NHS Taskforce to Probe Surge in Demand for ADHD Diagnoses

Young children dance with their umbrellas at the launch of an art installation called the Umbrella Project, to raise awareness of ADHD and autism in children, featuring 200 brightly coloured umbrellas suspended over Church Alley in Liverpool, England, on June 22, 2017. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

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.

On Thursday, the NHS said that the new taskforce will bring together expertise from across a broad range of sectors, including education and justice.

400 Percent Rise

The number of adults in search of a diagnosis has skyrocketed in recent years, with people increasingly turning to private clinics that use quick, unreliable online assessments while offering powerful medication, to leapfrog long waiting lists—up to seven years—on the NHS.

Talking to the BBC in January 2023, the ADHD Foundation said it had seen a 400 percent rise in adults going to them compared to before the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The UK’s NHS released data in 2022 that showed a 35 percent increase in prescriptions in 2020—2021 compared to five years earlier for children and young people for drugs used to treat the symptoms of ADHD.

Timely Diagnosis

In a statement, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: “NHS staff across the country are working hard to ensure all patients requiring assessments and further support from ADHD services are seen as promptly as possible.

“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.

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“This is a hugely complex piece of work and this taskforce will need to consult a wide range of partner and experts, to understand more about the issues impacting those with ADHD and how service provision can be better joined up to meet people’s needs today and in the future. This is a vital first step in helping us achieve real improvements in the ADHD services that the NHS and the independent sector provides.”

‘Medicalise the Human Experience’

Mental health professionals, however, have warned that the increasing use of diagnostic labels may “medicalise the human experience” instead of delving into the psychological issues behind symptoms.

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.”

Last year, Ben Harris, a psychotherapist in private practice in London, told The Epoch Times that he believes that we’re living in a culture that incentivises us to give ourselves illness labels.

“You’ve got this problem, potentially as I would see it, with the medicalisation of human experience, and the pathologisation of behaviour that previously might have been tolerated and thought of as within the norm, as now being seen as outside the normal,” Mr. Harris said.

‘Distress is Very Real’

Dr. Damian Wilde, a psychologist with many years of clinical and therapeutic experience in the NHS, told The Epoch Times last year that that ADHD isn’t an illness in the way many people think it is, though the “distress is very real.”

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.”