In September I am moving to Tokyo to start a masters programme at a well known national university. This will be my second time living there and I’m very excited – the programme is exactly what I want, I studied Japanese at university and speak fluent Japanese, and I thoroughly enjoyed living there on my year abroad.
I am currently located in the UK, where I’ve been working for the past nine months since graduation. The job is almost all remote work, and while I am very motivated and generally doing well, the level of consistent discipline and self-motivation required to hit my hours every day without procrastinating or doing anything stupid has been kicking my ass. I am 99% sure I have adhd and everyone I know who I have mentioned this too is in agreement. (I’m excessively energetic, I run most places, if I’m not being observed I tend to get distracted by something and get up and pace around every few minutes when I’m trying to work, almost every deadline I have ever had has turned into a historic battle to complete it on time etc etc). Up until recently I managed to partially hide and compensate for this quite well and graduated at the top of my year, even if it always felt like just getting up and eating and living was considerably harder for me than most people I know, in ways that would be very consistent with subpar executive functioning. I don’t have any problems concentrating in exams and was able to revise just-about-consistently enough that I would never need additional accommodations for academic stuff, it was just the entire rest of my life that was a chaotic mess. More recently with the demands of work I’ve slipped up worse and more often, and last month I had to take a pay out because I had obviously failed to hit my hours.
I never got assessed before because the healthcare system in the UK is broken: I knew I would be leaving the country before I ever reached the top of the NHS waiting list and I would much rather my parents’ limited resources for supporting me went to helping me do this master’s than on an extremely expensive private assessment. Additionally I was applying for MEXT (didn’t get it sadly) and I knew I would have to declare anything like that, at which point it would only generate more issues with getting further assessment and they might well just throw my application in the bin when they saw it anyway.
Now that I don’t have MEXT but I’m going anyway, I am wondering if I should finally get myself actually assessed for adhd once I’m there. From what I’ve read it would be considerably more affordable there than in the UK, and if any of the limited range of medication they are able to prescribe there actually helped and I could spend days actually concentrating like a normal person that would be extremely helpful. Being this stressed every day and unable to get it together until the last minute is really frustrating, it’s like I’m permanently on thin ice and I know it. If I got a diagnosis I wouldn’t intend to be open about it and try and fish for extra sympathy and support, I’d just like to see if there is some way I can live better than this and not have to work so hard to sort-of have it together.
If anyone here has experience of getting assessed for/diagnosed with adhd in Japan, I would really like to hear your thoughts and any advice on how to go about the process if it’s a good idea. Any information would be deeply appreciated 🙂
2 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Experience of getting assessed for ADHD in Japan?**
In September I am moving to Tokyo to start a masters programme at a well known national university. This will be my second time living there and I’m very excited – the programme is exactly what I want, I studied Japanese at university and speak fluent Japanese, and I thoroughly enjoyed living there on my year abroad.
I am currently located in the UK, where I’ve been working for the past nine months since graduation. The job is almost all remote work, and while I am very motivated and generally doing well, the level of consistent discipline and self-motivation required to hit my hours every day without procrastinating or doing anything stupid has been kicking my ass. I am 99% sure I have adhd and everyone I know who I have mentioned this too is in agreement. (I’m excessively energetic, I run most places, if I’m not being observed I tend to get distracted by something and get up and pace around every few minutes when I’m trying to work, almost every deadline I have ever had has turned into a historic battle to complete it on time etc etc). Up until recently I managed to partially hide and compensate for this quite well and graduated at the top of my year, even if it always felt like just getting up and eating and living was considerably harder for me than most people I know, in ways that would be very consistent with subpar executive functioning. I don’t have any problems concentrating in exams and was able to revise just-about-consistently enough that I would never need additional accommodations for academic stuff, it was just the entire rest of my life that was a chaotic mess. More recently with the demands of work I’ve slipped up worse and more often, and last month I had to take a pay out because I had obviously failed to hit my hours.
I never got assessed before because the healthcare system in the UK is broken: I knew I would be leaving the country before I ever reached the top of the NHS waiting list and I would much rather my parents’ limited resources for supporting me went to helping me do this master’s than on an extremely expensive private assessment. Additionally I was applying for MEXT (didn’t get it sadly) and I knew I would have to declare anything like that, at which point it would only generate more issues with getting further assessment and they might well just throw my application in the bin when they saw it anyway.
Now that I don’t have MEXT but I’m going anyway, I am wondering if I should finally get myself actually assessed for adhd once I’m there. From what I’ve read it would be considerably more affordable there than in the UK, and if any of the limited range of medication they are able to prescribe there actually helped and I could spend days actually concentrating like a normal person that would be extremely helpful. Being this stressed every day and unable to get it together until the last minute is really frustrating, it’s like I’m permanently on thin ice and I know it. If I got a diagnosis I wouldn’t intend to be open about it and try and fish for extra sympathy and support, I’d just like to see if there is some way I can live better than this and not have to work so hard to sort-of have it together.
If anyone here has experience of getting assessed for/diagnosed with adhd in Japan, I would really like to hear your thoughts and any advice on how to go about the process if it’s a good idea. Any information would be deeply appreciated 🙂
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This question gets asked sometimes, answer is typically the same. Its not easy unless you have medical history for it. I did not.
For me, it was “go to an english speaking, non insurance covered clinic that does a test that takes several hours and only on weekdays.” Because they need to put you into a national system of recognized patients.
Otherwise they would not give me stimulant medication (ritalin, adderall) but you can get strattera etc, which are covered under different limits (drugs that can be used to treat adhd AND depression are a different group and therefore different laws. They just dont want to give you speed.) I tried non-stimulants for a year with differing results, and learned they didnt work well for me.
You can and should expedite the process by getting diagnosed with adult adhd in your home country with a doctor recommending medication to improve focus and bringing the diagnosis with you to japan. With that diagnosis done, its 1000x simpler.
Start now. Getting anything done now will help. Even a singular prescription for ritalin.