Dr. Kieran Kennedy

So, you know, without getting on my soapbox too much today and ranting about politics, you know, I think for Australia, but also New Zealand, future work around ADHD needs to come with opening up potential public spaces

you know, services and access for people because that financial barrier is a significant one for a lot of people, you know, rightly so.

People can't necessarily afford to be paying $1,500 or $2,000 to see a psychiatrist for a diagnosis.

So we do really need some shift to happen there in the system as well.

There's a huge range, so there will absolutely be, hopefully, some access that's cheaper than that.

But absolutely, I mean, especially in Australia, people paying significant kind of costs to see a psychiatrist for ADHD.

And again, that's, I think, come around that demand-supply side and the bottleneck kind of model in terms of there are just a lot of people waiting for ADHD assessments.

Yeah.

And I will also say it's because there's a lot of work that goes into the diagnostic process as well.

There's a lot of kind of moving through scales, looking at school reports.

There's significant time and often multiple sessions included in the diagnosis.

So I guess in terms of seeing a specialist for that multiple times, overall, the cost can be significant, yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

And I definitely think that's part of it.

And that's why some of the systems around mental health in general for New Zealand and Australia, but especially conditions like ADHD...

That really needs to change and there needs to be more support, I think, from public health services and the government to open up access here.

And that might look like making sure more public clinicians are sort of able to diagnose, but also supporting people maybe in terms of public funding for psychiatric assessments for ADHD as well.

Because absolutely, you know, I think it is in some ways a bit of a privileged position now.

to A, be able to think about, well, your focus and distractibility and some of these symptoms, but also then afford to take a hit out of a family's savings or income to get this assessment and the diagnosis as well.

It's significant.