My cousin was diagnosed by a brain scan. She signed up to be part of a clinical trial for something else, got kicked out of the trial because her fMRI showed she had ADHD.

So if we can literally scan someone’s brain and diagnose them from a picture instead of all these vague “describe your symptom” guessing… why don’t we?

It’s quite costly to run an fMRI. Not needed if you can get the same results more or less from a questionnaire.

In my professional experience, it can be hard to tell between ADHD symptoms and CPTSD symptoms. The checklist is not a great way to diagnose people. We usually do a lot more assessments, I also use a computerized test to measure reaction time and error commission.

I wish we (therapists) at least had the option to order an MRI or recommend a doctor orders one in difficult cases (I can do the latter but they will just laugh at me).

Ya, it could be better. Maybe a compromise would be to go with EEG machines which are less costly and can probably still differentiate fairly well (maybe).