Hyperactivity: Mental Health Services

(asked on 17th November 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce NHS waiting times for ADHD assessments.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 24th November 2022

We expect integrated care boards and National Health Service trusts to have due regard to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline ‘Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management’. The guideline does not recommend a maximum waiting time standard from referral for an assessment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or from assessment to the point of diagnosis. It aims to improve diagnosis and the quality of care and support which people receive. Consultant-led mental health services are included in the NHS 18-week maximum waiting time.

Assessments for ADHD may be undertaken in a variety of care settings and there is currently no single established dataset to monitor the number of assessments nationally. NHS Digital is working to improve the quality of relevant datasets, such as the Mental Health Services and the Community Services Datasets.

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