Despairing over the wait for an assessment, we paid for one privately – only for our GP to refuse a shared care agreement
Our 14-year-old was recently diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder after a sustained period of risk-taking and depression that saw them truanting from school, being physically violent, going missing from home at night and being brought home by the police.
We sought help from a psychologist, who did an assessment but said she was not prepared to treat our child until there had been an assessment by a psychiatrist, as she suspected ADHD. We live in Warwickshire – cited in your article as having the longest waiting list of any part of England for child and adolescent mental health services (UK children waiting 16 months on average for ADHD and autism screening – study, 17 July).
