Britain’s ADHD crisis has taken another dramatic turn with an NHS clinic closing its doors to new patients due to a colossal 10-year long waiting list.
NHS Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust announced it was ‘temporarily’ closing its ADHD service for adults in a shocking move earlier this week.
In a statement the Trust said it can only see about 16 people every month but was currently receiving 170 referrals in that same time.
This means the Trust is currently being assigned 10 times the number of patients it can realistically see, or put another way, a patient referred today would effectively be forced to wait a decade before being seen on the NHS.
The move has sparked fears more patients desperate for diagnosis will go to the private sector, which experts have warned is more willing to diagnose people with ADHD and set them up to take powerful medications.
Fascinating graphs show how ADHD prescriptions have risen over time, with the patient demographic shifting from children to adults with women in particular now driving the increase
It also comes at a time when prescriptions for ADHD have soared, doubling in six years in a trend that has been linked to social media and celebrities encouraging people to seek drugs to help them focus.
Announcing the move Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s medical director Dr Chris Hosker acknowledged it would distressing news for those hoping for an ADHD assessment and apologized for the anxiety it would cause.
However, he added the Trust needed to be honest about the ‘overwhelming challenge’ it faced.
‘Our ADHD Service’s waiting list will just continue to grow if action is not taken,’ he said.
‘For example, if someone was to join the waiting list today, it would take well over 10 years for them to be seen.
‘We believe it would be unfair and unethical to continue to take referrals.’
Dr Hosker said the Trust’s plan was to now analyse the current 4,500-strong waiting list and triage cases, prioritising those with the greatest clinical need.
He added that the Trust was working with local partners for a solution to the huge demand for ADHD assessments but couldn’t offer a timeframe for when this would be complete.
Announcing the move Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s medical director Dr Chris Hosker acknowledged it would distressing news for those hoping for an ADHD assessment and apologized for the anxiety it would cause
Dr Hosker also warned that the Trust was not alone, and many other NHS organisations were facing a similar dilemma.
‘Demand for ADHD services has massively increased in recent years, and the NHS has not been funded to meet this demand – with several other NHS services closing to new referrals across England over the last two years,’ he said.
Other trusts that enacted a similar measure include those in Cheshire and Wirral, Oxford, Central and North West London, South London and Maudsley, and Hereford and Worcestershire.
NHS England said it was unable to comment on how what proportion of ADHD services this represents as it doesn’t hold a national list of such services.
The health service’s ADHD have faced a massive increase in demand over the past few years, particularly among adults.
NHS prescribing data shows the number of people taking drugs for the condition has doubled in six years, with adult women forming a large part of the trend.
A total of 230,000 people in England were taking the drugs last year. The biggest rise has been seen in young adults, with treatment increasing five-fold among those aged 25 to 39 since 2015.
Demand for ADHD diagnoses has been met by a booming private industry which provides assessments for the condition for a few hundred pounds.
But experts, and the NHS, has become increasingly concerned that some of these clinics could be contributing to an overdiagnosis of the condition.
University College London psychiatrist Professor Joanna Moncrieff, a vocal critic of medication over-use, previously told MailOnline there was massive variation in how ADHD was assessed across the sector.
‘You’re more likely to get a diagnosis if you go to a private clinic than if you go to the NHS,’ she said.
‘One psychiatrist in one service can think almost everyone has it while another psychiatrist in another service thinks very few people have it.
‘The criteria for ADHD are subjective and we all have the symptoms of ADHD to one extent or another.’
ADHD is defined as a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that has a direct negative impact on academic, occupational, or social functioning.
However, there are no clear definitions as to what this exactly constitutes meaning that a patient with the same symptoms can get a different diagnosis from two psychiatrists.
Concerns follow a damning BBC investigation earlier this year found patients could get diagnosed with ADHD and offered powerful drugs through unreliable video call assessments with private clinics.
A separate MailOnline analysis of NHS data also demonstrated massive variation of ADHD prescription rates across England with one in 100 people in some areas now taking medications, compared to one in 1,000 in others.
Potential overdiagnosis of ADHD is concerning as medication for the condition consists of powerful stimulants with links to cardiovascular side effects, psychosis, and an increased risk of Parkinson’s.
Rising ADHD cases prompted the health service to launch a dedicated ADHD taskforce earlier this year.
These experts also investigate ‘the rate of growth within the independent sector and the potential variation in the service models and thresholds being used’ and collect data to ‘fully understand the size of the challenge’.
Rising interest in ADHD diagnoses are thought to have been partly fuelled by celebrities such as model Katie Price, Love Island star Olivia Attwood and actress Sheridan Smith talking about their own ADHD journey.
Attwood previously explained how the condition ’caused myself and people around me a lot of stress’ during her teens and early 20s ‘when it wasn’t managed’.
Price also discussed how her adult ADHD diagnosis explains why she has never felt there would be ‘consequences’ for her actions.
Former Bake Off host Sue Perkins also last year shared that she had been diagnosed with ADHD and that ‘suddenly everything made sense – to me and those who love me’.
Social media sites are also full of users telling how medication helped to calm them down, control their fidgeting and boost their concentration.
Rising ADHD diagnoses have also led to a rise in the number of people claiming disability for the condition.
More than 52,000 adults who receive personal independence payments from the government listed ADHD as their main condition in 2023, with most of these being 16 to 29-year-olds. This is up from 38,000 in 2022.
ADHD is defined by the World Health Organization as being a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that has a direct negative impact on academic, occupational, or social functioning.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimates one in 20 children (5 per cent) and one in 29 adults (3 to 4 per cent) have the condition.
Rising interest in ADHD diagnoses are thought to have been partly fuelled by celebrities such as model Katie Price (left) and Love Island star Olivia Attwood (right)
Actress Sheridan Smith (left) and former Bake Off host Sue Perkins (right) have also shared details about their ADHD diagnoses
But NHS England believes the true figure may be higher. However, the health service says it is unable to say how many people have a diagnosis or are waiting for an assessment because it doesn’t have a consistent and complete dataset.
ADHD was the second most viewed health condition on the NHS website in 2023, after Covid, with 4.3 million page views during the year.
What exactly causes ADHD to appear in some people is unclear, but it’s thought to involve genetic mutations that affect a person’s brain function and structure.
Premature babies and those with epilepsy or brain damage are thought to be more at risk.
ADHD is also linked to other conditions like anxiety, depression, insomnia, Tourette’s and epilepsy.
There is no cure, but a combination of drugs and therapy is usually recommended to relieve symptoms and make day-to-day life easier.