Attention Deficit and Hyperactvitiy Disorder (ADHD)
SCS Policy for Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
If you have been previously diagnosed with ADHD, you must provide documentation of this diagnosis from the clinician who made the diagnosis in order to receive medication treatment from SCS. You should have your previous clinician send us the documentation so that we can review it to determine whether it is adequate. Documentation must be in the form of an evaluation, treatment summary and/or neuropsychiatric assessment supporting the diagnosis; progress notes are not acceptable. If, for whatever reason, we feel that the workup done outside was inadequate, you will have to complete our diagnostic protocol to be considered for medication treatment at SCS.
If you feel that you may have ADHD, you will need to go through our diagnostic protocol. You will be referred to the protocol from your intake appointment. The protocol will involve several appointments and will include assessment via semi-structured interview. If clinically indicated, a series of screening tests will then be conducted. Referrals for other services may be made in the course of completing the diagnostic protocol. This protocol requires approximately six weeks to complete. If you would rather seek private consultation and avoid completing our protocol, you can be given names of outside psychiatrists at your intake appointment.
If you are seeking accommodations, please contact the disabilities office. Our diagnostic protocol is not sufficient to meet required criteria for evaluation for accommodations; it is used exclusively for our own diagnostic purposes in an effort to best serve students.
If, after the diagnostic protocol process is complete, it is the opinion of the evaluators that you might indeed have ADHD, an appointment with one of the SCS psychiatrists will be made and the data from the diagnostic process will be provided to the psychiatrist. The decision of whether to medicate and what kind of medication to use will be made by the psychiatrist. It is our policy to choose the appropriate medication with the least potential for abuse.
