Post
... and in #GoodNews;
"From February 2026, General practitioners (GPs) and nurse practitioners will be able to start medical treatment for adults with ADHD, following decisions by Medsafe and Pharmac.
This is a change to the current system, under which GPs and nurse practitioners can only prescribe ADHD stimulant medicines to patients on a written recommendation from a paediatrician or psychiatrist ..."
(1/?)
This will be a gamechanger for kiwis with ADHD. Until recently we needed to spend thousands of dollars on a private psychiatric specialists to get a diagnosis, and the same again for a medical review every 2 years. Same again if we wanted to try and new medication we didn't have specialist approval for.
This was a huge obstacle to treatment for people less able to overcome such obstacles without it. Also a huge waste of scarce specialist appointments.
(2/?)
The 2 year reviews were already scrapped. Freeing up specialists to carry out more initial diagnoses and other urgent psychiatric work. Now the rules that tied up these specialists in diagnosing ADHD, and rubberstamping requests to try different medications, are all going too.
If GPs are confident to diagnose ADHD on their own, they can go ahead with trials of approved ADHD medications. How patients respond to medication is often the best way to confirm or disconfirm a diagnosis.
(3/3)
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