Money, meds, and mental health resources: The other deficits in ADHD
“After filling up the screening forms, your general practitioner will check them and then refer you for further psychiatric evaluation. If you get this referral, you can forward it to us so we can process your request ASAP,” my university’s guidance counselor told me. Then, looking at my disability accommodations request form, added, “Though, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t give you a referral.”
We smiled at each other at this, like it was a funnier joke than it was. On her computer was a summary of months of frustration, self-loathing, and helplessness—things that I would later expand on in a British clinic’s Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) self-referral form after my general practitioner’s go-ahead. I didn’t think a 19-item form should have taken a morning and an afternoon to complete. I noted this down on the form: “Eight hours in and I’m beginning to feel like this is a trial of attrition.”
With that done, I called my mother to remind her about the third-party evaluation form I’d sent her to fill out. After she sends them, I’ll be on the clinic’s seven-month waitlist for psychiatric evaluation, which will decide whether or not I get to be on the other seven-month waitlist for drug titration. It’s a long wait but I didn’t have the funds to pay for an expedited private consultation. As an international student in Britain, medical insurance from the National Health Service was a requisite for my visa. I thought I might as well take advantage of their public healthcare system and get the answer to the question I had been asking for years.
Just as I learned about addition in school, I learned that being disabled in the Philippines is very, very expensive.
My mother eventually replied, for the nth time, “I don’t understand, anak. You and I know you might have ADHD. Why do you need a doctor to tell you that you have it?”
I told her it was because just knowing I had the chance of having it wasn’t enough anymore. It wasn’t going to get me adequate disability accommodations at university or support at work. While I heard myself talking, I knew she still didn’t understand, no matter how many reasons, symptoms, incidents, or articles I recited to her, again and again, almost by heart.
I can go on and on about why I suspect my brain isn’t built within the bandwidth of neurotypicality—the standard of thought, perception, behavior, and neurodevelopment that is considered the “norm.” I have multiple documents detailing why I think I am neurodivergent, of my synapses straying from the bell curve of functioning, but these self-affirming fun facts do not provide me with the thing I need most: help.
This was something I knew I was burdening my family by asking for. Just as I learned simple addition in school, I learned that being disabled in the Philippines is very, very expensive. A relative of mine was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary. Their evaluation was nearly P10,000, medication was P6,900 a month, and occupational therapy was P1,500 a week. When they were older, their psychiatric consultations cost P3,000 an hour. These treatments were on-again, off-again, like a leaky faucet, because they were unsustainable to finance when money could be better used elsewhere, like utility bills and groceries—and my relatives were the lucky ones. How many Filipinos are undiagnosed because they can’t afford it? How many Filipinos can’t dream of treatment because it’s out of their income bracket? In 2019, the Department of Health reported that the country only had 600 registered psychiatrists. How many are qualified to diagnose and treat ADHD specifically?
“A lot of people really want to get better or find answers,” Maria Redillas, a digital marketer and ADHD advocate, says earnestly in an interview with Young STAR. “We’re lucky if we get to talk to a qualified healthcare provider (offering free consultations).”
Redillas has been blogging since 2009 but recently pivoted towards neurodiversity after realizing online resources for ADHD only targeted non-Filipinos or children. A large portion of solutions offered by these resources were impractical, expensive, or non-existent in a Filipino context. Not all of us are from the States or Europe, have access to doctors and medication, and enjoy being at least middle class, yet these are the expectations resources have of readers. If they did talk about Filipinos, they were angled toward figuring out how to calm hyperactive children down so they could do their homework. Redillas describes Filipino ADHD resources as stuck in a time capsule, frozen and out of touch with the realities Filipinos with ADHD face.
Her blog, mariaisquixotic, addresses this. Sandwiched between articles on keywords and content management are guides on living with adult ADHD and local disability politics. While she may not be a mental health professional, her blog was made to help ease the struggles of either those who suspect they have ADHD or adults living with it. She says, “As much as possible, I want to help others find answers. Not entire (answers) but just a bit of a step forward (on) their journey to make their life easier.”
Many things make life complicated for Filipinos with ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence: steep maintenance fees, consultations with overworked professionals and undertrained interns, persistent ableism and stigma that prevent disabled people from living their lives, and so on. For these reasons, guides like Redillas’ become essential, especially when you’re on the beaten path of finding ways to play nice with your ADHD without medical guidance. But while online resources have been key to mental health and disability welfare, they shouldn’t be the only things we cultivate.
Like other disabled Filipinos, Redillas hopes for a future where the government, the workplace, and the insurance sector focus on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion. “There are some companies out there that are actively embracing and becoming more inclusive to differently abled people,” she shares. “Yet, there are others who are stuck in that mentality that ADHD (is) just fictional. There’s more traction for (destigmatizing ADHD), but there’s a very long way to go.”
My journey is also going to be a long one, but it's one I’m willing to push forward for as I kick back in the doctor’s waiting room, my foot twitching as I scroll through websites like Redillas’ to find the answers to my questions about how to live with the way I am. My life’s not going on pause until a doctor’s note appears in seven months or seven years, so I might as well learn ways I can help myself first. I was always bad at waiting.