Services for adults with ADHD: work in progress: Commentary on . . . Specialist adult ADHD clinics in East Anglia.

Abstract

Magon and colleagues highlight a number of relative strengths and weaknesses very reminiscent of those we have seen over the years in the development of similar services for children and adolescents. It is clear that we all have a lot of work to do to improve our approach to the transition from child to adult services. There was clear evidence that adult services can adapt to manage ADHD, but there is also a clear need for increased upskilling of clinicians in the practical management of medication and other treatments. I disagree with Magon and colleagues about the role of primary care and believe that treatment initiation and ongoing monitoring should, for the time being, remain in secondary care and that, because of the volume of work that will come our way, this will need to become a core rather than specialist task. As with other aspects of psychiatric care, there is a clear role for specialist nurses in delivering a significant proportion of the core care.