Adult ADHD testing requiring you to basically become an expert to navigate correctly is itself a symptom of the problem it's trying to solve

I want to say something that I feel like isn't said enough

the amount of research, self advocacy, and persistence required to get a proper ADHD evaluation as an adult woman is genuinely excessive, and the people it most disadvantages are the people whose ADHD is most severe, because the capacity to spend weeks researching providers, asking the right questions, comparing report formats, figuring out insurance reimbursement, and advocating clearly in clinical settings is exactly the capacity that ADHD impairs

I got a proper evaluation eventually and I know what questions to ask now, but I got lucky in some ways because I have the verbal skills and the hyperfocus when motivated capacity to navigate a confusing system, and I'm aware that a lot of people with ADHD don't and never get a proper evaluation because the process filtered them out before they got there

the evaluation system being difficult to navigate is not a design feature, it's a failure that the system hasn't bothered to fix because the people it's failing don't have the executive function to mount a consistent enough complaint

I don't have a solution, I just want to name it