ADHD Evaluations
Most of our services are offered in person, conveniently located in Midtown Manhattan, and online.
Bilingual services for Spanish speakers
What does an ADHD evaluation look like?
A comprehensive neuropsychological assessment will include a clinical interview, self-report measures where you provide answers to describe your experience, and performance-based measures where you are asked to complete different tasks that help us assess how well-developed certain functions of your brain are. It provides a much more detailed picture of how your brain works and can be very helpful in developing the right strategies that capitalize on your strengths to help you succeed.
ADHD has a lot of overlapping symptoms with other very common disorders, such as anxiety and depression. While most clinicians will use self-report checklists to help diagnose ADHD, these don’t help differentiate between these possibilities and they don’t provide specific information about areas of strength and weaknesses of the person being diagnosed. Being misdiagnosed as having (or not having) ADHD can be a barrier to receiving the right medication and therapy, extending the negative feelings we described before.
Why Should I Pursue ADHD Evaluations?
For an adult with undiagnosed ADHD, daily life can feel like a persistent state of overwhelm and underachievement, without quite understanding why.
Some of the ways we’ve heard our clients with ADHD describe their experience include:
Feeling like they have “a million tabs open on their browser”
Being unable to begin working on something until the last minute
Constantly underestimating the amount of time something would take to complete
Having intense and immediate emotional reactions, particularly to rejection or disappointing others
Feeling like they are not “living up to their potential”
Always beating themselves up for being disorganized, forgetful, lazy, or impulsive
Feeling like they’re disappointing important people in their life
ADHD Evaluations at PACS
Experiencing these things without knowing why they happen can often lead to feelings of depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and shame. People who are diagnosed with ADHD as adults will often describe receiving the diagnosis as “life-changing”. They begin to understand they are not lazy or disorganized. Their brain is just wired differently. A diagnosis also gives them access to the right treatment, which often includes medication, and helps them develop skills to manage their time and workload more effectively.
You can also email us at info@pacsnyc.com for more information.
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Schedule a free consultation and one of our staff members will ask about your reasons for seeking an evaluation, and your availability, and help you navigate financial details. It takes about 15-20 minutes and you can book it right now.
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Once you’re ready to pursue the evaluation, we’ll send you some initial paperwork to review and complete and send you a full schedule with all the dates and times you’ll need to be available.
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This is a diagnostic interview that is designed to gather a wide range of information about your development and history.
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Your evaluator will orient you to what tests you’ll need to complete and whether you’ll need to come in in person or do them over telehealth. Typically, 2 testing sessions lasting 2 hours each are required.
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We ask everyone we evaluate to give us permission to interview someone who knows them well. This helps us get an understanding of the person we’re evaluating from a different perspective. This is usually a short conversation, over the phone, lasting about 30 minutes or so.
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Testing can be hard work! Now we’ll take all the information we’ve gathered and integrate it into a report that you’ll receive at the end of the process.
This takes 2-3 weeks to complete.
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This is the best part! We’ll invite you to come in for a feedback session where we’ll review our findings, share any diagnoses we’ve uncovered, explain what everything means, and give you tailored recommendations based on what we’ve learned about you.
Step-by-Step Testing Process
*If you are a licensed professional or practitioner, or would like to refer a client, please schedule a time to speak with us here.