Transcript
WEBVTT
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A listener production. Well, welcome to another solo episode of
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Crappy to Happy. I am Cass and I am your host.
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I have just returned from my trip to Amsterdam just
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to give you a little personal update, where I've been
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invited to work with a company up there on their
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corporate wellbeing plan for twenty twenty three. So that is
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super fun, really worthwhile work. Love getting into organizations and
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working with fabulous, creative, talented people and helping them live healthier,
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happier lives by all meets. Give me a shout if
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you want me to come and work with your organization.
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But meanwhile, let's get into the topic for today. And
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this is something that I wasn't planning to talk about.
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I was just inspired to talk about this today following
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recent BBC Panorama expose on the over diagnosed of ADHD
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in private clinics here in the UK and what an
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uproar that has created on the internet. I'm not an
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ADHD expert, but I was really I had some things
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to say about this whole situation which I thought I
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would share with you. As you probably know, I have
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talked about ADHD here on the show. I've talked about
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it in relation to procrastination. I've had Canden Phillips, who
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is an ADHD expert and coach on the show to
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discuss ADHD and how it presents and why it is
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being so frequently diagnosed now and what hasn't been in
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the past. This kind of gotcha journalism, this undercover reporting
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where a BBC journalist went into private ADHD clinics and
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got an ADHD diagnosis in a relatively short space of
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time when he in fact doesn't have ADHD, has really
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potentially caused a lot of people to question and even
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more how real some of these diagnoses are. And there
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are plenty of people who really are skeptical about ADHD
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and the rate at which it's being diagnosed, particularly in
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adults at the moment, and certainly a show like this,
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a presentation like this doesn't help. In contrast to those
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private in contrast to the experience of his rapid diagnosis
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in those online clinics, he had an assessment with an
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NHS which is public health provider here in the UK,
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with an NHS psychiatrist which was much more in depth,
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much longer, in which it was found that he does
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not have ADHD, and so he used that as the
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kind of gold standard, this is what should happen in
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an ADHD assessment, compared to what then happened when he
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fronted up and paid a lot of money to some
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private clinics, private assessors here in the UK, and obviously
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there are private practicing psychiatrists and psychologists in most countries,
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so that's no different. And use this to sort of
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say that this is a scandal and that a whole
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lot of people who don't have ADHD are being pandered
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a diagnosis and then prescribed this strong stimulant medication when
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they potentially do not have the diagnosis, and how dangerous
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that can be. And no question, if somebody's being diagnosed
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stimulus medication and they don't have the diagnosis, then that
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shouldn't be happening. But let's talk about what was really
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happening here. Let's just unpack this a little bit from
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my perspective as a psychologist, and again I'm not an
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ADHD expert, but I do have some understanding of how
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these conditions are diagnosed and assessed and how they're potentially treated. So,
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first of all, just in terms of the journalistic quality
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of this program, it started with a tip off from
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a patient or a parent of a patient who was
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concerned that her daughter had been diagnosed very quickly and
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she was concerned with the diagnos wasn't accurate. These private
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clinics also charge a lot of money, by the way,
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so there's that there's this whole idea that this is
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a money grabbing thing. So it started off. He went
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to an NHS psychiatrist who knew that this was being
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filmed for a BBC Panorama episode. The psychiatrists in the
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NHS had plenty of time to prepare and he spent
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three to three and a half hours with this journalist
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to provide a full and complete assessment before telling him
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that he does not have ad EHD. The rationale for
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presenting this was that he wanted to show what a
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proper diagnostic process should look like, like how it's supposed
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to happen, and then compare it to what did happen.
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I'm going to say upfront, I love the NHS. I
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live in the UK and I think they're great. They're
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chronically underfunded. The Tory government has been just gutting them
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for the last twelve years. They are under resourced. You
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wait forever for an appointment. You know, you don't pay
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for it once you get there, but you do wait
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forever for an appointment, and reportedly the wait for an
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ADHD diagnosis with the NHS at the moment is five years.
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You cannot tell me that any NHS psychiatrist has got
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the time to spend three and a half hours doing
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a full and thorough assessment for ADHD unless they know
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they're being filmed by the BBC. So any of us
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in our jobs, if we know we're being filmed and
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we know we are presenting best practice, of course we
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are going to be doing our utmost to make sure
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that we present the absolute gold standard in terms of service.
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We'd be fools not to I don't think, and I
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know people in the UK and other NHS and private
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practicing clinicians in this country have all agreed that that's
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unlikely to happen in real life. Appointments don't typically go
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for three and a half hours. Don't hold me to that.
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I don't know. I'm just speculating that. I don't think
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that would really happen if he was a patient who
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walked off the street after a five year weight and
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if you've got a line of five years worth of
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weight out the door. Nobody spending that much time conducting
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an assessment. The other thing about psychological conditions in general
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is that they rely on patient report. If somebody comes
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to me as a psychologist and presents as depressed or anxious,
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or they describe to me the symptoms they're experiencing, the
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only thing I have to go on is what they
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tell me. We have assessments, we have checklists. They're all checklists.
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There was a big who are in this article about
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how this was a tick box checklist type of a process.
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I mean, yes, we probe and we draw out more information,
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but we're all using checklists, and we are relying on
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patients to tell us what they're experiencing. There's not a
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blood test for depression, there's no brain scan at this
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point for EDDIEHD, there's no care what does all swab
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for anxiety? We take patients at their word. We ask
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them to describe for us what they're experiencing. And so
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that is the thing that sets psychological conditions apart from
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other medical conditions. It's why it's also so effective that
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they can be conducted online, because there's no physical examination
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for a mental health condition. You know, this idea that
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these assessments are being conducted quickly online and that they're
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just going off what the patient told them and handing
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out an assessment. Well, you know, it's probably not unusual.
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That's what we have to go on. If somebody has
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walked into a clinic and described all of the symptoms
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of ADHD, and they've showed up at an appointment and
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paid a lot of money because presumably they believe this
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is what's going on for them, then there's no wonder
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that they're getting a diagnosis because they're describing the condition.
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So I think that that's a really important point to make.
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To get a diagnosis, you have to describe a condition. Now,
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some people will say, well, yes, this is the reason
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why with ADHD we talk to the other people around
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that person, and in ideal circumstances, then yeah, that is
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what should happen. I did talk to Canton about this,
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and there's various reasons why that's not necessarily helpful. And
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as an adult too, you know, you don't always have
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access to the people who are around during your childhood.
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If you're providing a developmental history and you're recalling how
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things were for you at school or growing up, you
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only have your own memory. A lot of people have
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very foggy memories and that's sometimes part of the condition.
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Sometimes people don't remember a lot of what was going
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on in childhood. Of course, the ideal is to have
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other people, you know, collaborate your self report with other
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people's reports. It's not always possible. So there's that. I
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just wanted to make that point. The other thing is
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that as a psychologist, I will spend time with the
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person and they can tell me what they're experiencing, and
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I know the DSM. I've been clinically trained, and I
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can pretty much diagnose depression or anxiety or have an
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idea that maybe this looks a little bit like bipolar,
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or maybe this looks a little bit like, you know,
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some other mental health condition. As a psychologist in Australia,
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I don't make a diagnosis, and I think that's kind
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of across the board, unless perhaps it's different in the
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States where psychologists do a high level of study, and
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you know often in the UK as well, they all
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have a PhD. You can't be a clinical psychologist in
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other countries besides Australia unless you have a doctorate, So
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it may be different, but certainly in Australia, I can
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make a provisional diagnosis if for any reason a patient
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of mine needs, for example, a more comprehensive assessment, or
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if they need to have their medication adjusted. If the
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GP has put them on some medication and it's not
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really working, or that needs to be tweaked and it
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needs more higher level kind of assessment of what's going
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on medication wise, then that will be referred to a psychiatrist.
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When somebody goes to a psychiatrist, when that psychiatrist sees
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the person, they are taking all of the information that
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I've already gathered. And remember that before a person comes
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to see me, often they've also already been to a GP.
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So a GP has conducted an initial screening, They've decided
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that this person should see a psychologist. I've then done
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an assessment and then all of that information is sent
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off to the psychiatrist. So there was this part of
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this expose a which was the fact that a psychologist
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had done an assessment, had said you've got a diagnosis. Now,
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even in this I'm pretty sure that is not correct practice.
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A psychologist doesn't give that diagnosis. But when it came
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to the treatment, which is medication. The psychiatrist very quickly,
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within the space of ten minutes, said this is the
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standard sort of medication. We would normally start you on this,
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And it was a stimulant medication, which is the standard medication,
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sort of first line medication for an ADHD diagnosis. And
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so there was an uproar that the psychiatrist spent less
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than ten minutes with this person before prescribing stimulant medication.
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What wasn't taken into consideration was the fact that that
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psychiatrist was basing that on the fact that this person
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had been through an assessment process with a psychologist already,
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and that is standard practice the psychiatrist a lot of
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the time. I don't know currently what the process is
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in Australia. Maybe it's different because psychologists often un not diagnosing,
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but often the psychiatrist is relying on the information that
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has come from another trained professional. And this is the
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way we reduce bottlenecks in service delivery as well. The
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whole problem. Remember that this started with that the NHS
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weightlist is five years. I know that there is a
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long long waitlist in other countries. I know in Australia,
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people wait forever and spend a lot of money to
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get a diagnosis. There are clearly bottlenecks in the system,
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and so anything that we can do to facilitate an
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expedite people's journey through the system to get them to
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where they want to be, which is a diagnosis and
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some medication to get back their quality of life, I
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would normally think that that's a good thing. Yes, we
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don't want to lose our best practice, we don't want
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to skip steps and shortcut and mismanage people. These are
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serious diagnosis that these are serious medications. But this, this
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is a professional team of clinically trained people who are
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relying on other people's professional training. And I think that's
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not a bad thing. I think I alluded to this
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before already. But these people who are attending private clinics.
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In the UK, there are private psychiatry clinics and private
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specifically ADHD clinics that have popped up, presumably to respond
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to this increased demand for ADHD diagnosis. Now, the way
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this works over here, if you're not familiar, is that
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even as a private provider, they can apply they can
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be kind of listed as an NHS approved provider. So
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if the NHS can't provide a service to a patient
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within a timely manner, then a patient has a right
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to choose. So the patient can go to the HSGP,
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for example, and if the GP thinks that they again
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after an initial screening, if a GP thinks that they
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are a likely candidate that they warrants further investigation that
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they may have ADHD, but the wait list is five years,
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then the patient can request that they be referred to
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a private provider. In some cases, if they are actually
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kind of umbrellaed under the NHS, there's some sort of
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reciprocal arrangement thing, then the NHS can actually fund that
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person's assessment by the private provider. In some cases, they
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if it's not an official if they're not sort of
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a credited, approved whatever the process is by the NHS,
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then they need to pay out of their own pocket.
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But the point being that anybody who is showing up
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to a private provider and paying out of their own
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pocket upwards of seven hundred, eight hundred one thousand pounds
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for a diagnosis of ADHD is not doing it for fun.
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There's probably a really good reason why they trying to
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get in to see somebody that they're willing to pay