assessment, or if the provider's credentials meet requirements for insurance billing or recommending prescription of medications.
- ADHD assessments that use any form of neuroimaging such as SPECT, QEEG, DTI, PET/CT, neurofeedback, MRI, CT scans, FNIRSs, etc. While the field of neuroradiology has exploded in its complexity and utility in recent years, as of the writing of this article in 2023, there are currently no reputable studies that are able to incorporate neuroimaging as a diagnostic tool to improve accuracy of ADHD diagnosis. Providers that claim to give ADHD or other developmental diagnoses on the basis of these kinds of scans should be treated with skepticism.
- ADHD assessments that are administered using solely self-report questionnaires. There are a large number of questionnaires that purport to provide examinees with information on whether they meet criteria for ADHD. Self-report questionnaires are those that ask a person about how they are feeling about a certain topic or symptom, and rely on the person to rate how much, how frequently, or how severely they experience that symptom. Unfortunately, many self-report questionnaires that are free and readily available online lack any kind of research that ties their scores to true ADHD diagnoses. Indeed, many of these free online questionnaires exploit the Barnum Effect described above and simply inquire about vague and nonspecific symptoms that are readily experienced by the general population (like disorganization, brain fog, or poor time management). Even reputable self-report measures such as the Connors Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS) are prone to symptom exaggeration, and influence from non-ADHD conditions like depression, anxiety, or traumatic brain injury. When used in isolation by underqualified providers, the CAARS can produce results that are misleading, resulting in false positive diagnostic conclusions.
- ADHD diagnoses given on the basis of an office visit or therapy appointment. ADHD is a complex, nuanced, serious, and frequently debilitating condition. When a provider gives a diagnosis of ADHD following either a brief office visit or therapy session, the diagnosis is frequently inaccurate because these encounters frequently fail to account for things like developmental history, objectivity of deficits reported by patients, or other conditions are are capable of producing the patient's subjective symptoms. In these circumstances, oftentimes the provider or therapist themselves are falling victim to the Barnum Effect by attributing their patient's vague and nonspecific symptoms like brain fog or procrastination uniquely to ADHD when these symptoms are experienced at high rates in the general population.
Ultimately, YOU are the only one with control or responsibility over the healthcare information you consume from the healthcare community. If your healthcare team includes behavioral healthcare providers, it is important that you work with providers who have the training, education, and tools necessary to address your specific concerns. Your behavioral healthcare providers including clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, and psychiatrists are tasked with providing you with accurate and specific information about your psychiatric or cognitive functioning, even if that information is not what you want or expect to hear. By educating yourself on how to spot sketchy or misleading information about ADHD or other developmental conditions purveyed on social media and other Internet sources, you are well on your way to being an educated healthcare consumer. It is critical that you get your healthcare information from sources that are designed to provide clinical care - not designed to generate likes, followers, or comments.