Dr. Kieran Kennedy

And again, for adults, that's not always looking like struggling with alcohol or drugs or buying Porsches on a whim.

It can often look like struggling to manage your finances or being impulsive in your dating life or impulsive with decisions.

So it can kind of look quite different and subtle, and people often don't think that those things can be part of ADHD.

Look, sometimes I can.

Amongst friends and people I meet, I think they're often like, please don't analyze me.

Cover your eyes kind of thing.

Look, I mean, sometimes it can be quite clear that someone might be struggling to focus or they might be quite hyperactive.

But a lot of the time, again, I think for adults, it's actually quite complex and quite sort of internal.

So the ADHD assessment process really is quite in-depth in terms of teasing out and talking about a lot of these things.

I think I've got a pretty good barometer now for meeting patients and kind of getting a gut feel pretty early for whether we're looking at ADHD or neurodivergence or maybe we're looking at an anxiety disorder that is also impacting someone's attention and focus.

So, yeah, I think I've got a reasonable barometer, but I promise I switch it off when I'm not in the clinic.

No, I'm not analysing people in the supermarket, thank God.

I think that would drive me nuts.

But, yeah, pretty good read otherwise.

Really, really great question.

I think it's sticking to the core symptoms in terms of what I guess the DSM, which is our diagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to kind of diagnose conditions in a structured way around the world.

There are still a very kind of set set.

you know, number of criteria, I guess, for meeting a diagnosis.

So I guess the key for me, if I'm assessing someone, for example, is to move through those symptoms, but really try and tease out with that person how it affects them.

Because struggling to focus for me might not look like struggling to focus for you, depending on the type of work you do or if you're studying.