NHS Taskforce to Probe Surge in Demand for ADHD Diagnoses

An NHS taskforce has been set up in response to concerns around the rising demand for ADHD diagnoses, NHS England has announced.
ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) was the second-most viewed health condition on the NHS website in 2023, after COVID-19, according to new figures compiled by NHS England, with 4.3 million page views over the course of the year.
“We have recognised that that more needs to be done to ensure people can get a timely diagnosis and importantly, that all of their needs are addressed.
A 2015 review in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry claimed that ADHD is being overdiagnosed and argued that the definition of ADHD in doctors’ guidelines has broadened in recent years.
An ADHD assessment takes place with a specialist, typically a neurobehavioral psychiatrist, and normally takes one to three hours, using a list of symptoms from the reference book the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” often known as the “DSM.”
He said many people experience trauma, a difficult life event, neglect, a lack of opportunity, poverty, day-to-day stress, and poor relationships, all of which can contribute to psychological distress. In some cases, this unresolved pain can manifest as ADHD-like symptoms.
In an article titled “Mental Illness Doesn’t Make You Special,” the publication UnHerd wrote about a “thriving ADHD community” on TikTok and Tumblr in which people “view their attentional difficulties not as an annoyance to be managed with medical treatment but as an adorable character trait that makes them sharper and more interesting than others around them.”