NNeurodivergent Clinic

Ten questions · free · no email required

Free ADHD test for adults

Ten questions about how your attention, restlessness and impulse control actually behave. You get the result on this page straight away. Nothing is emailed to you and nothing is stored.

This is not a diagnostic test. No online questionnaire can diagnose ADHD, and this one is not a validated instrument. What it is: a structured version of the questions a clinician opens with, so you can decide whether a real assessment is worth your money before you spend any.

Answer for how things have been across your life, not just the last few weeks. ADHD is lifelong by definition, so a clinician is always asking whether this is a pattern or a phase.

1. You lose the thread of what you are reading or hearing and have to go back over it.

2. You put off anything that needs sustained mental effort until the deadline forces you.

3. Keys, wallet, phone, documents — you lose track of things you need regularly.

4. You start tasks with real intent and drift off them before they are finished.

5. Organising a multi-step task, or keeping track of several at once, takes far more out of you than it seems to take other people.

6. You are physically restless — fidgeting, bouncing a leg, needing to get up.

7. You interrupt people, finish their sentences, or answer before they have finished asking.

8. Waiting — in queues, in traffic, for your turn to speak — is genuinely hard.

9. You act on an idea, a purchase or a plan before you have thought it through.

10. Your mind is busy in a way that does not switch off, even when you are tired.

11. These things have cost you something real at work or in study — missed deadlines, warnings, jobs or courses not finished.

12. These things have caused friction in your close relationships.

Next stepAsk a clinician

Whatever this said, it is a prompt to think, not a verdict. Ten questions cannot do what a clinical interview does. If your score was low but something still does not feel right, that is worth taking seriously too.

What this test is actually measuring

The diagnostic criteria for ADHD in adults sit in two groups. One is inattention — losing the thread, avoiding sustained mental effort, losing things, drifting off tasks, struggling to organise. The other is hyperactivity and impulsivity — physical restlessness, interrupting, difficulty waiting, acting before thinking, a mind that does not switch off. The first five questions above are drawn from the first group and the next five from the second.

Adults can meet the criteria on one group without the other. Plenty of adults diagnosed with ADHD have almost no visible hyperactivity, which is a large part of why they were missed as children — a quiet child who daydreams gets described as away with the fairies, not as having a condition.

The last two questions are about impairment, and they matter more than people expect. Traits on their own are not a disorder. The diagnostic threshold requires that these things interfere with how you function, in more than one part of your life. Someone who endorses every trait but has built a life that absorbs them is in a genuinely different position from someone with half the traits who keeps losing jobs over them.

What the score does and does not tell you

A high score means the pattern that ADHD describes is recognisably present in how you answered. It does not mean you have ADHD, because several other things produce the same picture:

  • Depression and anxiety both wreck concentration and working memory, and both are more common than ADHD.
  • Chronic sleep deprivation — including undiagnosed sleep apnoea — produces an almost perfect imitation of inattentive ADHD.
  • Trauma produces hypervigilance and difficulty settling that reads as restlessness.
  • Thyroid dysfunction, iron deficiency and some medications all affect attention.
  • Autism overlaps substantially, and the two frequently occur together.

Sorting between these is most of what an assessment actually consists of. It is also why an assessment that does not take a full history is not worth paying for.

What a real ADHD assessment adds

An adult ADHD assessment with us is two to three hours over video with a registered psychologist, split across two sittings if that suits you better. It covers a developmental history back to childhood, standardised rating scales, a structured diagnostic interview against the DSM-5 criteria, and where you want it, a collateral account from someone who knew you growing up. You get a written report that shows the reasoning, not just a verdict.

The fee is $1,650, including the report. If autism is also on the table, assessing both together is $1,950 rather than $3,300, because the history only has to be taken once.

How the ADHD assessment worksSee all fees

Who can diagnose ADHD in Australia

A registered psychologist can assess and diagnose ADHD. A psychiatrist or paediatrician can too. The distinction that catches people out is prescribing: a psychologist cannot prescribe stimulant medication anywhere in Australia, and who can initiate treatment depends on which state you live in, not on where your clinician sits.

We publish the state-by-state position on the ADHD assessment page, because being diagnosed and then discovering that nobody in your state will write the script is an expensive surprise. If medication is part of why you are doing this, read that before you book anything, here or elsewhere.

State-by-state prescribing rules

If autism might also be in the picture

A lot of people arrive here because the ADHD explanation nearly fits but not quite. Autism and ADHD co-occur often, and each can mask the other — the restlessness reads as ADHD, the social exhaustion reads as anxiety, and the combination gets missed for decades.

If that sounds like you, the combined screener covers both, or you can take the autism test on its own.

Screener covering bothAutism testCombined assessment

Common questions

Is this a real ADHD test?

No. It is a structured version of the questions a clinician opens with, and it will tell you whether a proper assessment is worth your time and money. It is not a validated instrument and no online test can diagnose ADHD. A diagnosis requires a clinical interview, a developmental history, and a clinician ruling out the other things that look like ADHD.

Is the test free?

Yes. There is no charge, no sign-up and no email required. Your answers are scored in your browser and are not sent to us or stored anywhere.

Can a psychologist diagnose ADHD in Australia?

Yes. A registered psychologist can assess and diagnose ADHD in Australia. What a psychologist cannot do is prescribe stimulant medication — that requires a psychiatrist, a paediatrician, or in some states an authorised GP. The rules differ by state, which is why we publish the state-by-state position rather than leaving you to find out after you have paid.

Do I need a GP referral?

Not for a psychologist-led assessment. You need one if you want the Medicare rebate attached to the psychiatrist-led option.

How much does an ADHD assessment cost?

An adult ADHD assessment with us is $1,650, including the written report. Assessing for autism at the same time is $1,950 rather than $3,300, because the developmental history only has to be taken once.

What if I score low but still think something is wrong?

Trust that. This is ten questions and a clinician has hours. Low scores here happen in people who have built strong coping systems, in people whose difficulties are mostly inattentive rather than hyperactive, and in women who were never flagged as children. If it is affecting your life, it is worth asking about regardless of what this page said.

Still not sure whether to bother?

Tell us what is going on. A clinician reads every enquiry and will tell you if an assessment is the wrong move — we would rather say that than take your money.

Ask a clinicianWhat it costs