Medication Process in the UK
Hi to anyone UK based! 👋 This might help someone out there in the UK, so going to quickly share the process I went through recently to get my diagnosis and medication. (Disclaimer: I ‘think’ this is 100% the right order and accurate, obviously for a stupid adhd brain and we all know what that means for memory. Also please note, this is just my own experience to provide context on what the process looked like for me, Happy to answer any questions but I’m not a clinician and the meds can affect people in different ways.) Firstly, Call your GP and request to start an ADHD evaluation via the ‘Right To Choose’ process 💡➡️ This is important because it means that your GP will take over your care once you finish your tritation (more on that in a second), so you’re not restricted to just one private company providing meds. You then will be provided a link which will provide you a list of local providers available to take on the initial assessment. Mine showed me a waiting time for the assessment, and a waiting time for the medication. I went with Harrow Health. Check reviews online, but don’t read too much into all of them just check for any repeating patterns. With HH some reviews were varied but nearly all said the clinicians were excellent. HH had a 0 week waiting time for both appointments and medication waiting time, so was a no brainer really. Once you choose your provider, they’ll give you a letter to download to fill In Your details and provide to your GP, then once the GP surgery (this was the longest delay in the whole thing for me) Upon receipt of this, you then are sent a link for your provided (Harrow Health in my case) and you’ll have a few things to fill in, and there’s also a couple of forms for people close to you to fill in. I can’t remember exactly but they’re looking for evidence from your childhood (parent to full for example) and present day evidence. If you can’t get a parent to fill in the childhood part don’t worry, I couldn’t (it gives an option to N/A it) and just explained to my clinician in my appointment, and she said we’d just have to cover childhood aspects on the call.Once the call got booked, it all moved pretty quickly. I was on the phone with the clinician for a couple of hours before she confirmed my combined diagnosis, and gave me a code to take to a local pharmacy to pick up my medication.The tritiation phase is the process of slowly increasing the dosage over a few weeks to see your reaction. I was started on 18mg Methylphenidate, and was booked on a second call for roughly two weeks time. At that call they then upped my meds after another 10-14 days (18mg-36mg-54mg) and after a third call when they were happy with my reaction to the meds, my details got passed to the gp to then take over my care.Things to note: