Tuesday, 17 June 2025

ADHD services

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (18:24): (1706) My adjournment is for the Minister for Health, and the action I am seeking is for the minister to commit to a review of the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 and related regulations to enable GPs to perform diagnostic assessments and prescribe for ADHD. Since 2017 specialist GPs in Queensland have been able to diagnose ADHD in young people under the age of 18, as well as prescribe for and manage their treatment. Recently New South Wales and Western Australia brought about reforms to follow suit, extending GP diagnosis and prescription to all people seeking treatment, no matter their age. The ACT has flagged its intention to do the same.

Specialist ADHD assessments with a psychiatrist can cost up to $2000. There are very limited publicly funded services providing ADHD assessments in Victoria and none in Victoria for adults over 25. Factor in prohibitive wait times that can stretch to three months even in the private system, shortages of psychiatrists in regional and rural communities and a cost-of-living crisis – no wonder up to 480,000 Victorians could be living with ADHD but many are unable to access diagnosis and treatment.

For Victorians who languish on waitlists or decide to put off pursuing a diagnosis altogether, the statistics do not reflect the true impact that barriers to these appointments have on their day-to-day lives. Kids get left behind in classrooms, nurses battle to retain the details of their start-of-shift handovers and engineers struggle to stay on track as project meetings stretch out. Others face barriers in various aspects of their life, impacting employment opportunities, interpersonal relationships and their own wellbeing. To not be granted the opportunity of an assessment and diagnosis, as well as appropriate forms of treatment which might include but is not limited to medication, only further stigmatises an experience that we now know many share. In fact one in every 20 Australians are thought to live with features of ADHD.

A federal Senate inquiry tabled in 2023 highlighted all of the above issues and made numerous recommendations to improve access to care, many of which still need to be acted on. It is good to see other Australian jurisdictions taking positive steps to address these access issues, and Victoria should follow their lead. GPs are well placed to provide ADHD care, and in fact they already do everything except the bits they currently are not allowed to around diagnosis and prescribing. Provided the GP has appropriate training, undertaking assessments and initiating prescribing is well within their scope of practice. People living with ADHD should not be forced to wait for months to see a psychiatrist and pay thousands of dollars for an appointment, only to have their treatment managed as separate from the rest of their health care. Experts and consumers agree it is time to change the way we think about ADHD.