How do I find a reliable ADHD assessment centre?

[Firefly45]

How do know I find a company that will do a reliable, trustworthy and sensitive ADHD assessment with my young adult son?

My friend used one company and said they were great but its £1,000

I've seen another company that looks good and is £650 and another which is £250?

How am I meant to choose?

Feeling a bit lost!

(Not going through NHS cos of waiting times)

If you request a right to choose referral you can be seen via the NHS. Google RTC ADHD and loads of options come up, you just need to read through and select which one is the best for you then ask your GP to refer. ADHD UK has advice regarding this and companies to choose from

Your GP will be unlikely to accept shared care and you'll need to pay for prescriptions privately, just so you're aware.

I stayed away from ‘centres’ and went for a private psychiatrist who was also a consultant in the NHS.

I’ve just had an assessment through Right to Choose and have had shared care accepted by the GP, so haven’t had to pay for private prescriptions.

I used Harrow Health, and when I said that I assumed it was a private prescriptions, was told that they are run entirely through the NHS, so only the standard prescription charge.

I started the request with my GP at the end of February and had the assessment two weeks ago, with the diagnosis and prescription given the same day.

Ask services about how the process looks like, how many and what type of meetings assessment includes etc. One hour/one session assessment is unlikely to be of any quality. Ask who assesses and what experience they have - psychiatrist, nurse or maybe a pharmacist?

You can try Right to Choose in you're in England but be aware not all GP's accept private or even RtC reports for medication if you're thinking if shared care.

To add to my earlier post, my appointment was online, so can be done from anywhere in the country.

I believe that some GPs will accept shared care, once titration has been completed, mine accepted it from the start. Also worth noting that some assessment centres run separate waitings list for assessment and titration

https://adhduk.co.uk/right-to-choose/

I’d go with personal recommendations. Here is mine, Dr Helen Read. She is in London but all her appointments as online:

https://adhdconsultancy.co.uk/

I had a 2 or 3 hour session with Dr Read. She is a very experienced consultant psychiatrist - if you Google something like ‘most experienced ADHD psychiatrists UK’ her name and about 4 or 5 others come up. Before the appointment, i I filled out endless questionnaires (so she had a lot of reading to do). I then got a lengthy and detailed report. Cost £1000 which was very reasonable IMHO. She also gives email support at no extra charge and gives very detailed replies.

For £650, I’m guessing it’s a psychologist, perhaps not very experienced,

i’d be extremely suspicious of the £250 one.

I think you need to research a bit more and find out what you get for your money. I think typically it's about £1000.
whilst you're going private for this, it might be helpful to go on the adhd uk website and find the list of right to choose providers that's on there and choose one of them, they all offer private assessments quicker than NHS because nhs local integrated care boards are rationing "our" access by changing the criteria needed to be met for assessment and limiting the budgets.

The important caveat to going fully private is that you definitely will have to pay for private prescriptions at least to begin with. Some GPs will agree to Shared Care (ie the NHS takes over tbe prescribing). Some won’t though. If your GP says no to Shared Care, you will have to get them to refer for a review with an NHS psychiatrist which will take a long time - 2 years?

Bloody hell the price on that has gone up. When I had my assessment only 5 years ago it cost £450 from a reputable private psychiatrist. That was before the explosion of "ADHD Psychiatrist dot com" type businesses which seem to be production lines for ridiculous money, cashing in on people's desperation to get seen (zero judgement to the patients/parents BTW, I'm likely going to have to get rinsed by one of these places to get my DD assessed this year). Unfortunately, my private psychiatrist decided to accept right to choose patients a couple of years ago and now has an over 6 month wait for private appointments, much like so many other legitimate places.

...Leaving the unscrupulous "Cash in on people's misery and suffering" places to do exactly that because usually people seek a diagnosis when their/their kid's life is exploding, and you can at least get an appointment with them at your convenience.

We don't live in the country anymore and the medical system here doesn't accept the existence of ADHD so we have a short window during the summer to get DD assessed privately, we just have to pay the ADHD toll so her international school will give her support... and we don't even know for sure if she'll get a diagnosis or if it's autism (or both), which will be even more money to assess.

This. A psychiatrist will be able to assess for ADHD but will also consider whether there are other factors at play.

Agreed! I meant to say this in my PP. The psychiatrist I mentioned used to be in charge or adult ADHD in an NHS mental health trust.

I would start by asking your GP whether or not they will accept shared care. My dd had an assessment privately with a psychiatrist who also worked as a consultant psychiatrist with the NHS. My GP still would not accept shared care and will only prescribe based on an NHS assessment.
Then, the education authority would not accept an assessment from a private provider.

If you want a bit of paper that says adhd then there’s lots of providers that are guaranteed to give you one (my gp friend has a hunch they don’t even read the forms you fill in, it’s basically diagnosis on demand. If you want a proper assessment which will consider a range of diagnosis or none then you need to see a proper dr not an online diagnosis company, it isn’t cheap. My DD’s diagnosis (asd) was 2 one hour appointments with the psychiatrist plus a two hour session with the specialist asd nurse for assessments, and she already had an overseas diagnosis, we needed an nhs one though as they didn’t accept it.

3 years on the waiting list and we gave up and went private for DS.

I found a clinic based on a recommendation from GP friend.

assessment cost £4k and medication titration is at £3.5k and counting

GP won’t do shared care so still on the waiting list with NHS but my DS will age out soon at 18 and the NHS won’t assess adults for ADHD or Autism where I live in Scoltand.

So we had no choice 🥲

the diagnose was really important for DS and medication has made a huge difference. It’s not a ‘piece of paper’

NHS is a fecking shit show.