Are ADHD waiting lists ever going to improve?

This is such a frustrating, myopic view of the situation. It benefits the powers that be though doesn’t it!

Don’t blame us for the NHS, blame greedy people having the audacity to make a GP appointment. Don’t protest supermarket price gauging, fight amongst yourselves and blame those complaining when you could survive perfectly well on bread and water. Blame failures of the NHS mental health service on the people getting referred for those services…

as to OP, is ridiculous and it’s not just affecting ADHD. You can use Right to Choose for an assessment - it took me a year from assessment to diagnosis and then a further 4 months to titration. Much better than the 3 years I was initially quoted.

The pp has a point about screens. The attention element of ADHD is one that lots of people feel they can identify, particularly for their children. The rise in screen use means attention levels in schools are atrocious, so when teachers raise this, parents then have concerns that this may be an ADHD issue and many go on to seek further assessment via the GP. It is obviously not always that they do have ADHD, it is 'just' an attention need.

Buy a private assessment. It doesn’t have to be in the UK. A friend of mine got assessments done for herself and her entire family while on holiday in Spain.

To add, my elderly mum is absolutely undiagnosed adhd herself - not even slightly masked - and it's helped me understand some of her more difficult behaviours over the years.

For me (a late in life diagnosis) there was 1) a huge desire to try the meds and see if they help me with the memory and motivational issues that have plagued my professional and personal life (they do) and 2) an explanation for the absolutely insane things I've done over the years, despite being pretty successful and reliable on paper. Realising that huge impulsiveness is part of my make up has actually helped me rein that part of me in.

I’m sure it suits Tory rhetoric to blame self diagnosis instead of better diagnostics, better awareness, underfunding and Covid fallout.

I think adult diagnosis can be very self-validating as imposter syndrome high and it will aid the person to stop questioning themselves all the time. If it was any other condition, you’d get diagnosed. Especially with all the ignorance that abounds as seen here and in the media. “We’re all a bit adhd” etc. No, no we’re not. We’re all
forgetful at times. Or anxious. That doesn’t mean we have what can be a very debilitating condition.

I want to tell people about our diagnoses but the ignorance means they often glaze over or show a lack of comprehension when you mention it. Family will Google it and then bring up the usual rubbish online about it being made up etc. So we can’t talk about it with them. It’s pretty shocking when you consider that. It has led to us being distant with them and friends. Again, another sad impact.

It’s also helpful for the partner of the person to know their loved one has a condition. As someone said here, it can influence how you engage with the person and can make certain behaviours easier to manage. More needs to be done to get people the diagnosis they need.

There is so much ill-informed and downright insulting bullshit on this thread. ADHD is a debilitating condition which can cause incredible difficulties for people.

There are lots of adults getting diagnosed because we have more awareness of ADHD and how it presents and people are seeking answers for their difficulties.

This is especially true for women.

Yes there are people watching TikTok content and deciding they have ADHD because they're a bit disorganised but what I've read here is such crap.

Having a late diagnosis is very difficult and confusing. You start questioning everything about yourself and some also feel embarrassed about sharing their diagnosis because they know that people will be judging them and assuming they're desperate for a label.

Fucking bullshit.

Private clinics are fine when they run along the same lines as NHS clinics. You really ideally need face to face appointments and a QB test (not the less detailed ‘QB check.’

You need a psychologist or medical doctor involved.

More people getting an autism diagnosis will be impacting lists too. Myself and my children were referred for adhd diagnosis by the nhs after they did our autism diagnosis as traits showed up during the process.

They don't, I started a thread about it the other day:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5035931-do-you-know-anyone-who-paid-for-an-adult-adhdasd-assessment-and-was-told-they-dont-have-it?reply=134033230

You clearly have no idea what ADHd really is

The vast majority.

Essex and partnership university trust published their diagnosis rate a couple of years ago in response to a FOI request: 95%

https://eput.nhs.uk/media/dzzk021d/eput-foi-22-2575.pdf

There is screening to get on the assessment waiting list. Given such high conversion rates it’s almost certainly far too severe and still the waits are scandalous. The issue with ADHD assessment waiting lists is a lack of capacity, not horrendous numbers of chancers.

If going down private assessment route please, please make sure assessment is robust and follows NICE guidelines and will be accepted by NHS and education etc. Families are paying for sub par assessments which then cannot be accepted by the NHS when requests for ADHD meds are made. ND assessment for both adults and children is a huge problem and crisis in the NHS currently.

I work for CAMHS (now known as CYPMHS (Children and Young People's Mental Health Service) in large northern city. Current waiting list for ND assessment is 10 plus years. Lots of factors for huge increase in referrals - schools insisting on diagnosis, parental awareness, pandemic highlighting symptoms for families, self diagnosis etc. There are over 2k of referrals yet to be triaged and then put onto the waiting list. The situation is dire and funding is a massive issue and will get worse as the NHS trust has been told to make huge savings.

We had to do this for grandson... cost 1200. Well worth it tbh.

Private assessment is the only option at the moment- like others have said- the huge uptick in self diagnosis has led to there being no other option. Will a diagnosis actually change anything?

It depends on what age you are.

As a post menopausal woman that change in hormone levels can floor you.

Smart phone use doesn’t cause ADHD.

For women of a certain age, we didn’t have smartphones growing up yet as part of the diagnosis we had to recall our childhood.

Adhd is really Dopamine Deficiency. The reason a NT is able to do a list of jobs is because their brains get a dopamine delivered to the correct area of the brain And you get a reward

in an ADHD brain the dopamine isn’t being transported to the correct part of the brain. So we never get that reward.

Living with ADHD is akin to standing outside a large conference room with 10,000 people pairing up and having 5000 conversations. It’s that constant noise that we live with that we can’t tune out. Day to day it is having to listen to that noise and try to pick out a conversation from that noise that gives us some idea of what is needed to be done

Then we have to work on being able to actually do the task and without dopamine we either fail completely or it takes us hours to do a simple job

Adhd is something that has been with you for life. You didn’t suddenly get it by looking at your phone everyday

I've suspected my DH was ND probably 15 years ago. I was listening to a radio programme about 2 or 3 years ago talking about adult adhd and it was like a penny dropped, they were literally describing DH. (He was next to me while the programme was on but didnt hear it because he was concentrating on something) He is also dyslexic and had a really difficult time at school.

I spoke to him about it but he was not interested in researching or looking anything up. (Probably because it would involve reading which is difficult)
It's helped explain (for me) a lot of behaviour that I've found difficult within our relationship, particularly around listening and remembering things - I felt like I was being ignored or not worth listening to for probably a decade!

Honest question, how much is a diagnosis going to help an adult? Unless you need to be medicated? I think I probably have it from self diagnosing but I don't see the point in wasting anyone's time with it. I function quite well on a day to day basis though.

The GP route didn’t work for us and we’d still be suffering if we waited for NHS diagnosis. The levels of ignorance from some GPs was astounding. Other posters have covered it.

Psych is required, the disinformation spread by likes of The Times newspaper is pure malice; you go for diagnosis if you’re struggling with a disability. Because that is what it is. Disabling your every day. People who eyeroll at that? They just don’t understand. It’s a lonely world at times. You’re either in it or you’re not. And you’ll know yourself if you are.

The brain is different in people with ADHD so no, smartphones don’t make that happen. We got to point we couldn’t leave house, put it that way. Depression comes hand in hand. Other things that have happened include police turning up on doorstep due to adhd related behaviours. So it’s likely people who go down the route of diagnosis are truly struggling and it costs an absolute fortune to get the help you need. For adults with other conditions, you can’t often get any help. You just have to hope and pray you can rely on the coping mechanisms you’ve developed over time. Anger management is another connected issue around outbursts when stress post burnout builds up and poor self-esteem.

Spoiler alert, it can devastate relationships, as well as quash potential around careers and ambitions like any other disability. So when I see articles like the latest Times ableist bullshit, I get really riled. Then they print ‘people with adhd get really angry when you talk about over diagnosis’. 1 in 7 people are neurodivergent. 1 in 10 have dyslexia and it’s often co-morbid. Dyslexic? It’s likely you could have adhd also. Massive stats yet people say it’s being over-diagnosed…draw your own conclusions. Ignorance abounds.

Final word? If you’re disabled by adhd, you need to go private asap and stop worrying what others think. It’s not a ‘quirk’ of personality, it’s a condition.

1. It depends on the specific clinic I suppose but the ones I looked into are run by the same medical professionals who also work in the same capacity for the NHS; I’d like to think their medical expertise or standard of ethics doesn’t differ between their NHS clinics and their private clinics but maybe I’m being naive in thinking that.
2. I know of a few adults (support group) who went private and were flatly told they didn’t have ADHD. Several more though were also told they didn’t have it but were instead pointed in the direction of other conditions and were subsequently diagnosed by the NHS with ASD, BPD and various other mental health conditions so I don’t think they diagnose ADHD just for the sake of it.
3. I imagine they do have a high diagnosis rate though but only because the people who are willing to drop 2k-3k on an assessment, have probably done their research and are certain (mostly correctly) that they do have it. No one spends that amount of money for shits & giggles unless they are experiencing problems & looking for answers.

Really? Here ADHD medication can only be prescribed by a psychiatrist after official diagnosis.