Service
Adult ADHD assessment in Poznań (DIVA-5)
The assessment establishes whether difficulties with concentration, organisation and impulsivity meet the DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It is built on the DIVA-5 clinical interview, which works through every diagnostic criterion in turn, separately for childhood and for adult life. The fee covers the whole process, from the first interview to the discussion of results.
When is an assessment worth doing?
Adults usually come to us for an ADHD assessment in these situations:
- Work takes several times longer than it should. Not through lack of competence, but because starting a task and staying with it costs disproportionate effort.
- Deadlines, bills and paperwork keep slipping, despite one system, app or list after another that worked briefly.
- A child's diagnosis raised the question about yourself. This is one of the most common reasons people contact us: a parent hears ADHD described in their child and recognises their own life in it.
- Treatment for depression or anxiety helped only partly. The mood symptoms lifted and the difficulties with attention and organisation stayed.
- School reports and memories do not add up — a bright child with comments about inattention, talking and unfinished work.
- Your psychiatrist or therapist has asked for an assessment, to clarify the diagnosis and choose treatment.
What does the DIVA-5 interview cover?
DIVA-5 works through 18 DSM-5 symptom criteria: nine for inattention and nine for hyperactivity and impulsivity. Each one is assessed twice, for how it looked in childhood and how it looks now. That is not a formality: ADHD is a developmental condition, so DSM-5 requires several symptoms to have been present before the age of 12.
For each criterion I ask for a specific example from your life. A simple yes is not enough, because the same word can describe two different things in two different people.
The second part of the interview is about what those difficulties actually affect. DIVA-5 assesses functioning in five areas:
- work and education
- relationships and family life
- social contacts
- free time and interests
- self-esteem and self-image
This part weighs as heavily on the outcome as the symptom list. Symptoms without an effect on functioning are not enough for a diagnosis.
How does the process work?
1. Diagnostic interview, part one
A detailed assessment of inattention and of hyperactivity and impulsivity, separately for childhood and adult life. We work through the criteria in order, with examples.
2. Diagnostic interview, part two
A closer look at functioning across the five areas, plus a supplementary interview about other possible causes of the difficulties. This part matters as much as the first: attention difficulties have many sources, and some of them call for an entirely different response than ADHD.
3. Discussion of results
We go through what the assessment found: which criteria were met, on what basis, what follows from it, and what we recommend next.
We arrange the dates so that there is time between the interview and the results session to analyse what was gathered. The whole process usually takes a few weeks.
Each of these three steps is described in detail, with examples of the questions I ask, in Adult ADHD assessment step by step: the DIVA-5 interview.
How to prepare
The more material from the past, the more solid the outcome. None of it is a condition of being assessed, but it makes a difference.
Someone who remembers your childhood. DIVA-5 recommends supplementing your own account with information from someone who knew you as a child, usually a parent or a close relative. The reason is straightforward: everyone's memories of their early school years are selective, and DSM-5 requires an assessment of symptoms before the age of 12. It is not a condition of starting the assessment. If you have nobody to ask, the absence of that information does not rule out an assessment, but it can affect how firm the conclusions about childhood turn out to be.
Documents, if you have them. School reports with teachers' comments, old exercise books, assessments from an educational psychology service, and records of earlier psychiatric or psychological treatment are all useful.
A list of your own observations. Before the first session, it helps to write down a few specific situations from recent months where the difficulties showed. It is easier to give an example from a note than to reconstruct one on the spot.
Information about medication and other diagnoses. If you take medication or have earlier diagnoses, say so at the start. Some symptoms overlap, and that changes how the interview is conducted.
How long does it take, and what does the fee cover?
The assessment costs 1100 PLN, and that covers the whole process, meaning three sessions:
- diagnostic interview, part one
- diagnostic interview, part two
- discussion of results, with diagnostic conclusions and recommendations
There is no separate charge for the results session, or for the diagnostic conclusions and recommendations. The DIVA-5 interview alone usually takes between one and one and a half hours, but the process also includes deeper differential diagnosis, analysis of everything gathered, and a separate results session — which is why we spread it across three appointments.
What you receive, and who makes the diagnosis
At the end you receive diagnostic conclusions together with a psychological opinion: which DSM-5 criteria were met, on what basis, how the difficulties affect the five areas of functioning, and what follows for next steps.
ADHD is a medical diagnosis: in medical records, it is a psychiatrist who makes it. A psychological assessment is not a step to one side of that path, though — a psychologist forms a psychological diagnosis and opinion through the assessment process. Guidance on ADHD assessment requires a full clinical evaluation including a developmental history, and states plainly that a diagnosis is not made on the basis of questionnaires alone. A semi-structured clinical interview such as DIVA-5 is exactly that kind of evaluation.
In practical terms, you leave with a description of which criteria were checked, on what basis, and what the history of symptoms since childhood looked like — the material a full clinical evaluation requires. You can pass the opinion to a psychiatrist at a consultation, or to your therapist. How much they draw on it is their decision.
What this assessment is not
- It is not an online test or a self-report questionnaire. DIVA-5 is an interview conducted by a psychologist, in which each criterion is checked against a specific example and against what the criterion actually describes.
- It is not a neurological investigation. We do not carry out EEG, MRI or blood tests. An ADHD diagnosis rests on clinical assessment, not on imaging.
- It is not a prescription. The assessment does not end in medication or a sick note. Decisions about medication are made by a psychiatrist.
- The answer is not always yes. The assessment may show that the criteria are not met, and that is a useful result too: it points to where to look next. Difficulties with attention and organisation can follow from anxiety disorders, depression, long-term sleep deprivation, thyroid problems or sustained stress.
When to start with something else
- You are in acute crisis. After a sudden loss or another difficult event, current symptoms can strongly affect attention and memory, which makes it harder to separate them from a pattern going back to childhood. It is usually more sensible to start with crisis intervention or a consultation and come back to the assessment once things have settled.
- You have untreated depression or a severe anxiety disorder. The symptoms overlap with the picture of ADHD, and at high severity they can obscure the outcome. Depression and anxiety disorders often co-occur with ADHD, though, so this is not an automatic reason to wait. Mention it when you book, or say so at the start of the first session — we will decide together whether to start the assessment straight away or stabilise the symptoms first.
- You are not sure this is what you are looking for. Start with a psychological consultation and decide after talking it through.
- You are under 18. DIVA-5 is designed for adults. Take a look at our child and adolescent psychology consultation.
Who carries out the assessment
The assessment is carried out by Karolina Zawrotniak — a psychologist, sexologist and psychotraumatologist, and a graduate of psychology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She trained at the SWPS University School of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy, recommended by the Polish Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy. She is a member of the association and takes her work to regular supervision.
She completed training in adult ADHD assessment, and the assessment itself is one of the main areas of her practice. She also works with parents of children with ADHD and helps clients match strategies to specific situations in their daily lives. Her psychotraumatology qualification matters here in practice: some difficulties that look like ADHD are linked to earlier traumatic experiences, and the two can also co-occur. Telling these presentations apart changes the recommendations. Full qualifications: our specialists.
Assessments are carried out in Polish and in English.
Fees and booking
The assessment costs 1100 PLN for the whole process. No referral is needed; visits are private.
Available times and ways to reach us are on the contact page. You can book through ZnanyLekarz or by email at kontakt@centrum-oddech.pl. When you book, say that it is for an ADHD assessment, because it needs a longer block of time than an ordinary consultation.