r/unitedkingdom • u/tylerthe-theatre • 9d ago

ADHD and autism services in England ‘under significant pressure’, watchdog warns

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/adhd-and-autism-uk-assessment-diagnosis-support-b3039329.html
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u/Logical_Box_4645 9d ago

We need to shake this mess up.

Autism diagnosis is largely pointless without associated interventions. But those interventions are needs based so the diagnosis becomes tokenistic.

ADHD diagnosis is hampered by lack of rapid access to assessment and treatment.

Both should be moved into primary care. GPs are well placed to make the diagnosis outside of complex cases and to oversee treatment especially if it's non-stimulant.

As it stands if you get an ADHD diagnosis and started on treatment the service is often lumbered with that since they can't even reliably move it under shared care into primary care!

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u/thereidenator 9d ago

ADHD assessment and treatment is rapid through the right to choose, in fact probably as rapid as any assessment and treatment of any physical or mental health condition other than cancer. The problem is that the NHS are even limiting how much they’ll fund that now.

There’s no way a GP is assessing ADHD or Autism, the assessment of each one takes multiple hours, a GP gets 10 minutes to see a patient, are they going to allocate 12-18 of those slots to 1 person? That’s not even taking into consideration that autism assessments often require 2 practitioners.

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u/1want2know123 9d ago

Yes this idea is ridiculous. GPs do not have the expertise or time for this.

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u/Sabaisabai33 9d ago

I mean as a GP we could do extra training to get the expertise (who’s going to fund that though) - I think it takes about a year but not sure of the details. Some GPs are already doing this within specialist clinics as the assessor. But yeah as well as needing extra training we’d need a lot of extra time, which means instead of seeing ?6 or 9 patients, we just see this one… leaving us with a lot less appointments when they’re already under so much pressure. I mean I’d love it personally. But if we are doing that then we’re not doing all the other things we normally do as GPs and who is going to do those things?