ADHD informant form needs to be filled in by someone else

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So I have finally got a reply from my ADHD assessment centre, and have received a list of things I need to do next.

One of these things is causing me a lot of anxiety and difficulty, which is the 'informant form.' Someone who knows me well is meant to answer in depth questions about my potential ADHD. This is a big problem for me because I don't really have anyone that knows me well enough to answer the questions in any valid or meaningful way.

This is probably largely due to my Autism. I don't have the sorts of relationships where I can talk about things like this and have no one that knows me well enough to answer the ADHD informant form for me.

I do have some people that I could ask, one friend, and my Mother, father and sister. The thing is though I've never spoken to any of them about my ADHD so if I did ask any of them to fill in the form for me, they simply wouldn't have enough information to know how to answer the questions or how to provide examples.

If it really has to be done, my only option would be for me to provide the answers and examples for my informant. I fear that this may lead to me being 'caught out' at some point in the process, if I answer the questions in a very similar way, it's potentially going to be obvious what has happened.

But what else can I do? I don't think it's right or fair to fail at this hurdle just because I don't have anyone close to me that knows about my ADHD in great depth. Some of us Autistics are private people and lone wolves. What are we supposed to do in cases like this??

This is quite difficult. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas that would be really very helpful and massively appreciated because I am very worried about how to jump through this particular hoop.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do please?

The ADHD assessors says that this form is an important part of the assessment. Should I just tell them about my circumstances and ask if the assessment can be done without the informant form. Has anyone here had any similar issues?

It was not a big problem that I didn't have anyone to ask to do the informant form for my ASD diagnosis, hopefully it could be the same for the ADHD assessment too.

Talk to your evaluator about this. My son hides his ADHD outside the home. School returned results that indicated a model student, but there were small "tells" (constant fidgeting) and his self-reporting indicated the efforts he was making --- "they don't give me enough time to swing" (to regulate). In the clinic, test indicated his declining performance relative to ADHD factors. He was diagnosed with ADHD and the report explains why people outside the home don't see it and the price my son pays for masking it. In your case, you are your own home. You'd think our parents would have seen it in in us as children, but perhaps yours ---like mine--- may not have recognized it. Although there are "tells"... My mom says she gave me a 20-dollar bill to hold and she asked me for assurance that I would take care of it, which I gave her, and then I saw something else and immediately dropped the bill. My dad says I was "lazy" and wouldn't clean up or finish stuff (lack of executive function). Homework was excruciating.

Wishing your evaluators help you figure out how your outside informant form can be filled out with relevance and integrity. For my ASD evaluation, my provide instructed me to fill out the informant form and provide contact numbers if needed. When I followed up my evaluator said he did not need to use my contacts --- test results, and my self reporting were sufficient, as it was for my son. That could be the case for you.

Your family probably already thinks you are odd. Any diagnosis will likely just help them understand you better.

And you sound like you think the informants have to know something about ADHD. I don't think they do. It's the assessors who are supposed to be knowledgeable on ADHD, not your informants and not even you. Your informants just need to be cooperative and honest (so do you) so the assessors can find out more about you. The informants likely know some things about you that you don't even know!