Female-Presentation ADHD Screener

What this screener measures

Twenty-five questions, seven areas of daily life and a total out of 100. What it measures is how strongly you recognise yourself in statements about attention that runs inwards, effort that stays hidden and patterns that shift across the month. It does not measure intelligence. It does not weigh up what you have achieved. It cannot diagnose you, and it was not built to.

The seven areas are inattention on the inside, getting started and keeping going, emotional intensity and sensitivity to rejection, masking and the capable front, cycle and hormonal shifts, things treated as something else and day-to-day load. Each area is scored on its own as well as feeding the total, because this presentation of ADHD rarely arrives evenly across all seven.

This is a NeurAtip instrument and it is in validation. The items and the seven areas come from clinical work with women who went years without an answer. The score bands are first-pass clinical anchors rather than tested cut scores, so the screener carries no published cutoff and no reference group to rank you against. We would rather tell you that than imply a precision the instrument does not have yet.

Your answers are anonymous. We do not ask for your name and there is no account. Your result is saved against a private link so you can come back to it, print it or email it to yourself, and everything is deleted after twelve months.

Who it is designed for

Women and girls whose ADHD was never the visible kind. That is the presentation this screener was written around.

Four groups tend to recognise themselves in it. Adults who reached their thirties, forties or fifties before anyone said the word ADHD, often after a child was assessed first. People who were treated for anxiety or depression and found the treatment helped a little without ever reaching the thing underneath. People who were called bright but disorganised at school, then quietly worked twice as long as everyone else to keep up. People who manage everything at work and have nothing left for their own evening.

It also fits people whose attention and energy change across the menstrual cycle, and people who saw the pattern clearly for the first time during pregnancy, after birth or in perimenopause. Three of the twenty-five questions ask about that directly. Most ADHD screeners do not ask about it at all.

Men can complete it and the seven areas will still read true. One thing to know: the bands were written female-first, so the total is calibrated for the presentation described above rather than for you.

Why standard ADHD screeners were not built for this presentation

The widely used ADHD screeners describe the externalised presentation, because that is what the early research was built on. That research was mostly boys and men. Visible movement. Interrupting. Behaviour a teacher notices and refers on. Those items are not wrong. They describe one route through ADHD, and it happens to be the route that gets spotted.

If your inattention runs inwards, none of it is visible from the outside. A mind with several tracks playing at once looks like a woman sitting quietly in a meeting. Nothing to observe means nothing to report, and an instrument built on observable signs has little to work with.

Masking accounts for much of the rest. Many girls who struggle learn early that being agreeable, prepared and apologetic costs less than being told off. That learning works, which is the difficulty: by adulthood the compensation is so practised that a short screener reads the compensation rather than the difficulty underneath it. The effort is invisible. The output looks fine. The recovery time afterwards is not on the form.

Two further gaps matter here. Standard item sets do not ask about hormonal variation, so a pattern that changes every month has nowhere to be recorded. They also do not ask what you were treated for before, so years of anxiety treatment read as a history of anxiety rather than as a missed explanation.

None of that makes this screener more accurate than the established ones, and we are not claiming it is. It is designed for the presentation those items were not written to capture, and it is in validation. When the validation work produces numbers, we will publish them and say what they show.

The seven areas, and what each one is asking about

Inattention on the inside covers the internal version of distraction. Losing the thread of a page or a conversation and covering up that you drifted. Daydreaming far more than you let anyone see. Forgetting mid-step what you came into the room for.

Getting started and keeping going is about effort rather than ability. Structured work being easier than an open-ended task. Working harder than the people around you for the same result and rarely saying so. Perfectionism used as a way of staying functional rather than as a standard you enjoy.

Emotional intensity and sensitivity to rejection is about the size of the response. Sensing disapproval before it arrives and adjusting in advance. Small frustrations affecting you more than the situation warrants. Replaying a conversation hours later and finding new faults in what you said.

Masking and the capable front covers the distance between how you come across and how things actually are, and the recovery time that distance costs you.

Cycle and hormonal shifts asks whether concentration, irritability and mood change with your cycle. It also asks whether pregnancy, birth or perimenopause made a long-standing pattern obvious.

Things treated as something else is the history. Previous treatment that did not fully fit. Sleep that has been a running problem rather than a one-off. Using food, drink or other substances to regulate something rather than for pleasure.

Day-to-day load is the practical cost. Household admin. Friendships with intense periods and long silences. Self-care being the first thing to slip when you are under pressure.

How to read your result

Read the seven areas before you read the total. The area breakdown is the informative part of this screener, because this presentation tends to be uneven rather than uniformly high.

Each area gives you your score out of its own maximum, a percentage and a plain description on a five-step scale that runs from little sign, through a light pattern, a clear pattern and a strong pattern, up to a very strong pattern. The total out of 100 is described the same way. Areas that reach the middle step of that scale are named in your summary as the ones that stood out.

A low total does not clear anything up. The total is the seven areas added together, so one area at the top of that scale can be diluted by six quieter ones and still be the thing costing you most. That is why the breakdown comes first.

If you do not have a menstrual cycle you will have answered Never to three questions, so your total sits lower than it otherwise would. Those three questions still count towards the maximum. The other six areas are unaffected, so read those.

One more time, because it matters. The bands are first-pass anchors from an instrument in validation. They are not a diagnosis, a percentile or a probability. The shape of your answers is the part worth taking to a clinician.

What to do next

If the questions read like a description of your life, that recognition is the useful result, whatever the number said. A full assessment is the only thing that can turn it into an answer.

Our assessments run online. No GP referral is needed, appointments are available immediately and your written report arrives within 6 weeks of your first appointment. A team of two to three practitioners reviews your case, which can include an ADHD clinician, a clinical psychologist and a consultant psychiatrist. The report is NICE-compliant and accepted by the HSE and the NHS. If you want to look at medication, our psychiatrist approves that route and supports you through titration.

Every booking includes your EchoMind AI profile free, worth €97 or £97 depending on where you are. It describes how your mind works in practical terms rather than listing what is wrong with you.

If masking was the strongest part of your answers, MASC asks about that on its own. If autistic traits sit alongside the ADHD ones, the AuDHD screener looks at both together rather than separately. If you want a longer description across eleven areas of life, NEXA does that. All of them are free, and none of them is a diagnosis.

Common questions

Is this screener an ADHD diagnosis?

No. It is a screening questionnaire. It records how strongly you recognise yourself in twenty-five statements and shows you the shape of your answers across seven areas. A diagnosis needs a clinical interview, your developmental history, information from someone who knows you well and a clinician qualified to weigh all of it together.

Does a low score mean I do not have ADHD?

No. The screener cannot rule anything out. Its bands are first-pass clinical anchors from an instrument still in validation, not tested cut scores. A total is also seven areas added together, so one strong area can be diluted by quieter ones. If the questions described your life, that matters more than the total does.

I do not have a menstrual cycle. Is the screener still useful?

Yes. Answer Never to the three cycle questions. Your total will sit lower than it otherwise would, because those questions still count towards the maximum. The other six areas will read exactly as they should. Use the area breakdown rather than the total.

How is this different from the ASRS?

The ASRS is the World Health Organisation's adult ADHD screener. It is established, well evidenced and built around the widely described presentation. This one is designed for the internalised presentation instead: attention that runs inwards, hidden compensatory effort, sensitivity to rejection, masking and hormonal variation. It is our own instrument and it is in validation, so it carries far less published evidence behind it than the ASRS does. Many people find it useful to complete both.

What does 'in validation' mean here?

It means the instrument is being tested and does not yet have published cutoffs or norms. The items and the seven areas come from clinical practice, and the bands were set as first-pass clinical anchors rather than derived from a study sample. Read the pattern in your answers rather than treating the number as precise.

Are my answers saved?

Yes, and here is exactly how. Your answers and your result are saved against a private link, with no name, no account and no IP address attached. Anyone holding that link can see the result, so keep it to yourself unless you choose to share it. Everything is deleted after twelve months.