AuDHD Assessments

Understand the unique interaction between autism and ADHD, identify your strengths and explore whether AuDHD could help explain your experiences.

As awareness of neurodivergence continues to grow, more people are recognising themselves in both autism and ADHD. Many people tell me they have spent years recognising aspects of themselves in both autism and ADHD, but never feeling that either one fully aligns with their experiences or tells the whole story. 

If this sounds familiar, you may have come across the term AuDHD.

What is AuDHD?

AuDHD is not a formal diagnostic or clinical term within the diagnostic classification manuals. Rather, it is the term increasingly used by neurodivergent people, clinicians and researchers to describe someone who is both autistic and has ADHD. Whilst the term itself is informal, the lived experience is very real. The experience of being autistic and having ADHD interact to create a distinctive neurodevelopmental profile that can look, feel and impact people very differently from the experience of being autistic or having ADHD.

How can AuDHD feel?

Many people describe living with two equally valid sets of needs that seem to pull them in different directions.

• Finding it difficult to know when to speak in conversations, whilst also feeling an urge to jump in beofre your thoughts disappear.
• Monitoring or masking your social communication closely, whilst finding this difficult to maintain when distracted, excited, tired or overwhelmed.
• Wanting routine, predictability and certainty whilst struggling to implement and maintain routines consistently.
• Craving novelty and stimulation whilst becoming overwhelmed by too much change.
• Planning everything carefully but finding it difficult to follow through.
• Having intense interests but noticing that motivation and attention fluctuate.

Why AuDHD assessments require specialist expertise

In AuDHD, autism and ADHD can mask and compensate for one another, as well as amplify the other. This means that clinicians need to understand not only autism and ADHD individually, but how they interact to impact a person throughout life.

Screening questionnaires for autism and ADHD do not always capture the unique way that autism and ADHD can interact. People with AuDHD often find themselves answering questions with "yes, but..." or "it depends". This can mean they do not score within the indicative ranges on autism or ADHD screening questionnaires, even though a comprehensive assessment may show that they meet the diagnostic criteria for both autism and ADHD.

An AuDHD assessment with Dr Jo at Join Psychology focuses on both the strengths and difficulties that AuDHD brings. You may have lots of questions about the AuDHD assessment process, so I have listed some of the main questions and answers below, but please contact me if you have other questions and I'm happy to help.