Do I Have ADHD? Self-Screen Checklist

No checklist can properly answer the question "Do I have ADHD?" on its own (and you should be wary of anything that claims to). However, there is a self-screen checklist that can show you whether your experience matches the pattern commonly experienced by people with ADHD.

That checklist is the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, or ASRS.[1] It was developed in conjunction with the World Health Organization and is named among the screening tools listed for adults in Australia's national ADHD guideline.[2] The ASRS asks 6 questions about how you've felt and behaved over the past 6 months.

In this article, you'll find details about the 6 ASRS questions themselves and how to read your answers. We also cover what ADHD looks like in adults, the other explanations worth ruling out and how to organise a formal assessment if you feel one is needed.

What Is ADHD? An Overview for Adults

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, which means it's a difference in how the brain develops rather than something that arrives later in life. ADHD in adults affects attention, impulse control and the ability to organise tasks and follow them through.[3] Between 2% and 6% of Australian adults are estimated to be living with ADHD.[4]

When a healthcare professional assesses an adult for ADHD, they look at 2 separate groups of symptoms:

1. Inattention - includes things like losing track partway through a task, struggling to get things in order and forgetting appointments and obligations.

2. Hyperactivity and impulsivity - symptoms may include restlessness, talking over people, and acting before thinking it through. In adults, hyperactive symptoms are more often felt than seen, as an inability to settle rather than visible movement.

Inattention and hyperactivity are scored separately, and difficulties from either group aren't enough for a diagnosis on their own.

Diagnosing ADHD in Adults

In adults, an ADHD diagnosis generally needs 5 or more symptoms from either group, present for at least 6 months, with several traceable back to before you turned 12. The difficulties also need to show up in more than one part of your life, such as at work and at home.[3][5]

Childhood onset is a vital part of the diagnostic process, because it's what most often separates ADHD from other possible explanations, such as a stretch of poor sleep, a thyroid problem or chronic stress.

ADHD in Women: Signs Often Missed

Women tend to be diagnosed with ADHD later than men, and many reach adulthood without anyone raising it. Australia and New Zealand's college of psychiatrists describes females as "a largely under-diagnosed and under-treated cohort".[6] Boys are diagnosed about twice as often as girls in childhood, and the gap narrows in adulthood.[7]

Part of the reason for that gap sits in the diagnostic questions themselves. Screening tools were built around difficulties other people can see, and the pattern of ADHD in women is often one nobody else notices.

The rest of the gap comes down to masking. Women who've spent years managing with lists, routines, over-preparation and rehearsed conversations can look organised from the outside, while finding ordinary days exhausting. That effort doesn't always register on a questionnaire. Someone who's masked for 20 years may answer "rarely" quite honestly to a question about a difficulty they've built an entire system around avoiding.

Here are the experiences women with ADHD commonly describe:

• Overwhelming thoughts - fast or repetitive thinking, such as going over past conversations, and difficulty switching off, even at rest.

• Exhaustion - ongoing fatigue from the effort of keeping up at work and at home.

• Difficulty focusing - attention drifting during conversations, meetings and reading.

• Difficulty starting or completing tasks - delaying tasks that need sustained mental effort, or leaving them unfinished once the challenging part is done.

• Emotional dysregulation - quick, intense reactions to frustration that are hard to control and slow to settle.

• Missed bills, lost belongings and forgotten appointments - everyday admin continually falling behind, even with reminders and systems in place.

The 6 ASRS questions cover some of these experiences but not others. They ask about starting and finishing tasks and remembering appointments, but not about overwhelming thoughts, exhaustion, difficulty focusing or emotional dysregulation.

There's no separate ADHD in women checklist, and no distinct ADHD test for women. Our page on ADHD in women covers masking, hormones and late diagnosis in more depth.

Do I Have ADHD? Take the Self-Screen Checklist

The ADHD checklist below is the ASRS, a free ADHD test online. The 6 questions are quoted word for word from the published screener.[8]

This Adult Self-Report Scale-V1.1 (ASRS-V1.1) Screener is intended for people aged 18 years or older.

For each question, decide how often it has applied to you over the past 6 months: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often or Very Often.

1. How often do you have trouble wrapping up the final details of a project, once the challenging parts have been done?

2. How often do you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that requires organization?

3. How often do you have problems remembering appointments or obligations?

4. When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do you avoid or delay getting started?

5. How often do you fidget or squirm with your hands or feet when you have to sit down for a long time?

6. How often do you feel overly active and compelled to do things, like you were driven by a motor?

How to score it. For questions 1, 2 and 3, count each answer of Sometimes, Often or Very Often. For questions 4, 5 and 6, count only Often or Very Often. Your score is the number of answers that count, out of 6. A score of 4 or more means your symptoms may be consistent with adult ADHD, and it may be worth talking to your healthcare provider about an evaluation.

Harvard publishes a printable version of the screener if you would rather tick the boxes and keep a copy.[8]

© New York University and Ronald C. Kessler, PhD. All rights reserved.

Where this ADHD screening test comes from

The ASRS was developed with the World Health Organization by a workgroup based at New York University and Harvard Medical School, and its validation was published in 2005.[9] The questions were written against the diagnostic criteria in use at the time, and an ASRS assessment is designed as a starting point rather than a diagnostic test.

How to Interpret Your ADHD Score

If your score was 4 or more out of 6, the result lines up with a pattern that may indicate ADHD. The ASRS is only designed to give you an indication of whether a formal ADHD assessment may be useful, not a conclusion about whether you have ADHD or not.[2] When the ASRS is used with the general public rather than with people already suspected of having ADHD, most of those who score 4 or more turn out not to have the condition.[10]

A low score doesn't rule ADHD out. In the study that validated the ASRS, it missed about 3 in 10 people who did have the condition,[10] and it performs less well again in people who are also depressed.[2] So even if you do receive a low score, it can still be worth talking to your GP or a healthcare professional about your concerns.

What an ADHD self assessment can and can't tell you

Every adult ADHD test you'll find online (including the ASRS) works the same way. An ADHD screener is a short set of questions that sorts people into "worth-looking-into" and "probably-not". Australia's national ADHD guideline puts it plainly: a positive screen should be followed by further assessment.[2]

An online ADHD test also can't check other important parts of making an ADHD diagnosis, like whether the difficulties showed up before you were 12 and whether they affect more than one part of your life.

Is It ADHD or Something Else?

The 6 ASRS questions don't only relate to ADHD, as several other life experiences and mental health conditions can produce similar symptoms. These are things a healthcare professional works through before settling on a diagnosis:

• Anxiety often causes trouble concentrating, restlessness and unfinished tasks. The difference a healthcare professional looks for is timing. Anxious inattention tends to come and go with periods of worry, while ADHD runs steadily through the years.

• Depression can flatten concentration and motivation in much the same way. Depression tends to arrive in episodes, with low mood alongside it, whereas ADHD difficulties usually predate any change in mood.

• Poor sleep impairs the same parts of the brain ADHD affects. If your focus improves after a run of proper sleep, sleep is worth looking at first.

• Thyroid problems and low iron can produce mental fog, forgetfulness and fatigue, usually with physical signs as well. Both show up on a blood test and respond to medical treatment.

• Trauma often impairs attention through constant alertness. The attention problem is tied to an ongoing sense of threat rather than being present quietly in the background.

• Perimenopause may bring forgetfulness and mental fog in your 40s and 50s, often alongside other changes.

• Autism symptoms can overlap with ADHD and often occur with it. Autistic attention tends to be intense and narrow, while ADHD attention tends to be distractible and drawn to whatever is new.

None of the experiences or conditions above rule out ADHD. About 7 in 10 adults with ADHD have at least one other condition alongside it, and anxiety and depression are the most common.[11] Being told you have anxiety doesn't close the ADHD question, and for a lot of late-diagnosed adults, both can turn out to be true.

Frequently Asked Questions About ADHD Self-Assessment

How do I know if I have ADHD as an adult?

Without a formal assessment, you can't know for certain if you have ADHD, but this general pattern may be recognisable - the difficulties are long-standing rather than recent, they show up in more than one part of your life, and several of them go back to childhood. The 6 questions in the ASRS are a reasonable first check.

Is there a test to confirm if I have ADHD?

No single test confirms ADHD. A diagnosis comes from a full assessment with a healthcare professional that combines questionnaires with a detailed conversation about your history and how the difficulties affect you now.[2]

What type of ADHD do I have?

ADHD is described in 3 presentations: mainly inattentive, mainly hyperactive-impulsive, and combined. Which one applies depends on the symptom groups you meet the threshold in, which is settled at a formal assessment rather than by a questionnaire. The mainly inattentive presentation is more often diagnosed in adults and in women.[4][7]

Do I have ADHD or am I just lazy?

Laziness is usually described as someone not doing something they should by choice. In ADHD, difficulties like running late, being disorganised and struggling to complete tasks are the result of a neurodevelopmental condition, not conscious choice.

Who can diagnose ADHD in adults?

An ADHD diagnosis comes from a qualified health professional after a full assessment, not from a questionnaire. We cover who carries out the assessment and what the process involves in our guide on how to get diagnosed with ADHD in Australia.

Where to Start If You Think You Have ADHD

An ADHD self-screen is a starting point. If you scored 4 or more on the ASRS, or if you scored lower and the difficulties are still affecting your life, the next step is a conversation with a healthcare professional. They can discuss your results and experiences to help you figure out if a formal ADHD assessment would be useful.

An ADHD assessment goes further than any questionnaire can. It looks at your personal and medical history, how long the difficulties have been there, whether they show up in more than one part of your life and what else might explain your symptoms.

If you'd like clarity about whether ADHD explains what you've been experiencing, Nurtured Thoughts offers ADHD assessments Australia-wide, no referral required. You can find out more and book on our ADHD Assessments and Diagnosis page.

Disclaimer: This article is general information and is not a substitute for individual medical advice. Please speak with your GP or treating healthcare practitioner about your individual situation.

References

[1] Harvard Medical School, Department of Health Care Policy. (n.d.). Adult ADHD Self-Report Scales (ASRS). National Comorbidity Survey. https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/asrs.php

[2] Australasian ADHD Professionals Association. (2022). Australian evidence-based clinical practice guideline for ADHD: 1.2 Screening and identification. https://adhdguideline.aadpa.com.au/identification/screening-and-identification/

[3] Healthdirect Australia. (2025). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/attention-deficit-disorder-add-or-adhd

[4] Australasian ADHD Professionals Association. (2022). Australian evidence-based clinical practice guideline for ADHD: Background - About ADHD. https://adhdguideline.aadpa.com.au/about/about-adhd/

[5] American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (DSM-5 fact sheet). https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM-5-ADHD.pdf

[6] Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. (2023). ADHD across the lifespan (Position statement 55). https://www.ranzcp.org/clinical-guidelines-publications/clinical-guidelines-publications-library/adhd-across-the-lifespan

[7] Hinshaw, S. P., Nguyen, P. T., O'Grady, S. M., & Rosenthal, E. A. (2022). Annual Research Review: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 63(4), 484-496. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13480

[8] Harvard Medical School, Department of Health Care Policy. (n.d.). Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale-V1.1 6-question screener (ASRS-V1.1 6QS). National Comorbidity Survey. https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/ftpdir/adhd/6Q_ASRS_English.pdf

[9] Kessler, R. C., Adler, L., Ames, M., Demler, O., Faraone, S., Hiripi, E., et al. (2005). The World Health Organization Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS): A short screening scale for use in the general population. Psychological Medicine, 35(2), 245-256. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291704002892

[10] Chamberlain, S. R., Cortese, S., & Grant, J. E. (2021). Screening for adult ADHD using brief rating tools: What can we conclude from a positive screen? Some caveats. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 106, 152224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2021.152224

[11] Fu, X., Wu, W., Wu, Y., Liu, X., Liang, W., Wu, R., et al. (2025). Adult ADHD and comorbid anxiety and depressive disorders: A review of etiology and treatment. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1597559. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1597559