Gemma Spake

ADHD is probably the clearest example of why.

It is actually hard to pinpoint how many people are experiencing this.

Are diagnosis rates going up?

I will say numerically, they have risen.

There has been a huge increase in

adult diagnoses between 2000 and 2018 in UK data, US data, Australian data, Canadian data.

Prescribing has also risen in several countries.

I think in the UK, there's been a 51% increase in patients being prescribed medication over the last five years.

But that is not the only part of this picture.

A 2025 systematic review looking at post-2020 ADHD prevalence actually found no actual conclusive evidence of a real rise in underlying prevalence.

So what that means is that even though diagnosis assessment demand prescribing has clearly increased, essentially when these

researchers looked at 40 plus studies, they concluded that actually underlying that prevalence

probably hasn't changed.

It's just that people are showing up for services.

It's just that they are using the correct language for what they've always been experiencing.

It's just that they are getting help.

They're also getting later stage diagnoses.

These individuals probably should have been diagnosed a lot earlier.

It's only now that they are counting, but the underlying prevalence has always probably been the same.

Autism tells a very similar story.