What is the DIVA-5?
The DIVA-5, or Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults (Fifth Edition), is a semistructured clinical interview developed specifically for the assessment of ADHD in adults. It was developed by Dutch psychiatrists and translated and validated in English, and is now widely used across the UK as the clinical standard for structured adult ADHD assessment.
The DIVA-5 is anchored directly to the 18 symptom criteria of the DSM-5 and covers both childhood and adult presentations of each symptom. Its defining feature is that for each symptom, it provides a set of specific, real-world examples of how that symptom might manifest in daily life, which makes the questions considerably more accessible than the abstract clinical language of the DSM-5 itself.
It is described as semistructured because the clinician follows a defined framework but also uses clinical judgment and follow-up questions to explore responses in more depth. It is not a rigid checklist: it is a structured conversation that covers the required ground while allowing the clinician to pursue relevant threads where they arise.
Structure of the interview
The DIVA-5 is divided into three sections. The first covers symptoms in adulthood, working through each of the 18 DSM-5 symptoms and asking whether they are currently present and whether they were present in the two years before the age of 12. The second covers the impact of symptoms on daily functioning. The third provides a summary of the findings for the clinician to complete.
In practice, the clinician will typically begin with a general clinical conversation and then move into the structured DIVA-5 questions. The interview itself takes approximately 45 to 60 minutes, and the total consultation including the broader clinical assessment runs to 60 to 90 minutes.
The childhood section
For each of the 18 symptoms, the DIVA-5 asks whether it was present in childhood before the age of 12. The clinician reads a set of examples for each symptom relevant to that age group: for example, under the inattention symptom "often fails to give close attention to detail", the childhood examples include things like making careless mistakes in schoolwork and not noticing errors in written work.
This section can be the most challenging for adults who were not assessed as children, since it relies on retrospective memory of experiences that may be decades old. A few things are worth knowing in advance. You do not need contemporaneous records or documentation. General recollections are acceptable: the clinician is looking for whether the symptom pattern was present in some form, not for specific incidents. If you genuinely cannot recall whether a particular symptom applied in childhood, saying so is fine.
Some people find it helpful to think back to school, homework, social situations, and family life in the weeks before the appointment, simply to bring those memories more readily to mind. This is useful but not required: the clinician's questions and the examples provided in the interview often prompt recollections that did not come readily in advance.
"The interview is not asking you to prove your difficulties. It is asking you to describe your experience, and your honest account is the most clinically useful thing you can provide."
The adulthood section
For each symptom, the DIVA-5 also asks whether it is currently present in adulthood. The examples provided for each symptom are specific to adult contexts: work, relationships, finances, household management, and daily organisation. For example, under the same inattention symptom, adult examples include making errors in work tasks, missing details in contracts or reports, and difficulty proofreading.
This section tends to feel more immediately accessible to most adults, since it is asking about current experience that is more readily available to conscious reflection. The clinician is looking for symptoms that are currently present and persistent, occurring in more than one setting (for example, both at work and at home), and causing meaningful impairment.
One common experience in this section is that many adults with ADHD have developed compensatory strategies that mean they manage symptoms to a degree but at a significant cost of effort. The DIVA-5 is interested in whether the difficulty exists, not whether it is fully disabling. If you manage a symptom by working much harder than you feel you should need to, that is clinically relevant information and worth mentioning.
The impact section
The DIVA-5 concludes with an assessment of the impact of ADHD symptoms across five areas of daily functioning: work and education, relationships and social contacts, free time and hobbies, self-confidence and self-image, and daily life tasks.
This section addresses the DSM-5 requirement that symptoms cause significant impairment in at least two settings. It is also clinically important because the impact of ADHD on a person's life, including the cumulative effect on self-esteem and self-image over many years, is a significant part of the clinical picture that the report will address. Being specific about how symptoms have affected you in concrete ways is more useful here than general statements.
How to approach the interview
There is nothing specific you need to prepare. The most useful thing you can bring to the interview is honest, specific answers in your own words. The examples provided in the DIVA-5 are there to help you identify whether a symptom applies to you: if none of the examples resonate but the underlying difficulty does, say so in your own terms.
Do not try to present yourself in a particular way. A common concern is that masking during the appointment will affect the outcome. It can, to a degree, but the structured nature of the DIVA-5 means the clinician is working through a comprehensive framework rather than relying on observed behaviour. Your account of your experience across your lifetime is the primary clinical material, not how you present on the day.
If you find it difficult to remember specific examples during the interview, it is fine to say you need a moment to think, to give a general response rather than a specific incident, or to note that a symptom applies in general even if you cannot recall a particular example in the moment. The clinician is experienced in working with people for whom these kinds of recollections are difficult, and that difficulty itself is not without clinical relevance.
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What is used alongside the DIVA-5
The DIVA-5 is not used in isolation. At Distinct, it is used alongside the CAARS (Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scales), a validated self-report questionnaire that provides a standardised measure of current symptom severity. The CAARS is typically completed as part of the pre-assessment questionnaire before your appointment.
The clinical conclusion is based on the totality of information gathered: the DIVA-5 interview, the CAARS scores, the pre-assessment questionnaire, and the clinician's broader clinical judgment informed by the consultation as a whole. For more on how the diagnostic criteria work and how these tools fit into the wider assessment framework, see our guide to how ADHD is diagnosed in adults in the UK.
This article has been reviewed for clinical accuracy by Distinct's clinical governance team, led by a consultant psychiatrist and senior NHS clinical leader with over two decades of specialist experience.