Yes you have a psychiatric disorder

I actually find it a bit offensive to suggest that ADHD is anything but a psychiatric disorder. Many people will say: "Look, I have empathy for people who have mental health problems but I am not one of them! Don't put me in that category! After all, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, therefore due to its biological origins it is not a mental disorder." This of course makes absolutely no sense and is woefully ignorant of what a psychiatric disorder is in the first place.

This of course brings up the topic of terminology. We can quibble about this all we want- behavioral health, mental health, psychiatric disorder etc but it is all essentially the same thing. The department I work for is called the Behavioral Health Service Line. It is essentially the Department of Psychiatry. We can pretend to de-stigmatize ADHD by saying it is NOT mental health, but in every sense it meets the definition.

Evidence of a neuroscientific cause of a disorder does not, in and of itself, disqualify it as a mental health condition. I would argue that OCD has as much if not more of a neuroscientific foundation than ADHD but no medical specialist would consider it a neurologic disorder. Schizophrenia is now being widely understood to be in part a neurodevelopmental disorder but again this does not qualify it as anything other than psychiatric. So what criteria should be met for a disorder to be psychiatric? I believe there are 3 salient features.

Essential Criteria

1) The symptoms are predominantly mental, emotional, cognitive or behavioral.

2) Besides a mental status examination, there is no objective clinical evidence (ie lab tests, imaging) supporting the diagnosis.

3) It is in the clinical domain of the professionals conventionally considered mental health providers (ie therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist) to treat and manage these disorders and not another medical specialist. In other words, a neurologist, by virtue of their training would never consider themselves a specialist of said disorder while a psychiatrist would.

*There are of course some grey areas where disorders are considered on the boundary of psychiatry and neurology, sometimes referred to as neuropsychiatric (ie dementia). However, these disorders are relatively few and ADHD is conventionally not considered one of them.

ADHD meets all 3 of the above criteria. The last is especially important because despite biological theories supporting a neurodevelopmental cause of ADHD, a neurologist would never assume treatment for an ADHD diagnosis. I know dozens of neurologist, not one would take a referral for ADHD any more so than they would for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Even the neuropsychologists refuse these evaluations, instead passing the referral on to a general psychologist. Despite theoretical biological origins of ADHD, it is not de facto in actual clinical practice considered anything other than a psychiatric disorder.

So yes, if you have ADHD you have a psychiatric disorder. Or a mental health disorder or behavioral health disorder, or whatever you want to call it. The terms are for all practical clinical purposes interchangeable.