Scott McKirdy is a Registered Psychologist and co-owner of Solasta Counselling in Calgary, where he conducts adult autism and ADHD assessments. View Scott’s profile >>
If you’ve ever felt like ADHD explains half of you and autism explains the other half (never quite fitting either description completely on its own), there’s a name for this: AuDHD.
What Does AuDHD Mean?
AuDHD is shorthand (not a formal clinical diagnosis, but a widely used community term) for having both autism and ADHD at the same time. It’s grown popular quickly because it captures something a lot of people had struggled to name: the experience of traits from both conditions interacting, sometimes reinforcing each other and sometimes pulling in opposite directions.
Older diagnostic guidelines (DSM-IV) actually barred clinicians from diagnosing both autism and ADHD in the same person, but that rule was removed when the DSM-5 was published, specifically because the two conditions were recognized as genuinely, commonly co-occurring. Research since then has consistently found that a large share of autistic people also meet criteria for ADHD, and vice versa. AuDHD is community language catching up to something the clinical field already recognized.
AuDHD vs. ADHD: What’s the Difference?
ADHD on its own is primarily about attention regulation, impulsivity, and activity level. Autism on its own is primarily about social communication, sensory processing, and a need for routine or predictability. On paper, some of these traits look contradictory (ADHD is often associated with seeking novelty and struggling with routine, while autism is often associated with needing routine and finding unpredictability distressing).
In practice, AuDHD often looks less like “both sets of traits happening separately” and more like the two shaping each other. Someone might crave stimulation and struggle to sit still (ADHD), while also needing that stimulation to happen in a very specific, controlled way (autism), and get genuinely distressed when it doesn’t. That interaction is exactly why AuDHD can be harder to recognize than either condition alone: the traits don’t cancel out, but they don’t present as a textbook version of either diagnosis either.
Signs You Might Be AuDHD
Some patterns that come up often in people who turn out to have both:
- Intense focus on specific interests (autism), alongside real difficulty focusing on things that don’t interest you (ADHD)
- A strong need for routine, paired with getting bored of that same routine faster than most people
- Sensory sensitivities that make busy or loud environments overwhelming, combined with a craving for stimulation that pushes you toward those same environments
- Masking or “performing normal” so effectively at work or school that burnout hits hard once you’re finally somewhere you can let your guard down
- Being told as a child you were “too much” and “too rigid” at the same time (from different people, in different settings)
None of these on their own confirm anything. The pattern (traits from both conditions, often in tension with each other) is what’s worth paying attention to.
Is There an AuDHD Test?
There’s no standalone “AuDHD test,” because AuDHD isn’t a standalone diagnosis (it’s the presence of two separate, established conditions in one person). A real evaluation involves the same rigorous, validated tools used for each condition individually: structured autism assessment tools and ADHD-specific measures, gathered together and interpreted by someone who understands how the two interact, rather than assessing each in isolation and hoping the picture makes sense afterward.
Online “AuDHD tests” and self-report quizzes can be a reasonable starting point for noticing a pattern worth exploring further, but they aren’t diagnostic, and they can’t tell you anything a proper assessment can’t tell you more reliably.
What Are RAADS-R, CAT-Q, and ASRS?
If you’re here because of a score you got on an online quiz, you’re in good company (these three tools get searched by name constantly), and for good reason: they’re real, validated instruments used in actual clinical research, not random internet quizzes.
- RAADS-R (Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised) is a widely used self-report screening tool for autism in adults, covering social interaction, language, and sensory-motor traits.
- CAT-Q (Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire) measures something more specifically relevant to AuDHD: how much effort someone puts into masking, or “performing normal,” to compensate for autistic traits (capturing an experience many other screening tools miss entirely).
- ASRS (Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale) is the ADHD-side equivalent (developed with the World Health Organization, focused on attention, impulsivity, and related traits).
All three are screening tools, not diagnostic ones. A high score on any of them is a legitimate, real signal worth taking seriously; it’s not the same thing as a diagnosis, and it was never designed to be. These tools are built to be quick and accessible, which means they’re built to over-include: tuned to catch anyone who might have the condition, at the cost of also flagging some people who don’t. A full assessment exists to do what a ten-minute questionnaire can’t: combining multiple sources of information, developmental history, and clinical judgment into something you can actually rely on.
AuDHD in Women
AuDHD is especially likely to go unrecognized in women and girls, for the same reasons autism and ADHD are each individually under-diagnosed in women on their own. Social conditioning often pushes girls toward masking traits that would get a boy noticed and flagged earlier (appearing organized, agreeable, and “fine” on the outside while working much harder underneath to manage sensory overwhelm, attention difficulty, or social exhaustion than it looks like from the outside). Many women don’t get any diagnosis until adulthood, often after a burnout, a major life transition, or their own child’s assessment prompts them to recognize the same patterns in themselves.
Getting Assessed
Because AuDHD is two conditions, not one, a proper assessment needs to genuinely evaluate for both (not just screen for the more obviously visible one and assume the other isn’t relevant). At Solasta, our Adult Autism Assessment already evaluates for ADHD as part of a comprehensive assessment, rather than requiring two separate processes (because in practice, the two are so frequently linked that assessing for one without considering the other gives an incomplete picture). If ADHD turns out to be the more prominent piece for you, our Adult ADHD Assessment is built the same way.
Either way, what you get at the end is a comprehensive, plain-language written report (not just a label, but an explanation of how these traits actually show up for you specifically), and what that means going forward.