How many of us will end up being diagnosed?

The number of people taking ADHD medication is at a record level – and the NHS feels the tension because it tries to diagnose and treat the condition.

Since 2015, the number of patients in England has prescribed drugs to treat ADHD has almost tripled, and BBC research suggests that it would take eight years to assess all adults on the waiting lists.

Last year, ADHD was the second most consulted condition on the NHS website. The concerns about this growing demand prompted the NHS in England to set up a working group.

So what will happen and where will it end? ADHD (hyperactivity disorder of the attention deficit) becomes more common? Are we just going to recognize it better? Or is it too diagnosed?

It turns out that it is not only you and I who were caught by surprise – the experts too.

Dr. Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick, ADHD champion for the Royal College of Psychiatricists of the Royal of the Royal, said: “No one predicted that demand would be increasing so massively in the past 15 years, and especially in the past three years.” He has been running ADHD clinics for adults since 2007. At the time, he said, there were only a few.

ADHD is a fairly new condition – it was only 16 years old that the National Institute for Excellence of Health and Care (Nice) officially recognized it in adults. When you examine if this could continue to increase, Dr. Müller-Sedgwick argues that there are two different concepts to consider: prevalence and incidence.

The prevalence is the percentage of people with ADHD-Dr. Müller-Sedgwick predicts which will remain quite stable at 3 to 4% of adults in the United Kingdom.

The incidence is the number of new cases – people obtaining a diagnosis. This is where we see an increase. He explains: “What has changed is the number of patients that we diagnose. It is almost as more we diagnose, the more there is any words.”

Professor Emily Simonoff echoes this. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young. She thinks that around 5 to 7% of children have ADHD in the United Kingdom – and says: “It is quite similar around the world, it has been coherent and it has not really increased.”

Professor Simonoff agrees that there has been an “steep inclination” in people who manifest themselves for the evaluation from the pandemic – but says that it comes after years of “long -term sub -recognition”.

She highlights statistics on ADHD medication. It would expect 3 to 4% of children in the United Kingdom to need ADHD medication, but in reality, only 1 to 2% use it. She thinks it shows that we always underestimate the extent of the problem.

Professor Simonoff explains: “I think it is an important starting point for when we say:” My God, why do we see all these children now-are we too identified of ADHD? “We have an underdiagnosed or under-recognized ADHD in the United Kingdom for many years.”

In other words, we can expect more people to be diagnosed with ADHD now because the services play a catch -up.

Thea Stein is CEO of Health Think Tank the Nuffield Trust. She has her own description for the recent increase in demand: “The Hump”. She says: “The diagnosis or the desire to be diagnosed has increased due to knowledge and visibility – [it’s as] As simple as that.

According to Stein, the most immediate task is to go through the bump, assessing the huge backwards of people on the ADHD waiting lists. Then, in the longer term, she thinks that society will better identify ADHD earlier in children. She hopes that it will mean that they will get better support from an early age and abolish part of the adult services.

She says: “I have a real optimism that we will spend this period of time in a much better place as a society. What I have no optimism is that it is a quick solution.”

ADHD could be a new concept, but people who fight to focus are an old problem.

In 1798, the Scottish doctor Sir Alexander Crichton wrote on a “attention disease” with “an unnatural degree of mental agitation”.

He explained: “When people are affected in this way … they say they have the agitations.”

However, ADHD goes beyond concentration or hyperactive problems. People with this may find it difficult to regulate their emotions and impulses. It was linked to drug addiction and financial difficulties as well as higher crime rates and even car accidents.

All the experts I speak firmly are content with one point: it is much better for a person with ADHD to be diagnosed and treated as soon as possible.

Dr. Müller-Sedgwick says there is a “risk of very bad results”. But it lights up when it describes how diagnosis and treatment can transform lives.

He says: “I have seen so many patients improve, get back to work or go back to education. I have seen parents who travel the family court procedures that could be better parents.

“This is why we work in this area, it’s a really rewarding part of mental health in which to work.”

Currently, the treatment of ADHD is around medication and therapy, but there are other options on the horizon.

A patch worn by children with ADHD on the front during sleep – connected to a device that sends stimulating pulses to the brain – is on sale in the United States. It is not prescribed in the United Kingdom, but academics here and the United States are working on clinical trials that examine it.

Professor Katya Rubia is professor of cognitive neuroscience at King’s College London – as she says: “My work in the past 30 years is essentially the imagery of ADHD, understanding what is different in the brain [of people with ADHD]. “”

She explains that certain parts of the brain of ADHD, including the frontal lobe, are slightly smaller and also less active. Professor Rubia is trying to launch these areas of the brain, and works on a study on the trigler nerve – he goes directly to the brainstem and can increase activity in the frontal lobe.

She says: “All this is very new. If we find an effect, we have a new treatment.” Although this is not yet proven, she adds: “If everything goes well, it could be on the market in two years.”

So hope is that, in the not too distant future, there will be more ways to treat ADHD without medication. In the meantime, however, the challenge consists in crossing this “bump” of people waiting to be assessed – with the conviction that, over time, the increase in diagnostics should decrease.

See BBC Action Line to support ADHD problems

Read the NHS ADHD advice

Higher image: Getty Images

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