Decoding ADHD: The Complete Guide To Diagnosis And Support

Confused about ADHD diagnosis and assessment?
Learn what the process involves, how it helps, and what to do next.

🎙️ In this episode of Hypercast, we explore ADHD diagnosis and assessment with expert psychologist Heidi Keefe, M.C. Discover what’s involved in assessing and diagnosing ADHD, how to interpret the results, and actionable steps to support children and adults with ADHD in school, work, and life.

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✨ Guest Information
This episode features Heidi Keefe, M.C., founder and CEO of Deeply Rooted Psychological Services.
🌐 https://www.deeplyrootedpsychological.ca/


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www.understandingADHD.ca

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Heidi: we want to go into it, not just asking is ADHD the correct diagnosis here, but we're also asking what can we rule out?

[00:00:09] Heidi: When we look at the difference between Somebody being diagnosed with ADHD and somebody maybe showing some of the traits but not meeting criteria for that diagnosis is The impact on functioning. 

[00:00:23] Heidi: 

[00:00:23] Brianna: want to foster a love of learning in these kids, and if they're struggling at school, it's going to prevent them from learning down the line, and cause self esteem issues and barriers in their future. 

[00:00:32] Melissa: Hi everyone. Welcome to hypercast. 

[00:00:35] Brianna: Welcome to Hypercast. 

[00:00:36] Brianna: today's topic is about ADHD and assessments, and we want to talk about it because, what are assessments is an important question, but then once you've done the assessment, once you have your diagnosis and that little report, what do you do with It? how does that help you?

[00:00:51] Brianna: Now you have the information, but where do you go from there, 

[00:00:53] Melissa: that could be if, You are a parent who has a child that has gotten assessed and you're dealing with school and the education system. That can be as an adult and you get your assessment. And then how do you ask for accommodations at work? 

[00:01:05] Brianna: we have a wonderful guest with us today to talk about assessments, who actually does them and knows the answers to all these questions. this is Heidi. She's the founder and CEO of Deeply Rooted Psychological Services. and she is registered in Alberta, Newfoundland, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. And CityU, which is how we met. this is my intern supervisor. this is how I am learning to become a therapist.

[00:01:28] Melissa: Welcome.

[00:01:30] Heidi: thank you. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to chat with you guys.

[00:01:36] Melissa: tell us, why do you think that this is an important topic for us to cover? 

[00:01:40] Heidi: just so many different processes out there when it comes to ADHD assessment, there's just so many different ways you can go about getting, diagnosed and so that can be confusing when there's just all these different, services out there.

[00:01:57] Heidi: It's tough to know. what direction you need to go, how to get assessed, as you guys said, what to do with that assessment once you have it. so it's a big, confusing world out there when it comes to ADHD assessments and other assessments as well. And just being able to give some guidance and some information about, here's, what you should be looking for when it comes to a good assessment.

[00:02:23] Heidi: and then what you can do with that information when you have it. 

[00:02:27] Melissa: parents. Our concern, they think their kids may have ADHD and they don't know where to start, they don't know when to start, and they don't know what the process is like.

[00:02:35] Melissa: Do you think you could give

[00:02:36] Melissa: us some insight on that? 

[00:02:37] Heidi: the first thing is that whether we're assessing a child or an adult, The biggest piece is that we want to go into it, not just asking is ADHD the correct diagnosis here, but we're also asking what can we rule out?

[00:02:53] Heidi: What else could be going on that might look like ADHD? And a good assessment that's in line with best practices is going to use a differential diagnosis process, which involves ruling things in and ruling things out.

[00:03:08] Brianna: a lot of times what happens is the teacher, notices that there's something going on. The parents don't really know and they're like, here, fix my kid

[00:03:15] Brianna: or figure out what's wrong with my kid. So we don't necessarily know. It's not always oh, this kid is ADHD. I just want, to know for sure.

[00:03:22] Heidi: with both kids and adults, there are a whole bunch of things that we want to look at and be able to roll out as part of that process because we know that learning disorders can look like ADHD and intellectual disability can sometimes look like ADHD. 

[00:03:37] Heidi: when there's been traumatic experiences during the person's development, we can see symptoms that overlap with ADHD, depression, anxiety, 

[00:03:46] Heidi: even though you may have a learning disorder or you may have something else, that doesn't also mean that you 

[00:03:50] Melissa: don't have ADHD. It could be ADHD

[00:03:52] Heidi: Oh, exactly.. 

[00:03:53] Heidi: Just to complicate things further, right? it might not be just one thing that we're trying to understand. We might be looking at, a combination of, conditions contributing to whatever it is we're seeing. definitely a lot of pieces to the puzzle that need to be looked at and figured out.

[00:04:10] Heidi: 

[00:04:10] Brianna: that's why these

[00:04:11] Brianna: assessments are so important, You get the knowledge, right? That's

[00:04:14] Brianna: the solution to this problem. Essentially. It's there's something going on. We don't know. now we know which

[00:04:19] Brianna: techniques to apply, which supports to offer, which accommodations would be the most helpful in this

[00:04:24] Brianna: situation.

[00:04:24] Heidi: exactly, we need to understand, we need to know what's going on in order to best support that individual, 

[00:04:31] Melissa: How about approaching this? Do they go to their doctor? Do they talk to the school system? 

[00:04:36] Heidi: sometimes it's first noticed by the teacher in school. those first few years of school, tend to be when teachers will start to notice, differences in behavior, learning, whatever it is. sometimes that's how the assessment is requested through the school, but sometimes it is the parents who notice first and, depending where you live, the process of accessing an assessment might look a little bit different.

[00:05:01] Heidi: sometimes it is starting with the family doctor and having a conversation there. they may refer you on to a pediatrician, or psychologist, or maybe you're a parent who, knows how to navigate the services out there and, The parent access is the psychologist in clinic.

[00:05:21] Heidi: different ways getting to where you want to go depending where you live, it's going to be different 

[00:05:26] Melissa: there signs that parents. May notice, or that you, maybe you can give some tips on things that may indicate, that assessment

[00:05:35] Melissa: may be good for their children.

[00:05:37] Brianna: Or even things you see, because if they brought into you, then you can see what's going on.

[00:05:42] Heidi: When we look at the difference between Somebody being diagnosed with ADHD and somebody maybe showing some of the traits but not meeting criteria for that diagnosis is The impact on functioning. you can be somebody who struggles with attention and focus, but it's not impacting you to the degree that a diagnosis would fit.

[00:06:04] Heidi: We typically are going to see impact on learning, impact on social skills, social interaction, emotional regulation, all of those areas. and so when we see a child struggling to learn, maybe they're a little bit behind their peers or just struggling to pick up reading, messy writing is another one those motor skills will develop slower.

[00:06:28] Heidi: for me, the biggest thing is, When we have children who are starting to fall behind in school, we want to know why, we really need to know why so we can help them, you know, get back to, being able to learn more on par with their peers. when we see that happening where the child is struggling in school, that's a good indication that we should start looking a little bit deeper to find out what's going on with that child. 

[00:06:55] Melissa: Brianna, I

[00:06:55] Melissa: don't know about you, but I, I remember being really strong in certain areas and weaker in others, it was a glaring deficit, in a certain area and a huge strength in another. And that was a big sign that there was something going on with me. 

[00:07:09] Brianna: there was delight to have in the classroom. If only they could focus 

[00:07:13] Melissa : Yeah, 

[00:07:14] Brianna: that kind of 

[00:07:14] Melissa : I feel

[00:07:15] Melissa : like those report card, comments are pretty much carbon copy on every kid with ADHD 

[00:07:20] Heidi: Yeah, and that's something we're looking for too and that I've experienced on my own report cards as a child is, lots of potential, really bright kid, but needs to try harder, needs to put in more effort. And that's where we start going down the path of, inappropriately placing blame on a child in a way 

[00:07:41] Melissa: because of a brain difference.

[00:07:42] Melissa: more often than not, they are trying harder than everybody else already, 

[00:07:46] Brianna: delaying assessment is not a good thing. I think some people are worried putting their kids on medication too early is a thing, but sometimes delaying that assessment could actually. Be harmful to a kid. when is a good time to get assessed? 

[00:08:01] Heidi: the sooner the better when those, challenges are noticed whether by the teacher or the parents, because the gap in learning tends to grow as they get older 

[00:08:13] Heidi: the sooner we're able to get those supports in place and make sure that the child's learning needs are being met, the easier learning and school is going to be for them. ideally, the teacher is noticing traits in those first few years of school or the parents are noticing before we get to that point 

[00:08:31] Heidi: I feel like more often than not, it's, when the child gets into school and has all of those new demands and expectations placed on them, around here's the routine you have to follow. And here's, all of these, positions we put you in where you have to sit there and listen for an extended period of time, retain that information, follow those instructions, that's where we really start to see the symptoms pop 

[00:08:56] Heidi: up.

[00:08:57] Melissa: We 

[00:08:57] Brianna: want to foster a love of learning in these kids, and if they're struggling at school, it's going to prevent them from learning down the line, and cause self esteem issues and barriers in their future. So the earlier you can do it, the better.

[00:09:09] Brianna: you mentioned medication, Melissa, it's a conversation you can have. After, all the assessment is just information, and then you can make a more informed decision how to support your child, how to help your child, or yourself, Because if you don't have the information, then you're doing all the wrong things, and you're not actually helping.

[00:09:26] Brianna: I know you can't say everything that's in an assessment because it gives it away, but what is in an assessment?

[00:09:32] Heidi: I'll speak to the assessment process with children a little bit. the first piece that we typically start with is, an interview with the parents to understand the developmental history, and look at, the concerns coming from home, how long have these concerns been going on for, and really just get an understanding what else might be contributing to what we're seeing.

[00:09:57] Heidi: So just trying to get that understanding from the family of, who the child is, what the challenges have been and start to gather that information with the parents first before we, move on to gathering information from the school, which is the next step. that's going to look different depending on whether The psychologist is going into the school to complete the assessment or if the assessments being done in the clinic When we're in the school we have access to the teachers and can do an interview with the teacher as well We also usually get access to the school records which gives us, that historical piece of, how long the challenges have been showing up at school, how has the process of learning looked for this child, looking at report cards, looking at, specialized learning plans individual education plans and things like that. And speech and language and occupational therapy, have they been accessing those, specialized supports and services already? 

[00:10:58] Brianna: So you're describing

[00:10:59] Brianna: like a multi pronged approach where you're talking to parents, you're talking to school,

[00:11:03] Brianna: you're getting a history, and then you're also talking to the child. Because I 

[00:11:06] Heidi: yeah.

[00:11:06] Brianna: games and puzzles type thing.

[00:11:08] Heidi: You remember the testing part. Yeah, exactly. that's the next piece we, if we're in the school or clinic, we're going to start getting into the actual testing piece, which is going to involve, intellectual testing, it's going to involve academic testing.

[00:11:27] Heidi: where we're trying to get an understanding of, the child's cognitive strengths and, their areas of weakness and what are they capable of when it comes to learning? So that's the intellectual piece. when we move into the academic testing, what we're looking at is, how is this child performing academically?

[00:11:48] Heidi: are they, learning in a way that is typical for their developmental age. and then we're able to then potentially rule out things like a learning disorder, We're looking at, we know what this child is capable of, we know where they're performing academically, and if there's a gap, if they're not performing where we know they could be performing, we know something's getting in the way of learning. 

[00:12:17] Brianna: Yeah, that's exactly

[00:12:18] Brianna: what happened to me. I was in the 98th, 99th percentile for a bunch of these things, and I was performing well under that. And

[00:12:26] Brianna: then they knew that it wasn't a cognitive disability and it was something else. 

[00:12:30] Heidi: yeah, 

[00:12:31] Heidi: and so you're able to,

[00:12:32] Brianna: ruling things 

[00:12:33] Heidi: exactly, yeah, we want to rule that out as a starting point. A lot of times intellectual disability, especially when it's more profound, can look a little bit like ADHD, kids are a little bit checked out at school, they don't understand what's going on, so they're not paying attention, that's where we see the overlapping symptoms.

[00:12:53] Melissa: I've heard many stories and I'm sure you've seen this in your own practice, but you have a child that gets assessed and while the parents are ushering their children through this process, they figure out they have a D. H. D. if you're an adult and you're thinking you may have a D.

[00:13:07] Melissa: H. D. How do you go about as an adult 

[00:13:11] Brianna: Yeah. 

[00:13:11] Melissa: process, because it's different.

[00:13:13] Brianna: you don't have access to those school records. Most of the time we're like, your parents might have passed already. You don't have access to like, what was I like as a child?

[00:13:20] Heidi: yeah, exactly. And so it is a little bit different, but there are, similarities as well. It really does follow the same process. We just have to go about gathering that history a little bit differently. when we're looking at an ADHD assessment for adults, we're going to do a clinical interview with that adult, but we're also going to see if we can have them talk to their parents and ask some of those historical questions.

[00:13:51] Heidi: we can even interview our client's parents, ourselves, if we have the client's permission, or we can send out, questionnaires to collect the information from the client's parents. we really need that historical piece, because the DSM diagnostic criteria, um, really does reflect the idea that the disorder has to have been present in the early developmental years, right?

[00:14:14] Heidi: It's a neurodevelopmental disorder. we need to be able to clearly identify that, these symptoms were there early on in life as well.

[00:14:24] Brianna: In the case that you can't access that information, does that mean you can't get an ADHD diagnosis? 

[00:14:28] Heidi: Not necessarily, but, but what's important, in line with best practices is that we do our very best to try to understand that piece. like you mentioned, there are times when that's not going to be possible. we're relying on the client's memory of their own history, which is a bit more challenging.

[00:14:47] Heidi: But there's some pretty good, questionnaires and assessment tools out there now that help with that, reflecting back to childhood 

[00:14:55] Brianna: I can

[00:14:55] Brianna: imagine with most of us having some form of memory issues, short term memory, working memory problems, that trying to recover some of that information without 

[00:15:04] Brianna: prompts or triggers would be difficult. 

[00:15:05] Heidi: exactly. 

[00:15:07] Melissa: we're talking about, parents

[00:15:08] Melissa: fighting through this assessment process with their children, maybe discovering they have ADHD. But what about other adults? are there things that someone may notice or see? Because adults have unique challenges and unique ways of presenting their ADHD that are different than children. can you maybe talk about that a little bit? 

[00:15:25] Heidi: Yeah, it's definitely interesting, even 10, 15 years ago, there was this belief that, ADHD was a childhood disorder only, that a lot of children would just grow out of their ADHD. more recent research has shown us that, ADHD does, continue into adulthood the symptoms often do look different, so it's showing up in the lives of adults in different ways.

[00:15:53] Brianna: we really see, challenges with executive dysfunction as one of the main pieces. So struggling with time management, organization, task initiation, task completion, like those pieces tend to be what cause the most. issues in adults, right? This doesn't sound

[00:16:14] Brianna: familiar to me at all.

[00:16:15] Melissa: Brianna, we've talked about before. COVID, especially a lot of women were confronted with their systems just crumbling once COVID hit, they were taken out of the environments they had created their systems in. They were sent home

[00:16:27] Melissa: to be with children that were out of school.

[00:16:29] Melissa: They were trying to manage everything at once and everything just collapsed.

[00:16:33] Heidi: Yeah, and that's a common experience I see in assessments with adults who are looking at potential diagnosis of ADHD is that there's been some type of, big stressor or a big life change such as job changes or stuff going on with parenting or maybe like a health crisis. these stressors make the ADHD symptoms, If they haven't appeared before, they make those symptoms a lot worse. And so the, individual is going to become more aware of what they're struggling with and, and start to question it. And, a lot of the time it's showing up as, other conditions, anxiety, depression. And when you look underneath that, A lot of times it's ADHD that maybe hasn't been 

[00:17:25] Heidi: diagnosed.

[00:17:26] Brianna: How would you say to prepare? Like, I'm coming in for an assessment, what do I need to bring? 

[00:17:31] Heidi: What do you need to bring? Best case scenario, you're going to have some, of your old school records, maybe some report cards, or if you've had assessments before, definitely bringing those reports in, that's really helpful. other than that, it's just bringing yourself and, being prepared to go through, a few hours of cognitive and academic testing.

[00:17:55] Heidi: Thank you.

[00:17:56] Brianna: Okay, a few hours. Is that three, six? 

[00:17:58] Heidi: usually we schedule assessments in like two hour blocks, sometimes it goes longer than that. Depends on, how the individual is 

[00:18:07] Heidi: performing really.

[00:18:08] Melissa: kids like play games and with blocks and things. what do adults do when they're actually getting assessed by someone? 

[00:18:13] Heidi: Yeah, the blocks is just one very small piece of the intellectual assessment. yeah, really, it's the best part.

[00:18:21] Heidi: talking about it. And that's what we like to start 

[00:18:23] Heidi: with the kiddos so that they think it's going to be fun and they'll actually stick around. 

[00:18:28] Heidi: So there's, the intellectual component where we're testing, a whole bunch of different areas of cognition, we're testing, um, visual spatial, verbal comprehension, working memory, processing speed, fluid reasoning, all the different test components make up that intellectual assessment, some of them are puzzles, Blocks are one of them.

[00:18:50] Heidi: Some of it is working with words and language. a whole bunch of different pieces make up that assessment process. 

[00:18:58] Brianna: I've seen a bunch of people being like, you should write down some of your symptoms or interview your partner, your friends, things like that. Is that, another thing to bring in. Would you find that helpful if someone brought in like a written record of here's who I've talked to, here's the symptoms I've been experiencing.

[00:19:13] Brianna: If they didn't have access to the historical 

[00:19:15] Heidi: Yeah,And that's another way you can go about getting some of that, outside perspective that is helpful in diagnosing adults with ADHD. interviewing the spouse and, getting an understanding of what they see 

[00:19:31] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:19:31] Heidi: they've noticed 

[00:19:33] Brianna: But that's part of what's helpful, right? Like we have a lot of anxiety, like we're late diagnosed. There's a lot of anxiety that has come up as a coping mechanism, right? So if you know what you're getting yourself into, which is why we're having this podcast, like here's what you do. There's an interview process.

[00:19:46] Brianna: There's some intellectual testing. It takes about two hours. If you have that in your brain, this is a much less scary thing to go and do. 

[00:19:53] Melissa: An expectation is important. 

[00:19:55] Brianna: Yes, we should also probably set expectations with wait times if you're trying to get this publicly funded and you're not willing to go private. I've heard the wait times, especially in the States, can be upwards of two years. 

[00:20:06] Heidi: I can speak to, here in Canada and, some of the different school systems I've worked in and just being in clinic, it really depends on how you're trying to access that service, the schools typically have quite a long list of students they're hoping to get assessed and so that's where we start to see parents being sent, to private clinics, knowing that there's going to be less of a wait time, but then they're paying out of pocket which isn't, um, for a lot of 

[00:20:37] Heidi: people.

[00:20:37] Brianna: so we finished the assessment. We've been handed this report that you and I have taken time to write. We've been considerate

[00:20:46] Brianna: about what we've put in there and we've put some tips in there. What do we do with this piece of paper or booklet of paper? Mine was like 20 pages thick. 

[00:20:53] Heidi: Yeah. the first, piece to that, in following best practices is that there should be a debrief component. There should be an opportunity for you to meet with the psychologist again and go through the findings of that assessment, Part of what we're doing is taking all the data we've collected and we're integrating it all together.

[00:21:15] Heidi: We're coming up with our diagnostic impressions. and if applicable, we're going to assign that diagnosis. the information we're including in that report, we try to make it, easy for everybody to read, but there's definitely pieces that, are best interpreted by a psychologist.

[00:21:34] Heidi: And so we, as the psychologist, it's, part of our responsibility to make sure that the client really understands. What the information is, what that diagnosis means, and then, what the recommendations are and how to proceed with, doing whatever it is that we're recommending.

[00:21:55] Heidi: That's a piece that's often overlooked. Not everybody does the debrief piece, which, in my opinion, is so important. That's where we get to really make sure that, everything is clear and understood.

[00:22:06] Brianna: not only clear and understood, but also the emotional piece that comes with it. there is a grieving period, or this is shocking information, or maybe your culture doesn't

[00:22:14] Brianna: accept this about you. And now you're going to have to reveal this, or maybe there's next steps that you need to take, that's a huge hit.

[00:22:21] Brianna: especially if you're later diagnosed and not a child, you're like, I didn't know that this is the reason why my life has been so

[00:22:26] Brianna: hard up until this point. So just having that debrief to sit and talk with a licensed psychologist.

[00:22:32] Melissa: the psychiatrist or psychologist can be an interpreter I was in an ADHD subreddit, and someone had gotten an assessment there were parts that said they had obsessive behavior and then they're looking at this report without it coming through the filter of a 

[00:22:45] Heidi: Yeah.

[00:22:46] Melissa: and it was jarring for them to read 

[00:22:48] Melissa: they felt judged. 

[00:22:49] Brianna: Yeah, 

[00:22:50] Brianna: you have to write in the style of not judging the person. It's supposed to be supportive and affirming and some people have the viewpoint that it

[00:22:58] Brianna: is something that makes you broken. 

[00:22:59] Melissa: 

[00:22:59] Melissa: I think they had gotten the report from a testing center and before they had sat down with their psychologist to discuss it and not having that filter there made it really upsetting because it was very direct, and it didn't put it in context at all.

[00:23:14] Heidi: Exactly. That would be the piece that's missing is the context, when I think about some of the test measures that we use, the BASC or the Connors, those are symptoms we're looking at all these extreme behaviors, Because we want to get an understanding of all the things that are happening in the client's life.

[00:23:31] Heidi: there's going to be things reflected in that report that, sound more extreme than they are because it's missing the context. When you put it in the context of here's what we're looking for, here's why, and here's where you fall in this range of scores, it can be really overwhelming to read the information in the report without

[00:23:53] Heidi: some guidance.

[00:23:54] Melissa: And once, you've gotten this information, what about accommodation? What about, school accommodation for children and accommodation at work for adults? 

[00:24:02] Brianna: I had this 20 page report and I had some data on it. I didn't know how much of that I had to give to my school or employer. 

[00:24:11] Brianna: It can be misinterpreted easily, especially if you're HR and not an actual psychologist. So someone is asking for that, what do you give them? 

[00:24:18] Heidi: There's a couple different ways that you could approach that. A lot of times, the report is going to have the diagnosis and the recommendations listed separately maybe the last couple pages. And so absolutely nothing wrong with just submitting those pieces to the school to access those accommodations.

[00:24:39] Heidi: you can request something separately drafted up that would be more suitable for submission. ideally, we're just going to be able to take the main pieces out of that assessment report and hand that in, when we're, talking about kids and wanting to share the information from the assessment with the school and the teachers, the teachers are actually going to benefit from a lot of that data that's in there. For example, the academic testing that we do, the teacher can look at those results and say, okay, this individual is, performing in math around grade level. That's great, but I can see that their language arts, their writing, their reading is a little bit low. and so that's going to give them an idea of where the intervention needs to happen.

[00:25:26] Brianna: that information is in the report and the schools can use that.

[00:25:28] Heidi: what about work? primary school that I feel like accommodation, it's built in, like there's a whole process. But once you get to college, It's 

[00:25:36] Heidi: Mm hmm.

[00:25:37] Heidi: 

[00:25:37] Melissa AI: then then when you get into the workforce, it's even harder it's All on you to actually ask for that accommodation.

[00:25:42] Heidi: Yeah. and that's exactly what it is. It's figuring out who you need to talk to, right? Is it your direct supervisor or is there an HR department that's responsible for helping people with things like accommodations? And so, it's going to look different depending on who you are, what your job is, 

[00:26:01] Heidi: But essentially, it's the same kind of idea. You absolutely do not need to provide that whole entire report that contains a ton of personal information. You just need to give, those main pieces that, yes, here is this diagnosis. And based on that, here's what the recommendations are for accommodations.

[00:26:23] Heidi: They need more time to complete, tasks. They need more breaks. Maybe they need whatever it is that's been determined as potentially being helpful. that's the information you want to share with the employer.

[00:26:36] Melissa: Do you work with your clients to be able to translate that from what's on the paper into real world speak and how to approach their HR or their direct manager about it? what does extra time mean to you and your specific job?

[00:26:53] Heidi: Yeah, exactly. realistically, what would be even better than just coaching the client through that or having to support them in making those, interpretations from professional language to everyday language. We want to be having these discussions. at the beginning of the assessment.

[00:27:12] Heidi: We want to know what is it, are you hoping to get out of this assessment? Are you looking for accommodations? if you're struggling at work, what are the struggles? then we can know what would make things easier, 

[00:27:24] Melissa: Yeah.

[00:27:25] Heidi: And so then we're speaking really specifically to what the needs are.

[00:27:29] Heidi: that's why you go in and have these two hour or longer sessions.and then you get that personalized information.

[00:27:35] Brianna: You get that specific help. You get to talk to them about your actual problems and they have all this research and training and expertise to help you specifically with what you need. 

[00:27:44] Brianna: So today we talked about. ADHD assessments and how to go about getting one, what the process looks like, and then how you can actually use that information to actually make real change in your life, whether that's for your children at school and helping support them in their learning and their growth and their success, or if that's helping yourself.

[00:28:05] Brianna: In either college or in your workplace, get the tools you need with the understanding and the knowledge that this assessment provides. 

[00:28:12] Melissa: What other questions do you have about assessments and accommodation? Let us know. 

[00:28:17] Melissa: We want to thank Heidi Keith for being with us today. Heidi, where can we and anyone find you?

[00:28:22] Heidi: I have a website, 

[00:28:24] Melissa: the website is www. deeplyrootedpsychological. ca. we have a Facebook page as well. 

[00:28:31] Heidi: We'll have Instagram soon, I think. yeah, so website is a good way to find us. 

[00:28:37] Melissa: if you're looking for further support with your ADHD, I'm an A DH ADHD coach and you can find me@likemindcoaching.com 

[00:28:44] Brianna: I'm an ADHD coach, and you can find me at understandingadhd. ca, but you can also find me on Heidi's website because I'm her intern, and my website links to hers. So we're all connected 

[00:28:53] Brianna: here.

[00:28:54] Melissa: Thank you so much and until next time. Bye. 

[00:28:57] Brianna: Bye bye.