January 11, 2025
January 11, 2025
|

Comprehensive Guide to ADHD Assessment for Adults and What to Expect

Many adults with ADHD experience challenges that make it difficult for them to succeed at school. They might struggle to stay organized and manage their time. As a result, they may fall behind in classes, have trouble keeping up with assignments, and perform poorly on tests. If this situation sounds familiar, you are not alone. Fortunately, research has shown that grading can be made easier with the proper support. This article will explore how ADHD Assessment for Adults can help identify your unique challenges and how the EssayGrader AI Co-pilot for teachers can help neurodiverse teachers by giving a lot of feedback and context that helps them with grading essays.

The EssayGrader AI Co-pilot for teachers can help you achieve your goals by improving classroom management, how to teach essay writing and the grading process. This valuable tool can relieve stress and grading pressure by providing personalized and detailed feedback on student writing.

What Does ADHD in Adults Look Like, Especially Where It Has Never Been Formally Diagnosed?

person Using Phone - ADHD Assessment for Adults

Symptoms and Behaviors Common in Adults with ADHD 

ADHD in adults is a serious condition that can both impact individuals and create broader challenges for society. Adult ADHD is often underdiagnosed and misunderstood, especially in women. Symptoms of ADHD in adults can look quite different than childhood symptoms, and many adults with ADHD have never received an official diagnosis.

Adults with ADHD report difficulties in areas such as: 

  • Remembering
  • Concentration
  • Personal organization
  • Planning
  • Behavioral problems:some text
    • Emotional
    • Social 

According to Dr. Thomas E. Brown of the Yale University School of Medicine, “ADHD is essentially a name for developmental impairment of executive function.” Executive functions are the skills involved in: 

  • Planning
  • Selective attention
  • Motivation
  • Impulse control

Understanding the Six Key Areas of Executive Functioning Affected by ADHD in Adults

Adults with ADHD have problems in six major areas of executive functioning:

  • Activation: Problems with organization, prioritizing, and starting tasks. 
  • Focus: Problems with sustaining focus and resisting distraction, especially with reading. 
  • Effort: Problems with motivation, sustained effort, and persistence. 
  • Emotion: Difficulty regulating emotions and managing stress. 
  • Memory: Problems with short-term memory and memory retrieval. 
  • Action: Problems with self-control and self-regulation. 

The Prevalence and Gender Distribution of ADHD in Adults: Key Insights and Challenges

American research indicates that up to 60% of those diagnosed with childhood ADHD continue to suffer the symptoms through adulthood. Therefore, ADHD in adults is a serious issue that can create many difficulties for sufferers and society at large. 

It is also suggested that ADHD in adults is more evenly distributed among the sexes, with as many women reporting symptoms of ADHD as men. 

Seeking Support and an ADHD Assessment for Adults 

To receive an ADHD diagnosis, you will need to visit a psychologist or psychiatrist with experience in diagnosing and managing ADHD.

It is believed that ADHD is not an adult-onset disorder and can be verified from a review of childhood behaviours. An assessment may look back on childhood behavior, including school reports of inattentiveness, behavior problems, and underachievement, as well as discussions with parents about any childhood symptoms or family history of ADHD. 

This would be in addition to obtaining a complete self-report from the adult of their symptoms. Other tests would be carried out to determine any medical or neurological illnesses or specific learning difficulties.

Related Reading

A Step-By-Step Guide to ADHD Assessment for Adults

Peron Posing - ADHD Assessment for Adults

Getting an ADHD assessment as an adult is no quick and easy task. The evaluation of adults presenting with ADHD symptoms typically requires at least two visits. This thorough approach allows the clinician to assess motivation for follow-up visits, the persistence of symptoms and dysfunction, and the likelihood of alternative diagnoses. 

During both visits, the following components of a complete evaluation should be considered:  

  • Review and corroboration of current symptoms and dysfunction.  
  • Determination of a childhood onset.  
  • Evaluation for comorbid and/or mimicking psychiatric problems, medical disorders, or substance abuse.    

Diagnostic Criteria for Adult ADHD Assessment

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association, outlines diagnostic criteria for making a diagnosis of ADHD in children and adults. 

For a formal diagnosis of ADHD, symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity and/or inattention should meet the diagnostic criteria outlined in DSM-5.   

Differential Diagnosis: Ruling Out Other Conditions When Assessing ADHD in Adults

The symptoms of ADHD are common in other mental health disorders and non-psychiatric conditions. An appropriate evaluation must consider whether the symptoms belong to: 

  • ADHD
  • Another mental health condition
  • Another physical health condition
  • If they represent more than one disorder

Other explanations for presenting symptoms should also be ruled out.  

Screening and Assessment Tools for Adult ADHD

The following scales have been developed to screen, evaluate, and monitor adults with ADHD. Since rating scales are based on subjective self-reported perceptions, it is recommended that significant persons in the adult's life also complete the forms. These include: 

  • The person's spouse
  • A close relative
  • Employer and/or colleague

ADHD Screeners:  

  • ADHD Rating Scale-IV (ADHD-RS-IV) With Adult Prompts
  • Adult ADHD Clinical Diagnostic Scale (ACDS) v1.2
  • Adult ADHD Investigator Rating Scale (AISRS)
  • Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) v1.1
  • Adult ADHD Self-Report Screening Scale for DSM-5 (ASRS DSM-5) Screener
  • Adult ASRS Symptom Checklist v1.1
  • Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11)
  • Brown Attention-Deficit Disorder Symptom Assessment Scale (BADDS) for Adults
  • Clinical Global Impression (CGI)
  • Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scales (CAARS)
  • Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults (DIVA) 2.0
  • Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS)

Informant Questionnaires: 

Note: A fee may be associated with using some of these tools for you and/or the patient.

Quality of Life Assessments:

  • Adult ADHD Quality of Life Measure (AAQoL)
  • Driving Behavior Survey (DBS)
  • Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire General Health V2.0 (WPAI: GH)

ADHD Screeners and Guidelines

Related Reading

Save Time While Grading Schoolwork with EssayGrader's Grading Software for Teachers

EssayGrader is an artificial intelligence grading tool that can help you quickly and accurately evaluate student essays and written assignments. This tool can cut your grading time from 10 minutes per essay to 30 seconds! 

It achieves this by allowing teachers to create custom grading rubrics that assess essays with the same accuracy as humans and can even summarize essays. The result is high-quality feedback for students that helps them improve their writing skills and achieve better grades.  

How Can EssayGrader Help Me Save Time?

When you use EssayGrader to assess student essays, you can dramatically reduce your grading time. On average, a teacher takes 10 minutes to grade a single essay. With EssayGrader, that time is cut down to 30 seconds. 

That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.  Instead of spending hours grading essays, you can save that time for more critical tasks like lesson planning or helping struggling students.  

How Accurate Is EssayGrader?

One of teachers' biggest concerns when using artificial intelligence to grade student essays is accuracy. After all, if a computer takes over the grading process, how can you be sure it will produce the same results as a human? With EssayGrader, teachers can replicate their existing grading rubrics, so the AI doesn't have to do the guesswork to set the grading criteria. 

Instead, it grades the essay based on the exact parameters the teacher has set. This allows for a quick and accurate assessment of student writing.  

What Features Does EssayGrader Offer?  

EssayGrader offers a variety of features to help you get the most out of the software. You can:

  • Create custom rubrics
  • Grade essays by class
  • Bulk upload essays
  • Summarize essays with our essay summarizer 

There’s also an AI detector to help you catch essays written by artificial intelligence. Over half a million essays were graded by 60,000 teachers on our platform. These features make EssayGrader an invaluable tool for teachers looking to improve student writing and save time on grading.  

Related Reading

  • Best Free LMS Systems
  • Professional Development Plan Template
  • Rubrics for Teachers
  • Middle School Classroom Rules
  • Princeton Supplemental Essays
  • Middle School Classroom Management
  • Classroom Rules
  • Behavior Management Systems
  • Yale Supplemental Essays
  • Behavior Management Plan
  • Critical Thinking for Kids
Chan Yerneni
Chan leads the day-to-day operations at EssayGrader with a deep passion for education. Coming from a family of teachers, he founded a school in India that served over 700 underprivileged students.
Table of contents
Start grading today

Save hours by grading essays in 30 seconds or less.

Get started for free
Get started for free

Grade with AI superpowers

Streamline grading, provide detailed, actionable feedback to your students, and maintain complete control over your assessments - all in one intuitive interface.

Get started for free
Get started for free
Loved by 100,000+ Teachers