, typically struggles with excess energy and overreliance on instinct and impulse.
ADHD Symptoms
ADHD can show up in various ways. Signs that you may have ADHD include:
- Inattention
- Impulsivity
- Hyperactivity
- Distractibility
- Disorganized
- Lack of focus
- Forgetfulness
- Excessive fidgeting
- Difficulty staying on task
- Impatience
Benefits of ADHD Testing
If you suspect you have ADHD, getting tested will give you a thorough, empirically-based evaluation resulting in a more complete and accurate diagnosis. The testing will help you understand your ADHD better, provide guidance for your treatment, and help support accommodations for work, school, and standardized exams.
ADHD is often diagnosed with minimal evaluation, such as a short interview or questionnaire provided by a primary care physician or psychiatrist. These types of superficial evaluations do not provide the level of detail necessary to fully evaluate ADHD. Clients are often left with a limited understanding of the diagnosis or how to manage their ADHD symptoms.
Furthermore, because some of the symptoms of ADHD are similar to other mental conditions (e.g., anxiety, depression, OCD, autism), a professional evaluation is necessary to receive an accurate diagnosis. This allows you to better understand the condition you’re experiencing and receive the best therapy or treatment for the condition.
Professional ADHD testing includes evaluation for depression, anxiety and other conditions. Your symptoms could point to another condition altogether, or they could point to multiple diagnoses. The results will help determine which condition or conditions you’re experiencing and recommend appropriate treatment for you.
People with ADHD may require extra time or other accommodations to perform their best on standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, MCAT, and LSAT. Exam boards typically require professional ADHD testing and diagnosis, also known as a neuropsychological evaluation or psychoeducational evaluation, to grant these accommodations.
How to Get Diagnosed with ADHD
1. BHNY Initial Consultation
An initial interview with Behavioral Health of New York helps assess whether your symptoms may call for an ADHD evaluation. The initial consultation questions will help us better understand you and what you are experiencing.
2. Neuropsychological Evaluation
Our neuropsychologist will conduct an extensive evaluation of your intellectual functioning, learning, memory, attention, concentration, language abilities, visuospatial skills, and executive function. They’ll also conduct emotional and personality assessments to help provide a more accurate diagnosis.
3. Diagnosis & Treatment Plan
After the assessment, our neuropsychologist will inform you of your results and whether or not you meet the criteria for ADHD diagnosis. If you are diagnosed with ADHD, our thorough assessment will provide the foundation for individualized treatment recommendations.
ADHD Affects People of All Ages
One of the criteria for an adult ADHD diagnosis is a history of ADHD symptoms going back to childhood. However, many adults were never diagnosed as a child so it’s not uncommon for adults to live with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD. Adults come to BHNY for ADHD testing to see if they have ADHD, and what steps they can take for treatment.
Once an adult receives a comprehensive ADHD diagnosis, it can be used for accommodations at work, such as provisions of a private office, assisted technology, receipt of intermittent breaks and staggered work schedules. Adults applying to graduate school can also use the evaluation for test accommodations on standardized exams such as the LSAT, BAR exam, MCAT and GMAT. BHNY will also provide follow-up therapy for adults diagnosed with ADHD, which will help to improve work focus and organization, reduce distractibility in social interactions, improve relationships and overall quality of life.
If you suspect your teenager has ADHD, it’s important to diagnose and treat this condition before it becomes problematic in adulthood. ADHD testing will differentiate adolescent anxiety and depression from ADHD. Adolescents with undiagnosed ADHD often feel inferior and less intelligent than their peers. Their ADHD significantly impacts academic performance and teachers unaware that a student has ADHD, may view the student as unmotivated, apathetic, and uncommitted to their schoolwork.
A comprehensive ADHD evaluation and proper diagnosis can significantly improve the life of an adolescent. The evaluation allows parents and teachers to fully understand their academic and social needs. The test results will provide the teen with academic accommodations such as extended time for both in-class and standardized exams, test taking in a distraction-free room, preferential classroom seating, and provision of a set of notes for lectures.
ADHD diagnosis and treatment for adolescents can be life-changing. For the first time adolescents learn that they’re not lazy, academically inadequate, or inferior but they have a legitimate, treatable condition. The net result is improvement in self-esteem, academic functioning, and peer and teacher relationships.
ADHD evaluation and treatment in childhood can prevent problems persisting into adulthood. The testing will also differentiate ADHD from other childhood conditions such as specific learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, and autism spectrum disorder. Additionally, children are afforded the benefits of special accommodations in the school environment, such as extended time for test taking, smaller classrooms, more teacher to child support, one-to-one tutoring, adjunctive therapies and possibly a private school environment for individualized attention.
ADHD Therapy
Contact Us
Call, email, or fill out the form
Get ADHD Testing in NYC
Contact Behavioral Health of New York today to set up an appointment for ADHD testing in New York City.
Frequently Asked Questions
ADD or attention deficit disorder is an older term for what we now call ADHD. In the past, ADD was used to describe conditions without hyperactivity, but in the 1990s, doctors determined it was best to use ADHD for all types of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
The causes of ADHD are not well understood yet. In some cases, it appears that genetics may play a role. Brain structure, epilepsy, premature birth, and brain damage are other risk factors.
ADHD is not a learning disability. However, people with ADHD often struggle in school due to their symptoms, and people with ADHD may have a separate learning disability that contributes to their experiences.
ADHD does appear to run in families, indicating that there may be a genetic cause. However, it is still unclear how ADHD is inherited, and it does not appear that a single gene causes ADHD.