ADHD services
Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (13:26): (942) My question is for the Minister for Mental Health. The New South Wales government recently introduced reforms to enable general practitioners with appropriate training to diagnose and initiate treatment for ADHD. GPs and people living with ADHD across Victoria are now calling for your government to follow suit. Currently it is almost a universal experience for people living with ADHD that they struggle to access diagnosis and treatment, with their journey to a fuller understanding of their neurodivergence marked by a lack of access to services, prohibitive costs, frustration and despair. Minister, will you work with the Minister for Health to see reforms akin to those in New South Wales enacted in Victoria?
Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (13:26): I thank Dr Mansfield for her question. It is an important issue. I know a lot of families in Victoria and right around the country face real challenges when they are trying to access specialist care for members of their family who may need diagnosis around ADHD, whether that is children or whether that is adults later in life. I absolutely can confirm that I will be working closely with the Minister for Health on this matter, and indeed I will be working with state, territory and federal counterparts as well. This was a matter that was discussed at last week’s health ministers meeting; there was a joint session in that meeting with mental health ministers as well. We have certainly agreed that we will do some more work on making sure that we can consult with the sector around what ways we can improve access to prescribing but also ways that we can improve access to diagnosis, which is obviously the key when you want to begin a treatment plan and care for individuals that are diagnosed with ADHD. There is a real commitment to seeing whether we can standardise the approach across the country so it is not piecemeal in each state and territory. I would be happy to keep you up to date on that work.
Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (13:28): I am really heartened to hear that response and look forward to seeing progress in this space. As you would be aware, currently public outpatient psychiatric care for ADHD is very limited in Victoria. Public diagnostic services, as far as I am aware, are non-existent in Victoria for adults over 25. As outlined in the Grattan Institute’s report this week on access to specialist care, private psychiatric care is the most expensive, and I am aware of ADHD assessments costing up to $2000. Minister, what are you going to do to improve public psychiatric outpatient care for people living with ADHD?
Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (13:29): I would agree with you. Access to private psychiatrists is a matter for the Commonwealth, but we do work closely across the country on making sure that we are complementing each other’s efforts when it comes to attraction and retention of these key areas of the mental health workforce. In relation to publicly funded programs, we have had some good increases in the number of psychiatry registrars in Victoria, with more than 90 that have been delivered since 2023. In the 2025–26 budget we included $6.9 million to continue a highly successful program, which is the junior medical officers program, so that there is a rotation through the mental health disciplines. That has certainly had the effect of increasing the number of junior doctors pursuing psychiatry as a specialty. We will keep working on these sorts of programs that are all about attracting these professionals into the public system – but more than that, they are about ultimately providing more access to specialist care for Victorians.