ADHD Vancouver: Assessment, Diagnosis, & Treatment of ADHD

Dr. Jones charges $225 per hour for all assessment and treatment services.   His fees are reimbursable through all extended health insurance providers.

At Port Moody and Vancouver locations, Dr. Jones provides assessment, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD for children, adolescents and adults:

Assessment and Diagnosis of ADHD through the lifespan:

• Assessment of current and prior ADHD symptoms, severity, frequency, variability and situations in which they occur

• Assessment of the impact of symptoms on a person’s functioning – in school, work, social and health-and-wellness domains

• Assessment of executive functions, which refer to the conscious mental functions required for goal-directed behavior

• ADHD Diagnosis based on DSM-5 criteria

• Direct iPad-administered testing of attention, working memory and planning abilities

• This assessment requires five hours of work and carries a fee of $1125

Psycho-educational Assessment and ADHD Diagnosis: 

Assessment of ADHD can include a psycho-educational or cognitive assessment in addition to making the diagnosis based on behavior and functioning. This additional testing is often required in order to obtain university accommodations for ADHD. It can also be helpful to see how ADHD may be affecting a person’s problem-solving, learning, memory and/or other aspects of information processing.

We offer psycho-educational assessment and neuropsychological testing to diagnose ADHD and assess the impact of symptoms on functioning (for example, vocational, academic, social, day-to-day adaptive functioning).

• Assessment to identify appropriate school and university accommodations, and to guide interventions and accommodations.

• The psycho-educational assessment requires 13 hours of work – at $225 / hour, the total cost is $2925.

Comprehensive Treatment of ADHD: 

We offer comprehensive treatment of ADHD  via individual therapy and group skills training and/or referral to a medical doctor for medication.  Treatment often includes the following components:

• Optimization of physical factors, including sleep, nutrition/hydration, and exercise

• A letter or report for your medical doctor that reviews your diagnosis and the methods used to diagnose

• Helping you to establishing an effective support network, including peer support if feasible; university students can “double up”  – participate in treatment together, split the costs of treatment, and help each other enact the behavioral commitments required

• Optimization of task and environmental factors at work, school and home

• Skills training in three main areas of executive function:

  • Maintaining awareness of tasks and deadlines

  • Initiating tasks at the right time (not procrastinating)

  • Working productively without getting side-tracked or bogged down in unnecessary details

•  Meta-cognitive skills training for specific study or work tasks

• Active attention strategies for reading, listening or observing

• Meta-memory and learning strategies to encode and recall effectively

• Structuring complex output with well-learned routines

• Self-monitoring and reinforcement of attention and on-task behavior

Please contact us for more information about 1:1 treatment of ADHD through the lifespan.

Group Therapy for ADHD:

We are not running groups per se at this time, however all components listed below are available in individual therapy format.

Please note that individuals can form their own groups (up to four persons), share the cost of therapy, and help each other with the behavioral commitments needed.

In the future we will run groups again. Our program has included 10 sessions and involved six to 12 persons. Formal ADHD diagnosis is not required. The program is largely based on the published work of Stephen Safren and colleagues and Dr. Mary Solanto and colleagues and has the following major components:

1. Understanding your ADHD Profile

2. Committing to the treatment and to improving functioning

3. Mindfulness, acceptance, and commitment to value-guided action as a foundation for CBT skills-training and implementation

4. Organizational systems

5. Time awareness and scheduling

6. Task shaping

7. Prioritizing and checklists

8. Activation and motivation issues

9. Planning and following through

10. Problem behaviors

11. Stress and emotions

12. Social contacts and maintaining relationships

Our program differs from Safren and Solanto programs in that it includes skills training components focusing on mindfulness, value-awareness, value-guided action, management of problematic impulses / behaviors, and managing emotions and stress from within an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) framework.

Empirical support for a combined CBT and Mindfulness-based approach:

Solanto and colleagues (2010) found that their program significantly reduced inattentive symptoms for a group of 88 adults diagnosed with ADHD. A greater proportion of persons receiving their program improved compared with a control group receiving supportive therapy.

Problem behaviors, anxiety, depression, and difficulties regulating stress and emotions are often experienced by persons with ADHD, ACT has been evaluated for effectiveness in more than 50 controlled studies and shown to be effective in treating a variety of clinical problems including anxiety disorders, depression, emotion dysregulation and a variety of problem behaviors. The majority of controlled outcome studies show ACT to be more effective, or at least as effective, as the gold standard therapies to which it has been compared (Hayes et al, 2012).

1. Safren, SA et al (2005). Mastering Your Adult ADHD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program Therapist Guide (Treatments That Work). New York: OUP

2. Solanto, MV (2011). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for adult ADHD. New York: Guildford Press.

3. Hayes, SC; Strosahl, KD; and Wilson, KD (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2nd Ed. New York: Guildford Press.

4. Solanto, MV et al. (2010). Efficacy of metacognitive therapy for adult ADHD: American Journal of Psychiatry, 168, pp. 958-968.

5. Able, SL; Johnston, JA; Adler, LA; and Swindle, RW (2007). Functional and psychosocial impairment in adults with undiagnosed ADHD.