Most parents arrive at an assessment focused on one thing. The ADHD has been clear enough for a while, in the messages from teachers, the long evenings spent on homework, the sense that their child is working harder than their classmates for less.
Dubai runs on people who are passing through. About 92% of the population are expats, most of them on contracts they always knew had an end date. The city is built for arrivals rather than for people putting down roots, and that turns out to matter more than it seems when you first land.
A lot of people end up on sleeping pills almost by accident. Some rough patch arrives, maybe work stress or grief or a newborn, and the nights fall apart. A doctor prescribes something to get them through, it does the job, and the rough patch eventually passes.
There is a particular disappointment that catches people out in the first fortnight on an antidepressant. They went to the doctor because they felt bad, they were prescribed something to help, they took it as instructed, and within a few days they felt worse.
The titles get used almost interchangeably in everyday conversation, which is how people end up booking the wrong appointment for what they actually need. Someone with crushing anxiety pays for an expensive psychiatric assessment when a course of talking therapy would have served them better.
Dubai runs on people who are passing through. About 92% of the population are expats, most of them on contracts they always knew had an end date. The city is built for arrivals rather than for people putting down roots, and that turns out to matter more than it seems when you first land.
Every year, a few weeks before Ramadan, the same question starts coming up in psychiatry clinics across the region. Can I keep taking my medication and still fast?
High-functioning anxiety is not a diagnosis. You will not find it in any psychiatric manual, and no clinician can write it on a form.
The person who books the appointment is often not the person who needs it most. A daughter calls about her father, who has been withdrawn and short-tempered since retiring.
The diagnosis often arrives sideways. A parent takes their own child to be assessed, sits through the description of how ADHD actually presents, and recognises not the child but themselves.