Getting Tested for ADHD and Autism Together in Tennessee: AuDHD Assessment Without Two Waitlists

Last reviewed: 05/21/2026

Reviewed by: Dr. Kiesa Kelly

If you have spent years suspecting that neither "just ADHD" nor "just autism" fully explains how your mind works, you are describing something clinicians increasingly recognize: the two conditions frequently travel together. Many adults call this AuDHD — an informal term for the well-documented co-occurrence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. The frustrating part is that the usual path to answers means joining one waitlist, getting a partial picture, then joining another. This article explains what a combined ADHD and autism evaluation actually looks like, why doing both at once is often the more honest and efficient route, and how telehealth makes that possible across Tennessee.

In this article, you'll learn:

• What AuDHD means and why a combined evaluation often makes more sense than testing one condition at a time

• How ADHD and autism overlap — and how the same struggle differs between them

• Why sequential evaluations can cost you months, and how one integrated assessment avoids that

• What a combined ADHD + autism evaluation includes, step by step

• The specific questions to ask a provider before you book

• How telehealth brings combined assessment to Memphis, Knoxville, and the rest of the state

What AuDHD means and why a combined evaluation makes sense

"AuDHD" is not a formal diagnosis. It is shorthand for having both autism and ADHD, which the current diagnostic system explicitly allows. Until 2013, the official manual did not permit clinicians to diagnose both conditions in the same person; the DSM-5 changed that, recognizing that they genuinely co-occur [10]. So if you have wondered whether you have to choose, the honest answer is that you may not have to — and a good evaluation is built to find out.

The overlap is substantial. Research consistently shows that the two conditions co-occur far more often than chance — depending on the sample and how it is measured, somewhere between roughly a fifth and half of autistic people also meet criteria for ADHD, and a sizable share of people diagnosed with ADHD show clinically significant autistic traits [6]. Twin and family studies also point to genetic factors shared between the two conditions, which helps explain why they so often cluster together [11]. A quick, free way to start gathering your own signal is to complete both the AQ-10 autism screener and the ASRS ADHD screener; together they give a fuller picture than either one alone. Neither can diagnose you, but the pattern they reveal is exactly the kind of information a combined evaluation is designed to interpret.

A few misconceptions keep capable adults stuck on this exact question, so they are worth correcting up front.

"You can only have one — if you're autistic, the ADHD is just part of that." This was effectively the old rule, but it is no longer how the diagnostic system or the research understands these conditions [10]. They are distinct neurodevelopmental conditions that often coexist, each with its own profile and its own implications for support [8][9].

"If you can be spontaneous and social, you can't really be autistic." Many autistic adults — especially those identified late — have spent decades masking, consciously studying and copying social behavior until it looks effortless from the outside [2]. The ability to perform sociability does not rule out autism; the cost of performing it is often part of the picture.

"A combined evaluation is just two evaluations bolted together, so I should do them one at a time." An integrated assessment is not two separate workups stacked back to back. It is a single process designed from the start to weigh both conditions against each other, which is more accurate precisely because ADHD and autism can imitate and mask one another.

🧩 Key takeaway: AuDHD isn't a trend label — it's everyday shorthand for a co-occurrence the diagnostic system has formally recognized since 2013.

How ADHD and autism overlap — and how they differ

Part of what makes self-diagnosis so hard is that ADHD and autism can produce similar-looking struggles for very different underlying reasons. A good evaluation does not just check boxes; it works out why a given difficulty is happening. Here is how that plays out across the domains people most often ask about.

Executive function. Both conditions can wreck your ability to start, organize, and finish things — but the mechanism differs. In ADHD, the difficulty often looks like inconsistent activation: you know exactly what to do and cannot make yourself begin until urgency or interest forces it. In autism, executive difficulty more often shows up as inflexibility during transitions — trouble shifting gears when a plan changes, or shutting down when demands exceed your processing capacity. Telling these apart matters, because the support that helps each is different.

Sensory experience. Sensory sensitivity tends to be consistent in autism — the same fluorescent lights, fabric tags, or background noise reliably cause distress. In ADHD, sensory irritability is more likely to fluctuate with your overall regulatory state: you tolerate the open office fine when you are rested, and it becomes unbearable when you are already depleted.

Social life. ADHD social friction often comes from inattention and impulsivity — interrupting, losing the thread, missing a cue because your attention drifted. Autistic social effort is more about consciously decoding unspoken rules that others seem to absorb automatically, which is effortful and tiring even when it succeeds.

The AuDHD experience adds a twist neither condition has alone: an internal tug-of-war. ADHD pulls toward novelty, stimulation, and spontaneity; autism pulls toward routine, predictability, and sameness. Living with both can feel like having one foot on the gas and one on the brake — and that specific conflict is one of the clearest signals that an evaluation should look at both conditions together rather than picking one.

Consider how this looks in practice. You build a careful daily routine to keep your life from falling apart — meals planned, calendar color-coded, a system for everything — because structure is the only thing that makes the world manageable. Then your ADHD brain spots something more interesting at 2 p.m. and the whole routine evaporates, and by evening the unstructured wreckage of the day leaves you overstimulated and shut down. You are not lazy and you are not undisciplined; you are running two operating systems that want opposite things, and you have been blaming yourself for the friction between them.

Or picture a workday. You mask through back-to-back meetings, reading faces and managing your tone with effort no one sees, while also fighting to keep your attention from sliding off the agenda. By 4 p.m. you are not just distracted — you are depleted in a way that sleep does not fix, because you have spent the day paying two separate taxes at once: the ADHD tax of forcing focus and the autistic tax of performing fluency. That double cost is the lived reality a combined evaluation is built to recognize.

⚖️ Key takeaway: The same struggle — say, trouble finishing tasks — can come from ADHD's inconsistent activation or autism's transition inflexibility. The why is what changes the plan.

The two-waitlists problem

Here is the practical trap. The traditional route is to suspect one condition, wait months for an evaluation, get a diagnosis for that one, and then — when it does not fully explain things — start the process over for the second condition. Adult neurodevelopmental evaluations already carry long waits, and national data show that demand for adult ADHD assessment in particular has climbed sharply [7]. Doing the conditions sequentially can easily turn a six-month wait into a year or more.

There is a clinical cost on top of the time cost. When you evaluate one condition in isolation, the other can distort the result. Autism can mask ADHD, and ADHD can mask autism, so a single-condition workup may confidently land on one label while missing the part of your profile that actually explains the most. The waitlist patterns behind all of this — and the ways telehealth shortens them — are covered in our guide to why adult ADHD and autism evaluations have such long waitlists.

A combined evaluation solves both problems at once. One intake, one developmental history, one testing battery designed to weigh both conditions, and one feedback session that integrates everything. You wait once, not twice, and you walk away with a picture that accounts for the whole profile.

⏳ Key takeaway: Sequential evaluations can double your wait and still miss the overlap — one diagnosis can hide the other when they're assessed apart.

What a combined ADHD + autism evaluation includes

A thorough combined evaluation is a structured clinical process, not a questionnaire. Clinical guidelines for both conditions describe diagnosis as resting on a careful clinical interview supported by validated tools and developmental history — not on any single test [1][3]. When both conditions are on the table, that process is designed to assess them in parallel.

Shared history and intake

The evaluation starts with a detailed conversation about how attention, organization, sensory experience, social interaction, routine, and flexibility play out across your whole life — and how far back each pattern goes. Both ADHD and autism are defined in part by traits present from early development [1], so the interview covers childhood even if you do not have report cards or old records. We will ask about the strategies you built to cope, because adults are often experts at hiding the struggle, and that masking is itself diagnostic information [2].

The testing battery

Validated rating scales add structure and let your experience be compared against established norms. The ASRS, for example, is a short screening scale developed with the World Health Organization and validated in the general adult population [4], while the AQ-10 is a brief, validated autism screening tool [5]. In a combined evaluation, instruments for both conditions are used together, alongside measures that help rule out look-alikes such as anxiety, depression, or trauma — because those can mimic or accompany either condition. If burnout is part of your picture, our autistic burnout (ABO) screener can help frame that conversation, though the research base on autistic burnout is still developing and the concept continues to be refined.

One integrated feedback session

This is where a combined evaluation earns its value. Instead of two disconnected reports, you receive a single feedback session and a written report that explains how the pieces fit — what is ADHD, what is autism, what is both, and what each finding means for treatment, accommodations, and daily life. A diagnosis without a usable plan is half a service; the integration is the point.

How to decide: combined or one at a time

If your query is essentially "do I have ADHD, autism, or both," here is a decision rule you can apply before you leave this page. If only one condition's pattern fits and the other clearly does not, a focused single-condition evaluation may be the right starting point. But if both feel accurate — if you recognize yourself in the inconsistent-activation picture and the routine-and-sensory picture, or if the gas-and-brake conflict above resonated — do not talk yourself out of that. When both are plausible, a combined evaluation is the most honest and efficient place to start, because it is the only route that can confirm or rule out each condition without the other distorting the result. For a fuller walk-through of that decision, our post on when a combined AuDHD evaluation can save you years of guessing covers the trade-offs in depth.

Questions to ask before you book

Whatever provider you choose, these questions separate a true combined evaluation from a single-condition workup wearing a broader label. Ask them verbatim:

• Scope: Does this evaluation actually assess both ADHD and autism in one integrated process, or does it primarily test for one and screen lightly for the other?

• Dual-diagnosis capability: Can you diagnose both conditions, or would I need a separate referral for the second?

• Methodology: How does your process account for adults who have masked or compensated for years and may not present in the obvious way?

• Developmental history: What do you do if I do not have childhood records? How is early history gathered? (Our guide on whether you need childhood records for an adult diagnosis covers this in detail.)

• Output: What will I receive at the end — a label only, or specific, integrated recommendations I can use for treatment, work, and daily life?

You can also talk through your situation with our team directly through our contact page before committing.

📋 Key takeaway: Five questions — scope, dual-diagnosis capability, masking, history, and output — tell you in one call whether an evaluation is truly built to see both conditions.

Telehealth across Tennessee — Memphis, Knoxville, and statewide

For most adults, a combined ADHD and autism evaluation can be completed by secure video. The components that matter most — the clinical interview, validated rating scales, and developmental history — translate cleanly to telehealth, and telehealth has become a routine part of how adults access neurodevelopmental care [7]. That matters even more for combined assessment, because clinicians who evaluate both conditions together are not evenly distributed across the state. Telehealth means an adult in Memphis, Knoxville, or a rural county without a nearby specialist can work with a clinician trained specifically in adult AuDHD assessment.

There are honest limits. A small number of situations — certain accommodation requests or complex presentations — are better served at least partly in person, and a trustworthy provider will tell you when that applies rather than funneling everyone into the same format. If you are still deciding where to begin, our psychological assessment overview lays out how the process works from first contact to final report.

💻 Key takeaway: Telehealth widens access to the clinicians who actually evaluate both conditions together — which is exactly the expertise combined assessment requires.

Getting an answer that fits the whole picture

You should not have to choose between two halves of yourself, wait through two separate evaluations, or settle for a diagnosis that explains only part of your experience. When ADHD and autism both seem to fit, the most honest path is an evaluation built to hold both at once — one wait, one integrated process, and one set of recommendations that accounts for how the two actually interact in your life. That is how a years-long question becomes a plan you can use.

Ready for an AuDHD-specialized evaluation?

If the patterns above feel familiar, an evaluation that looks at autism and ADHD together — not one or the other in isolation — can help name what's actually driving the overload.

Schedule an AuDHD evaluation →

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do a combined ADHD and autism evaluation instead of two separate ones?

A combined evaluation assesses ADHD and autism in one integrated process, which avoids the months-long gap between two separate waitlists and prevents one diagnosis from obscuring the other. When the conditions overlap, looking at them together gives a more accurate picture than testing for one, getting a partial answer, and starting over. It also means a single, coherent set of recommendations rather than two reports that do not talk to each other.

Is a combined AuDHD evaluation more expensive than testing for one condition?

A combined evaluation usually costs more than a single-condition assessment because it uses more instruments and clinician time, but it is typically more efficient than paying for two completely separate evaluations. The shared intake, history, and feedback session reduce duplication. We discuss exact pricing and what is included before you book, so you can compare it honestly against the sequential route.

Can I get a combined AuDHD evaluation by telehealth in Tennessee?

Yes. A combined ADHD and autism evaluation can be conducted by secure telehealth for adults across Tennessee, including Memphis, Knoxville, and rural areas without a nearby specialist. The interview, validated rating scales, and developmental history translate well to video. A clinician will tell you honestly if any part of your situation would be better served in person rather than defaulting everyone to one format.

Should I take the AQ-10 or the ASRS first if I think I have both?

If you suspect both, there is no wrong order — completing both the AQ-10 (autism) and the ASRS (ADHD) gives a clinician a fuller starting picture than either alone. These are screeners, not diagnoses; a high score on one, both, or neither is simply information you bring to an evaluation. If your day-to-day struggles are significant even when a screener comes back low, that still warrants a closer look, because adults often mask.

Does having both ADHD and autism change how each one is treated?

Often, yes. When ADHD and autism co-occur, support has to account for the tension between them — for example, ADHD strategies that rely on novelty can clash with an autistic need for routine. Medication decisions, therapy approach, and accommodations are tailored to the combined profile rather than to one condition in isolation, which is a major reason an integrated evaluation matters before a treatment plan is built.

About the Author

Dr. Kiesa Kelly is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of ScienceWorks Behavioral Healthcare, with more than 20 years of experience in psychological assessment and evidence-based care. Her clinical focus includes adult neurodevelopmental evaluation — ADHD, autism, and the AuDHD profile where the two overlap — with particular attention to how these conditions present in adults who were missed earlier in life.

Dr. Kelly's approach to assessment is neuro-affirming and grounded in current diagnostic standards: she emphasizes integrated evaluations that account for masking, co-occurring conditions, and the real-world impact on work, relationships, and daily functioning. She reviews ScienceWorks's clinical content for accuracy before publication and leads a telehealth-forward practice serving adults and adolescents across Tennessee.

References

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8. National Institute of Mental Health. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd

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Disclaimer

This article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading it does not create a clinician-patient relationship. A screener result is not a diagnosis, and "AuDHD" is an informal term, not a formal diagnostic category. If you have questions about ADHD, autism, or your mental health, consult a qualified clinician. If you are in crisis or experiencing a medical emergency, call 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or 911.