Your life is falling apart.
You’ve been struggling for months. You’re at serious risk of losing your job and your marriage is crumbling.
You’re forgetting things, missing appointments, constantly overwhelmed, starting five things and finishing none of them. Perhaps you’ve spent years wondering why ordinary things seem to take so much more effort than they appear to for everyone else.
You finally go to your GP.
They listen, ask a few questions and say ADHD might be worth exploring. They agree that an assessment would be appropriate and refer you.
Then you start looking at waiting times.
The provider says six months.
Not brilliant, but you can cope with six months.
Except you may not be seen in six months.
Here in the North East and North Cumbria, NHS-funded ADHD and autism assessments are now working to an approximately 78-week minimum waiting time for initial assessment during 2026/27. North East and North Cumbria NHS
A minimum waiting time.
Not a target to see you within 78 weeks.
A period of around 78 weeks that you may have to wait before being assessed.
I know that sounds nonsensical. It is very difficult to read it any other way.
Why is there a 78-week minimum wait for ADHD assessments in the North East?
NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board says it has introduced what it calls equalised waiting times across the providers it funds.
The ICB says this is intended to make access fairer between providers, give priority to people who have already been waiting longest and manage the NHS funding available for ADHD and autism assessments. North East and North Cumbria NHS
Which creates a rather strange situation.
A provider may have the capacity to assess you sooner.
Its website may advertise a much shorter waiting time.
You may have chosen that provider because it can apparently see you sooner.
But the ICB says that does not mean it has NHS funding available to purchase that earlier appointment. For people newly referred in North East and North Cumbria, it says you are unlikely to receive an NHS-funded assessment within the provider’s advertised shorter timescale. North East and North Cumbria NHS
So the provider’s waiting list and the length of time you actually wait are no longer necessarily the same thing.
That is an extraordinary distinction.
What about Right to Choose?
This is the bit that really bothers me.
Right to Choose has become an important route for adults stuck on very long local ADHD waiting lists.
You speak to your GP, choose an eligible NHS-contracted provider and, where the referral is appropriate, access your assessment through that provider rather than simply accepting the local NHS trust waiting list.
In North East and North Cumbria, Right to Choose referrals have not been stopped.
You can still be referred.
You can still choose a provider.
But the ICB states:
“changing provider will not mean that you are assessed sooner.”
It says the approximately 78-week minimum waiting time applies across the providers it funds. North East and North Cumbria NHS
You still have choice.
What you may no longer have is the thing that made that choice so useful to many people in the first place, the chance of accessing an assessment considerably sooner.
I struggle with calling that fairer.
If one provider can see somebody in six months while another takes 18 months, preventing the first provider from seeing that person earlier certainly makes the waiting times more equal.
It does not make the person receive healthcare sooner.
Those are two very different things.
Why not just go private?
For people who can find the money, paying for a private ADHD assessment may look like the obvious way around this.
Then another problem appears.
Getting a diagnosis and getting ongoing treatment are not the same thing.
Some GP practices will not enter Shared Care arrangements with private ADHD providers. Some people find themselves paying privately not only for an assessment, but for medication reviews and prescriptions afterwards too.
NHS North East and North Cumbria says somebody who paid privately for an ADHD assessment can seek NHS-funded medication through a Right to Choose treatment-only pathway if their GP clinically supports the referral.
And the stated waiting time for that?
Approximately 78 weeks from the date the referral is accepted. North East and North Cumbria NHS
Read that again.
You can already have the diagnosis.
You can have paid for it yourself.
Medication can have been clinically recommended.
And you may then wait around 78 weeks to access NHS-funded treatment through that route.
The ICB says this is intended to create fairness for people who cannot afford to self-fund and are already waiting for NHS assessment and treatment. North East and North Cumbria NHS
I understand the problem they are trying to solve.
I do not think making somebody else wait longer fixes it.
This isn’t only happening in the North East
The North East and North Cumbria is not alone.
A Guardian investigation found NHS Integrated Care Boards in several parts of England using minimum waits and other restrictions to manage rising demand and the money available for ADHD and autism assessments.
West Yorkshire has gone further, with a two-year minimum wait reported there. The Guardian
On 1 October, ADHD UK sent West Yorkshire ICB a formal letter before claim challenging the two-year minimum wait and said it would seek judicial review unless the policy is withdrawn or suspended. The charity argues that the policy interferes with patients’ legal Right to Choose and alleges failures around equality law, public involvement and NHS contracting procedures. West Yorkshire ICB has confirmed receipt of the correspondence but has not commented further because the matter may become subject to legal proceedings. The Guardian
So this is becoming a much bigger question than waiting-list management in one part of England.
What is Right to Choose actually worth if NHS commissioners can equalise waiting times across providers regardless of their available capacity?
And what happens to the person waiting?
Because there is a person in all of this.
Your ADHD doesn’t wait 78 weeks
This is the bit that gets lost very quickly when we start talking about commissioning arrangements, activity plans, providers and funding.
You went to the GP because something was wrong.
Perhaps your job really is at risk.
Perhaps your relationship is suffering.
Perhaps university has gone from difficult to impossible.
Maybe the bills are piling up because you cannot face opening them.
Your house is chaos.
You are exhausted from spending your entire life trying to compensate for things that seem to come naturally to everybody else.
Perhaps nobody has told you that you definitely have ADHD.
That is the point of the assessment.
But something brought you to the GP in the first place.
That problem does not politely sit in a waiting room for 78 weeks.
Your life keeps happening.
And being placed on an assessment waiting list is not, by itself, support.
You do not need an ADHD diagnosis to start getting support
I am going to keep saying this because the current system makes it more important, not less.
YOU DO NOT NEED AN ADHD DIAGNOSIS TO START GETTING SUPPORT.
A diagnosis matters.
For many people it matters enormously. It can provide answers after years of struggling. It can open the route to ADHD medication. It may help somebody understand themselves in a completely different way.
I would never suggest that people simply stop seeking diagnosis because waiting lists are awful.
But diagnosis does not have to be the front door to every other kind of help.
You can start understanding the difficulties you are having now.
You can look at what happens when you become overwhelmed, why starting tasks can feel almost physically impossible, why everything disappears from your brain the second it leaves your field of view, or why you can work brilliantly on something for five hours and then spend three days unable to answer an email.
You can join ADHD support groups.
You can speak to an ADHD coach.
You can explore changes at work.
You can ask your employer to look at reasonable adjustments based on the difficulties you experience. A formal diagnosis is not always required for somebody to meet the Equality Act definition of disability.
You can start working out what actually helps you rather than waiting 78 weeks for somebody to give you permission.
ADHDaptive already has a free ADHD Help Finder for exactly this reason. You can start with what is causing the biggest problem right now, whether that is work, overwhelm, burnout, assessment, medication or something else.
And if coaching is appropriate, ADHDaptive works with adults who have a diagnosis, adults waiting for one and adults who simply suspect ADHD may explain some of what they are experiencing.
There is more on this in You Don’t Need an ADHD Diagnosis to Start Getting Support.
What can I do while waiting for an ADHD assessment?
Start with the problem that is hurting you most.
Not ADHD as one enormous thing.
The actual problem.
If work is falling apart, what is going wrong at work?
If you are overwhelmed at home, what keeps not getting done?
If you keep missing appointments, what happens between making the appointment and remembering to attend it?
If you are exhausted, what are you spending all your energy trying to hold together?
You do not need to solve your entire life.
You need somewhere to begin.
The NHS itself says people should not always have to wait for diagnosis before receiving help and support. North East and North Cumbria NHS
For once, we completely agree.
Questions about ADHD assessment waiting times
How long is the ADHD assessment waiting time in North East and North Cumbria?
For NHS-funded initial ADHD and autism assessments during 2026/27, NHS North East and North Cumbria says providers it funds are working to an approximately 78-week minimum waiting time. People who have already been waiting longer are expected to be prioritised. North East and North Cumbria NHS
Can I still use Right to Choose for ADHD in the North East?
Yes. Right to Choose referrals remain open in North East and North Cumbria.
The problem is that choosing a provider advertising a shorter waiting time does not mean you will receive an NHS-funded assessment within that shorter period. The ICB says funded providers are working to equalised waiting times of approximately 78 weeks. North East and North Cumbria NHS
Can I change Right to Choose provider to get assessed more quickly?
NHS North East and North Cumbria says changing provider will not mean you are assessed sooner under the current 2026/27 arrangements. North East and North Cumbria NHS
Can I get ADHD support without a diagnosis?
Yes.
What support makes sense depends on what you are struggling with.
That could include ADHD coaching, peer support, workplace adjustments, Access to Work in some employment situations, changes to routines and your environment, or support for related mental-health problems.
You do not have to spend the next 78 weeks doing nothing.
Frankly, when you say it out loud, the idea that somebody should wait until the NHS is ready to assess them before they are allowed to start making their life easier sounds bloody stupid.
So don’t.
Get the assessment.
Stay on the waiting list.
Keep pushing for a system that works better than this one.
But get help with the life you are living now.
Because that life isn’t waiting 78 weeks.