Dr. Kieran Kennedy

Definitely.

Wow.

So I think we don't think enough about that side of depression and anxiety disorders or other mental health conditions.

Absolutely.

If someone has a really...

nasty sort of dug in anxiety disorder let's say generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder that can absolutely short circuit our ability to focus or not get distracted or remember things if someone is really depressed what it can actually do is affect the cognition of the brain and even look like dementia for some people if they're significantly depressed so

Part of ADHD assessment is also making sure there isn't something else going on that is kind of causing the same symptoms that might look like ADHD.

So it's definitely a pretty complex kind of process as well to tease all that out.

This is a common one, especially for girls and women.

You know, I meet a lot of women now who have been told for many, many years, you have anxiety or you're just stressed or, you know, you need to kind of sleep more.

And, you know, so they've been told things that...

You know, and so a lot of sort of struggling with ADHD type symptoms can be put down to other things.

And again, that's because it's complex.

As we've just said, an anxiety disorder or depression can look like ADHD sometimes.

But also, I think there's been a big misunderstanding about what ADHD looks like, too, especially for girls and women.

And so, yeah, I think kind of anxiety, depression, being told you're just generally struggling with your mental health, that's a very common one to see people come to me with.

And then when we go through everything, we actually realize, well, you've had pretty significant ADHD your whole life.

It's not anxiety.

I mean, I think often it's really relieving and validating and can be quite emotional in a positive way because I think, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's your physical health or your mental health.

I think a lot of people can relate to feeling that something's not right or maybe we're not kind of quite down the right track of the diagnosis or the treatment.