Let’s get to grips with ADHD crisis - Alex Cole-Hamilton

Many ADHD sufferers are rationing and sharing medication

She went on to expand on that by saying that the condition would manifest for her as forgetfulness, an inability to prioritise or focus on detail; of starting new tasks before the completion of previous ones; of feeling distracted and disorientated sometimes to the point of agitation. That’s an exhausting way to live. Especially if you know help exists, but you just can’t access it.

Well, since this time last year, adult and child sufferers of ADHD across the UK have faced the nightmare scenario of having to ration and sometimes share their medication or go without entirely. That’s because the country has been impacted by a global supply chain disruption of ADHD medicine, particularly the medications Guanfacine and Lisdexamfetamine.

One of the reasons for this disruption has been a huge surge in demand brought about by greater understanding and identification of the condition. The number of referrals for diagnosis has absolutely skyrocketed.

Take NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, in the last four years alone, the number of adults joining the waiting list for ADHD assessment has risen by a whopping 1000 per cent. It’s great that people are coming forward, that there may be an answer for them and even a treatment, but it’s causing massive delays in the system.

A family recently visited my constituency surgery in west Edinburgh. Their teenage son has suspected ADHD. He was referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services only to be told that he was in a queue and that it would probably take seven years for him to be seen. That’s an appalling predicament – to have to face the rest of your schooling, exams and childhood without the medication you need.

Small wonder then that many Edinburgh parents are scraping the cash together to get their children seen privately and diagnosed that way. In their position, I’d do the same, but the catch-22 they now face is that while their local NHS GP would have previously recognised that private diagnosis and issued an NHS prescription accordingly, under a “shared care” arrangement, most of the practices in the city are now refusing to do that anymore.

That means, even if you’ve got that private diagnosis, but can’t fund the hundreds of pounds a private prescription will cost you each month indefinitely, your only option is to go back to square one and join what must surely now be the longest queue in the NHS.

I recently put party politics aside and teamed up with a cross-party group of Edinburgh MSPs to challenge this reality with the leadership of NHS Lothian. In particular it seems vital that we reinstate the practice of shared care, where GPs will give NHS prescriptions on the back of private diagnosis – that will immediately help to bring down those waiting lists.

World Mental Health Day falls this week on October 10. The crisis in ADHD care began around that time last year, let’s not make patients and their families wait another year or longer for help.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is MSP for Edinburgh Western and leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats