OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY THE SCOTTISH ADHD COALITION

The Coalition recognises that the recent Panorama documentary has caused considerable concerns to many members of our community.

We congratulate the documentary team in bringing to the attention of the wider public the paucity of services within the NHS for the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of this complex condition, and the fact that many who suffer from its impact are forced to seek private services.

We know also that highly qualified clinicians are as concerned as patients and that efforts are being made to persuade NHS managers that more needs to be done to modernise patient pathways for assessment, treatment, and post-diagnostic support.

We have concerns that the programme may have mis-represented both the motives of patients for seeking support and the quality of assessments offered by the private sector and believe that clinical professionals should be judged not by journalists but by their own regulatory bodies and according to the standards laid out in national practice guidelines.

ADHD in the adult population is vastly under-recognised and under-treated at a huge cost to the individuals concerned, their families, and to society as a whole.

Intelligent, well-informed debate about how to progress intervention and support is to be welcomed, but programme-makers should be aware of the unintentional consequences of making blanket statements about clinical services in either the public or private sectors  and the potential damage that may be caused to innocent and well-motivated professionals who are driven to fill gaps in provision rather than seek to profit from failings elsewhere.

We urge the BBC to consider carefully in future how it chooses to portray the myriad of issues that ADHD raises, and to ensure that an appropriate balance has been struck in raising what may be justifiable concerns with the principles of journalistic integrity and natural justice to those affected.

At last week’s Royal College of Psychiatrists CAMHS Faculty Conference held in Glasgow, Geraldine Mynors, Chair of the Scottish ADHD Coalition, chaired a ‘Harkness table’ debate.  The participants were four young people with experience of Scotland’s mental health services:

• Charlie MacKenzie-Nash, Volunteer Faculty Service User representative for the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
• Ross Pollard, a social researcher currently working with Adopt an Intern to help get people with disbilites into work
• Alex Lightbody, a student nurse
• Kareen Stewart, a care-experienced Ambassador on the Communities that Care project in Renfrewshire, for Who Cares Scotland.

The debaters chose and took on the challenging question:

‘How can we ensure that CAMHS services are available to those in the greatest need, and not flooded by the tidal wave of mental health difficulties experienced by young people today?’

The wide ranging debate was enthusiastically received by the audience of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals from across the UK.  Some of the points where there was consensus were:

• The statistics on the increase in young people reporting mental ill-health and referrals to CAMHS speak for themselves – but it is unclear how much this is due to a welcome reduction in stigma about speaking out about it.
• More work is needed to understand the role that social media and smartphone addiction have in exacerbating mental health problems – and how much these can also help.   Austerity is also likely to be linked to mental distress amongst young people.
• CAMHS services are under-resourced and clearly need more funding to prevent a much bigger bill in the adult mental health system and society at large.
• However, besides more resources, CAMHS services need to look at how they organise themselves and target their services. The criteria for accepting or rejecting referrals at the moment often seem arbitrary and need to be more rational – with more information about children referred gathered up front.   Too many children have to repeat their story over and over again, and come up against staff who are ‘patronising’ and – in particular  – seem to find it hard to relate to adolescents.  Separate services for teens and young adults could help – possibly offering more group consultations and other age-appropriate interventions.
• Diagnoses and ‘labels’ can sometimes be profoundly unhelpful to young people and only add to their stress and anxiety.  Words like ‘borderline personality disorder’ can carry real stigma. On the other hand, the young people with ADHD in the conference felt that a much earlier diagnosis would have helped them avoid other mental health problems down the line.
• Mental health prevention needs a much greater emphasis – along with first line services which GPs can refer to (like school counsellors) before problems get out of hand.  School is the place where most young people can be reached, but shouldn’t be the only setting for prevention work – youth workers and other youth activities play a huge role too.

The Scottish ADHD Coalition was proud to have been involved in this event, and impressed with the huge insight and courage shown by the young people involved in order to highlight the  ways in which CAMHS services need to rise to today’s challenges.

The debating team worked with Debating Mental Health to prepare for the debate.  The Conference was chaired by Professor Helen Minnis of the University of Glasgow.

The Scottish ADHD Coalition is working with the Central Scotland Adult ADHD Groups to re-run ADD Impact, a six week course for adults with ADHD which was originally developed in Edinburgh by the Addressing the Balance charity.

With a grant from Shire Pharma, the course is being revised and updated and will be delivered over the next year in at least four locations.

The first of these will be Glasgow, and booking is now open at

goo.gl/tGDzHY

Any adult with a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD, or who has been referred to a psychiatrist for assessment, is welcome to register to attend.

Watch this space for details of further venues and dates for subsequent courses.

New data obtained by the BBC shows a concerning rise in antidepressant prescribing for children in Scotland. In this comment we highlight that undiagnosed ADHD and ASD can be one thing which gives rise to mental health problems in young people.

As well as treatment for anxiety and depression, much could be achieved if young people were able to engage more with the Outdoors, the arts, exercise and purpose – and if parents were better supported.   All things we plan to work on in the future.

BBC Reporting Scotland news 24th July 2017

The Press and Journal yesterday reported on the policy of NHS Grampian towards adult ADHD

Download the full article here.

Press and Journal article 5 6 18

UPDATE – 6th June 2018

Minister to order NHS Grampian to end ADHD treatment ban

A new ADHD Support Group for both parents and adults has just been launched in Fife and will have input from Fife CAMHS and the Coalition.

Big well done to Andi Paddon for getting it off the ground.

Join their Facebook group via https://www.facebook.com/groups/246719372752812/

The Salvesen Mindroom Centre Research Centre team at the University of Edinburgh would like to say thank you to everyone from the Glasgow ADHD groups that volunteered to help us pilot our new study looking at learning in children with ADHD. Now this pilot study has been completed we are starting the official recruitment stage of the project.

This study is looking at the relationship between how children with ADHD remember things and pay attention and how they do in maths and literacy including reading, spelling and writing. There is a suggestion in research that memory and attention may be linked to how children with ADHD learn these subjects. We are looking to improve our understanding of this and to tackle the difficulties many of these children face in their learning.

In this next phase of the project we are looking to recruit around 120 children aged 6-12 years referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), focusing on the North CAMHS team in Edinburgh. We also hope to extend this study to other CAMHS teams in the very near future.

We had an exciting day today at Castle Douglas Town Hall, hosted by the Dumfries and Galloway Parents Inclusion Network, meeting up with parents of children with ADHD and staff from Dumfries and Galloway CAMHS – to talk about creating a new support group for families affected by ADHD in Dumfries and Galloway. A closed Facebook group has been created for parents in the area who would like to get involved in the new group, and you can join it at https://www.facebook.com/groups/440657899692661

The Coalition will continue to support the new group as they get going with workshop resources and other information about ADHD.

For more information you can contact Shirley Duggan at Parents Inclusion Network.