Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ADHD is more than just trouble paying attention—it can hurt the way you work, connect with others, and even see yourself. People with ADHD often find themselves working much harder to accomplish the same as those around them while feeling like they have to justify the reality of their challenges or keep up with impossible standards. Whether you've already got a diagnosis or are just trying to figure things out, Turning Point can help you with the next steps to figuring out your brain. Psychotherapy offers a supportive space to better understand your symptoms, develop tailored strategies, and reclaim your sense of control. 

     Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is a Neurodevelopmental Disorder. That means it is a concrete, measurable, real and scannable difference in the physical brain--not a personal shortcoming or bad work ethic. We used to separate ADHD into the inattentive and the hyperactive types but really the disorder is much more complex, graphed across multiple symptom domains.

     Often you'll hear people talk about "Executive Dysfunction" as a typical symptom of ADHD but this is actually a misnomer. Executive Functions are a group of systems and functions in the brain that emerge from the cooperation of a bunch of individual parts of your brain. For example, anytime you do any sort of mental math you're using your Working Memory to hold and manipulate the question in your brain. Working Memory is just one of many, many different Executive Functions. They're all very complex and include all sorts of things like focus, distractibility, initiation, and even frustration tolerance.

    When the normal development of the brain is impaired by ADHD, certain structures such as the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex struggle to operate at the level of a neurotypical brain and results in an impairment to executive functions. 

     ADHD is much, much more of a profound and challenging disorder than how it is often portrayed in the media. 

     As you would expect, something so fundamentally complex is just as complicated to diagnose and is often prohibitively expensive for people just trying to figure out what is going on. A Formal Diagnosis often requires extensive testing by a Clinical Psychologist with experience in assessment. Sometimes a Physician may complete a Clinical Diagnosis by conducting a medication trial but not all Physicians agree with this practice. 

     At Turning Point we offer a third option to help bridge the gap and make a diagnostic inquiry more accessible and affordable to our clients. Our process involves meeting with you to discuss a case history and expectations followed by a series of non-diagnostic psychometric assessments that are shared with your physician to help collaborate on the process and explore the appropriateness of a medication trial.