about ADHD
If you got here from a video, that's how most people arrive now — and it's not a bad starting point. But it's worth knowing what that content is actually made of, what the symptom list can and can't tell you, and how you'd genuinely find out. This won't diagnose you. It'll help you take the question somewhere useful.
Educational information — not a diagnostic tool. In India, only a psychiatrist or RCI-registered clinical psychologist can diagnose ADHD. If someone without that offers to, that's a red flag about them.
If you got here from a video
What that content
is actually made of
When clinical psychologists reviewed the most-watched ADHD videos on TikTok: fewer than half of the symptom claims matched the actual diagnostic criteria. Around 94% of creators cited no source. None were licensed clinicians. A separate analysis found more than half of the top videos inaccurate.
This isn't a reason to dismiss what you've noticed about yourself. It's a reason not to conclude from it. The videos are unreliable in both directions — they convince some people who don't have ADHD that they do, and describe it so narrowly that others who do have it don't recognise themselves.
Heavy viewers, the research found, couldn't tell accurate from inaccurate content, and overestimated how common ADHD is. That's not a failing on your part — it's what happens when compelling, confident, sourceless content meets a real question. The way forward isn't more videos. It's an assessment.
Recognising yourself in a description is the beginning of a question, not the answer to it. Hold what you've noticed loosely, and take it somewhere it can be checked.
The awkward truth about the symptom list
Things that look like
ADHD and aren't
Almost everything on the ADHD list happens to everyone sometimes — losing things, zoning out, abandoning projects, interrupting, time slipping. What distinguishes a condition is degree, duration and cost — plus that it started in childhood, before you were 12.
Several of these are more common and more fixable:
None of this means you don't have ADHD. It means these need ruling out — and that's a job for someone qualified. Fix sleep first, always; it clarifies the whole picture more than anything else you can do while you wait.
How to actually find out, in India
Four steps that
get you an answer
The WHO's free screening questionnaire, online at no cost. It is a screener, not a diagnosis. A high score means “worth investigating” — nothing more.
In India, only they can diagnose. A counsellor, coach or therapist without that registration cannot — and if one offers to, that's a red flag about them.
School reports, old teacher comments, family memories of you as a child. The childhood-onset requirement is where most assessments turn, and it's hard to reconstruct on the spot.
Adult ADHD services in India are concentrated in a few cities. That's a real access problem, not you being deprioritised.
On “you'd have known as a child”: symptoms must have been present before 12 — but they may not have been identified, especially in girls, in high-IQ compensators, and in schooling contexts where inattention was read as laziness and disciplined rather than assessed.
If you're waiting for an appointment
Things that help
either way
The wait is often long. These help regardless of what the answer turns out to be:
Many people who reach this question have spent years being called careless, lazy or not serious. Whatever the assessment concludes, that history is worth addressing on its own. The damage those words do doesn't depend on the diagnosis — and it's something a counsellor can help with right now, while you wait for the rest.
If low mood, anxiety or exhaustion is heavy while you wait — Tele-MANAS 14416, free, 24×7.
The summary
The one-page
version
“The way to find out isn't more videos. It's an assessment — and, while you wait, better sleep.”
Written by Tanuj Suthar, Counselling Psychologist (MSc Clinical Psychology), under supervision. Educational information, not a diagnostic tool. Only a psychiatrist or RCI-registered clinical psychologist can diagnose ADHD. Series 2 · Topic 5 · Version 1.0 · August 2026.