What we help with
ADHD.
Attention that will not go where you point it. Time that disappears. Twenty open tabs, in the browser and in your head. In adults, ADHD is often missed, misread as anxiety or a personality flaw, or only recognised once a child in the family is assessed.
The short version
At a glance.
- Who it is for
- Adults who suspect or already know they have ADHD, assessed or not, and the people who love them
- What we offer
- Therapy that works with your attention rather than against it, and a structured ADHD assessment if you want one
- Referral
- Everyone sees their GP before the first appointment. A Mental Health Treatment Plan is what unlocks the Medicare rebate for therapy sessions
- Medication
- We are psychologists, not prescribers. We work alongside your GP or psychiatrist and can help you get to one
- Assessment
- A clinical interview, standardised measures and, where useful, an observer report. A written outcome either way
- Telehealth
- Everything on this page can be done by video
What it looks like
What ADHD can look like in adults.
ADHD in adulthood rarely looks like the stereotype of a child who cannot sit still. It is quieter and harder to name: losing an afternoon to a task that should have taken twenty minutes, starting several things and finishing few, forgetting appointments despite three reminders, or feeling like every day runs on a low simmer of catching up.
Attention is not simply low. It is unevenly distributed. Something genuinely interesting can hold you for hours, while something dull or effortful becomes almost physically hard to start. That inconsistency gets mistaken for laziness or a lack of discipline, including by the person living it.
Many adults reach us after years of managing alone: sometimes with a childhood diagnosis that was never followed up, sometimes newly wondering after a partner, colleague or child's assessment made the pattern visible, often after a burnout that finally made the workarounds stop working. None of those paths is late. We work from where you are.
Does any of this sound like you?
The everyday version.
These are the things people describe to us, in their words rather than the manual's. You do not need all of them.
Attention
The interesting thing wins
You can focus for hours on something that lights you up and cannot start the thing that is due tomorrow. Hyperfocus and paralysis are the same system.
Noise you cannot filter
Every conversation in the café, the hum of the fridge, the tag in your shirt. Concentrating means fighting all of it.
Reading the same line four times
Or realising you nodded through the last five minutes of a meeting and have no idea what was decided.
Time and tasks
Time blindness
Everything is either now or not now. Twenty minutes and two hours feel the same until the deadline is in the room.
The wall of awful
The task itself is small. The pile of dread, shame and previous failed attempts in front of it is not.
Starting is the hard part
Once you are in it, you are fine. Getting there can take all day, and then you do it at 11pm.
Memory and things
Working memory drops things
You walk into a room and the reason is gone. You put it somewhere safe. You said you would, and you meant it.
The ADHD tax
Late fees, lost deposits, expired food, the gym membership you never cancelled, the thing you bought twice.
Object permanence for people
Out of sight, out of mind, including friends you love and have not messaged in four months.
Feelings and energy
Big feelings, fast
Frustration, hurt or excitement arrive at full volume and pass just as quickly. Other people are still recovering.
Rejection hits like a blow
A neutral text, a colleague's tone, a perceived slight, and the day is gone. People call this rejection sensitivity; it is common and rarely talked about.
Boredom is painful
Not mildly. It is something you will do almost anything to escape, which is a lot of the impulsivity story.
The long tail
Years of trying harder
Systems that worked for a week. Planners bought in hope. A quiet belief that everyone else got a manual you did not.
Anxiety that is really vigilance
When you have missed enough things, checking everything constantly stops being a disorder and starts being a strategy.
Burnout
Masking, over-functioning and catching up have a cost. It usually comes due in your thirties or forties, or after a big life change.
The criteria
What the diagnosis actually requires, in plain language.
Psychologists in Australia diagnose ADHD against the DSM-5-TR, the current diagnostic manual. Stripped of the jargon, it asks four questions.
1. Enough of the pattern
There are two lists of nine traits. Inattention: missing details or making careless errors; trouble holding attention on tasks; seeming not to listen when spoken to; not following through on instructions or finishing work; difficulty organising tasks and time; avoiding or dreading work that needs sustained mental effort; losing the things you need; being easily distracted; being forgetful in daily life. Hyperactivity and impulsivity: fidgeting or squirming; leaving your seat when you are expected to stay; restlessness (in adults, usually an inner feeling rather than climbing things); trouble doing leisure activities quietly; feeling driven by a motor; talking excessively; blurting answers before a question is finished; trouble waiting your turn; interrupting or intruding. Adults need five or more from a list (children need six), present for at least six months and out of step with what is expected at your age.
2. It started early
Several of the traits were there before age 12. For many adults this is the hard part: nobody was looking, you were quiet, or you were bright enough to compensate. Old school reports, a parent's memory, or your own recollection of how school felt all count.
3. It shows up in more than one place
At work or study and at home, or in relationships and in managing money. ADHD is not a work problem or a home problem; it travels with you.
4. It costs you something
The traits clearly interfere with, or reduce the quality of, your work, study, relationships or daily life. This is why a person who has built enormous scaffolding and still struggles can meet criteria while looking successful from the outside.
Three presentations
Depending on which list you meet, ADHD is described as predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, or combined. Presentations can shift over a lifetime; many adults who were hyperactive children become inattentive adults with a restless mind. What used to be called ADD is the inattentive presentation.
What has to be ruled out
The traits are not better explained by something else: anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep deprivation, thyroid problems, substance use, or another neurodevelopmental difference. Often it is both, which is why we screen widely rather than stopping at the first fit.
Meeting criteria is a threshold, not a verdict on who you are. Plenty of people sit just under it and still benefit from support built around how their attention works.
Co-occurring
What often travels with ADHD.
ADHD rarely arrives alone. These are the companions we see most, and the ones research consistently finds more common in ADHD than in the general population. We screen for them rather than assuming ADHD explains everything.
Autism (AuDHD)
Once thought to be mutually exclusive; now known to overlap often. Autistic traits can hide ADHD and vice versa, and the combination has its own texture: craving novelty and needing sameness at the same time.
Autism → 02Anxiety
Very common, and often a consequence rather than a cause: years of missed deadlines and dropped balls teach a nervous system to stay on alert.
Anxiety → 03Depression and low mood
Sometimes a mood disorder in its own right, sometimes the demoralisation of a life that has felt harder than it should. Both deserve care.
Depression →Sleep
Delayed sleep phase (a body clock that runs late), trouble winding down, revenge bedtime procrastination. Poor sleep worsens every ADHD trait.
Dyslexia, dyscalculia and other learning differences
Reading, spelling, maths and written expression difficulties co-occur often, and a good assessment tells them apart from attention.
Eating and body concerns
Binge eating, forgetting to eat until you are ravenous, and restrictive patterns (including ARFID) are all more common with ADHD.
Eating & body → 07OCD
Intrusive thoughts and rituals can sit alongside ADHD, and the two pull in different directions. Getting the order of treatment right matters.
OCD → 08Trauma and PTSD
ADHD raises the odds of adverse experiences, and trauma symptoms can look like ADHD. Careful assessment separates them; often it is both.
Trauma & PTSD →Substance use
Higher rates of using alcohol, cannabis, nicotine or stimulants to self-medicate focus, sleep or restlessness. Treating the ADHD tends to help.
Hypermobility, EDS and POTS
Joint hypermobility and dysautonomia are reported more often in neurodivergent people. We do not diagnose them, but we take them seriously and know who does.
Hormones
Many people notice ADHD traits worsen premenstrually, in perimenopause, or across pregnancy. It is real, under-researched, and worth naming with your GP.
Rejection sensitivity
Not a diagnosis, but a pattern so common we treat it as part of the picture: intense emotional pain in response to perceived rejection or criticism.
Words you will hear
A short glossary.
Terms that come up in ADHD spaces, clinics and online. Some are clinical, some are community shorthand. Knowing which is which helps.
Executive function
The brain's management system: planning, starting, organising, prioritising, holding things in mind, and regulating emotion. ADHD is largely a difference in executive function.
Working memory
The mental scratchpad. Where you hold the phone number while you find a pen. In ADHD it is smaller and leakier than average.
Hyperfocus
Deep, hours-long absorption in something engaging, often at the expense of food, sleep or the thing you were meant to be doing.
Time blindness
Difficulty sensing time passing, estimating how long things take, or feeling a future deadline as real until it is imminent.
Dopamine
The neurotransmitter most involved in motivation and reward. ADHD brains regulate it differently, which is why interest and urgency work when importance does not.
Masking
Hiding or compensating for traits to appear neurotypical. Effective in the short term, exhausting over years.
Body doubling
Working alongside another person, in the room or on a call, because their presence makes starting and continuing easier.
RSD
Rejection sensitive dysphoria. A community term, not in the manual, for the intense emotional response to real or perceived rejection many people with ADHD describe.
The ADHD tax
The financial and practical cost of ADHD: fees, replacements, missed refunds, impulse buys, and the time spent recovering from all of it.
AuDHD
Being both Autistic and ADHD. Increasingly recognised, with its own experiences that neither label alone describes.
Presentation
The DSM-5-TR term for the type of ADHD: inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive, or combined. Not a measure of severity.
Stimulant and non-stimulant
The two families of ADHD medication. Prescribed by a psychiatrist or, in some circumstances, a GP. We do not prescribe, but we work alongside those who do.
Neurodivergent
A mind that works differently from the dominant pattern. ADHD is one form of neurodivergence, alongside autism, dyslexia and others.
Special interests
Deep, sustained passions that bring energy and expertise. We use the term deliberately, and we ask about yours.
MHTP
Mental Health Treatment Plan. The GP referral that brings a Medicare rebate on eligible therapy sessions. It does not cover the assessment itself.
What we do
Support that works with your attention, not against it.
If you want clarity
A full assessment gives a structured answer: a clinical interview about your history and current life, standardised ADHD measures, screening for the things that commonly travel with ADHD, and, where it is useful and you are comfortable arranging it, a report from someone who has known you a long time. You get a written outcome either way, whether or not it meets diagnostic threshold, and a feedback session to talk it through. Screening questionnaires are emailed and completed digitally before you come in.
If you already know
We work with the ADHD you have. In practice that means:
- Structure and environment. Designing tasks, spaces and routines around how your attention actually behaves, rather than another system that assumes it behaves like everyone else's.
- Skills. CBT adapted for adult ADHD: planning, prioritising, starting, and the specific parts of daily life that keep slipping (money, study, relationships, work).
- The emotional layer. The shame, anxiety and self-criticism that build up over years of trying harder, and the rejection sensitivity that makes relationships feel dangerous. Schema Therapy and ACT do a lot of work here.
- Co-occurring conditions. Treating the anxiety, depression, sleep, eating or trauma that sits alongside, in the right order.
- Relationships and work. Sessions with a partner where that helps, and letters or reports for workplace or study adjustments.
Medication
The research is clear that medication is the most effective single treatment for the core traits of ADHD, and that psychological support is what improves the rest: functioning, emotional regulation, self-understanding, and the conditions that come with it. Many people do best with both. We do not prescribe, but we can help you get to a GP or psychiatrist, prepare for that appointment, and make sense of what happens afterwards.
We do not treat ADHD as something to eliminate. The goal is a life that works with your attention, including the parts of it that are genuinely useful.
If you want an assessment
How an ADHD assessment runs.
Assessment is optional, not a prerequisite for support. This is the path for people who want one. Ask us about the current cost when you enquire; it is not covered by a Mental Health Treatment Plan.
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01 Getting started
A short conversation about what you are noticing and what an outcome would need to answer for you. Your GP referral comes in here.
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02 Questionnaires
Standardised, validated ADHD and screening measures, emailed to you and completed online. If you have arranged it, someone who knows you well completes an observer version.
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03 The interview
A structured look at your history (school, work, relationships, health) and your current day to day, including the things that might explain the pattern instead of, or as well as, ADHD.
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04 The outcome
A written report and a feedback session, whatever the result, plus what a diagnosis would open up in practice, from medication pathways to workplace adjustments.
Questions
Questions people ask about ADHD support.
Do I need a diagnosis to start therapy?
No. Plenty of people work with us on attention, structure and the flow-on effects of ADHD without ever being formally assessed. You do still need a GP referral for the first appointment, like every client.
Does a Mental Health Treatment Plan cover the assessment?
No. It covers eligible therapy sessions. The assessment is a separate cost, which we will tell you plainly before you book anything.
I was diagnosed as a child. Do I need to be reassessed?
Not necessarily. We can usually work from an existing diagnosis. A fresh assessment is worth it if you need current, detailed documentation, for example for medication or study adjustments.
Can ADHD and autism overlap?
Yes, often. We screen broadly rather than assuming one explains everything, and it is common to hold both.
Do you prescribe medication?
No. We are psychologists, not prescribers. Where medication looks relevant we will talk about it, help you prepare, and liaise with your GP or a psychiatrist.
What if I do not meet the criteria?
You still get a written outcome explaining what we found and what would help. Sitting just under the threshold is common and does not mean nothing is going on.
Is an assessment done online?
Yes. The interview works well by video, and the questionnaires are completed online either way.
Will you write letters for work or study?
Yes, where the assessment supports it: reasonable adjustments, exam provisions, and letters your employer or university can act on.
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However long it has taken to get here, you are not behind.
Come with a lifetime of workarounds or none at all. Both are a fine place to start.