Need diagnosis

[Onestepmore]

I'm a 50 year old Canadian man living in Thailand many years. Recently I have self diagnosed myself with ADHD but I also see traits of borderline personality disorder.

I went to a public hospital in Thailand to get a diagnosis but after several weeks I gave up due to the stress of the process but also I didn't have faith in their diagnosis being thorough or accurate as it seems it would have been a 20 minute chat just to get a prescription.

My question is will I be able to get an thorough diagnosis online ? If so, where do you recommend? There are private clinics in Thailand but they aren't cheap and I am concerned about the quality.

One of my biggest fears is that I will be told I'm simply depressed. My whole life has been a struggle and I'm closer to suicide more than ever.

[AuDHD3245]

You mean, you dont want to go face to face because you really want the medication, and if it fails face to face, you dont get the pills. So, as a security blanket, you'd prefer to go online, so you can act better?? They dont work if you havent got ADHD... Never self diagnose, never research because ultimately you'll be caught for being well rehearsed. ADHD is part of you. We're born with it. You shouldn't have to look into it and guess. Others tell you, you respond, and then the assessor tells you. You dont go in because you think it, you go in there because you dont know what's going on

[Onestepmore in reply to AuDHD3245]

It had nothing to do about being face to face. In Thailand getting a prescription is super easy. My priority is to get a thorough and professional diagnois. I'm not a doctor so it's not for me to decide what is appropriate. Buy I worry about it being dismissed as depression because I know it's not only that. There are private clinics that focus only on adhd but they aren't cheap.

[Tigger4me]

Hi Onestep, To follow on AuDHD3245's reply to your post, sounds like your situation may be tricky; Canadian, living in Thailand, trying to navigate their medical system, trying to get a diagnosis for a condition that may not be well known there (don't know if that is true) and possibly getting medication (legally), and also cost in time and money.

Don't know if a person can get a diagnosis (medical) of ADHD online, but I would doubt it, unless that person were enrolled in a health care system and was connecting remotely with a MD in that health care system. (I live in US and so I'm using language appropriate for the US). However, I would be very very surprised if a person could get a legal prescription for controlled stimulants solely on line.

If, however, all you want is information about ADHD to learn if indeed this is what you have, there are a lot of sites on line, you might have gone through chadd.org to get to this chat site. There is also add.org.

[Onestepmore in reply to Tigger4me]

Yes, things here aren't the same as back home. Getting prescriptions is very easy here but a proper diagnosis isn't. You can actually get the medcation from any pharmacy without a prescription but its expensive. I may need to pay a private clinic for the diagnois. I should do some more research from the websites you mentioned.

[Tigger4me]

Great. Thanks for the information. Best of luck.

A question, are you planning on staying in Thailand or will you be going back to Canada in the future? The reason I ask is that I had a conversation with a friend from Canada who was relating how problematic it might be in school or a job if it was known that you had ADHD. Don't know if this is true or how widespread, but he was saying how his son had some accommodations in high school and even though this wasn't on his son's official school transcript, college admissions could tell that he had one, cause of other certain courses his son ended up taking or not taking. As a result, his son only got into one (low level?) college even with stellar grades.