Hello, I'm 24 years old, diagnosed a year ago. Here in France, there are so little possibility to be diagnosed and cared as an adult with ADHD. I didn't struggle with receiving the diagnosis. I struggled much more with legal stuff, moreover while having a specialist asking me to do things who put me in danger (as for my health as for other fields). I could only rely on myself and mom, no one else when mom had to fight to make me change specialist : I was so overwhelmed by all the administrative problem that having to fight to change specialist was the last straw. And the hospital asked me to get the permission from my ex-psychiatrist to change specialist at hospital, whereas it's illegal to ask so (even mom says that it's courtesy, in reality, it's illegal in France. And having a Social Security like we have doesn't mean you don't have the freedom to choose your specialist : in France, you have a Social Security and the freedom to choose your practitioner). I was so tired to fight that consequences on my health were quite worrying : I lost so much weight that my new and now current psychiatrist suspected an anorexia (but a doctor who knows me really well knows that stress may makes me lose a great amount of weight without being an anorexia. But if you don't know it, you can't invent it ! ;) ). Fortunately, my current psychiatrist learnt she can be confident with me, and that I didn't change psychiatrist because it was a fuss, but because I had no other solution than this (she nearly made a heart attack when she saw the form to enroll for driving licence, the form where my previous psychiatrist asked me to lie in the health questionary. Poor her !). The article, published in a quite important French newspaper and related about my fight to make a law change, made her proud of me. All the floor knows it (even all the department, but I never climb the stairs to go up, in the other units). My ex psychiatrist, who works at the same floor as her, now has been bawl out at least from my psychiatrist, and maybe by everyone who works at this floor ! I can tell because I heard it when I dashed there that everyone at this floor heard about the article and that my psychiatrist is proud of it. Well, I'll be proud only when law is changed, for good : never count your chickens before they've hatched ! There is still a lot to do, but it's not the moment to give up !

So never give up, and even less never give up hope : after the rain, comes the sun and the rainbow :)

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