In June 2025, the Ministry of Health announced that from February 2026, general practitioners (GPs) and nurse practitioners will be able to assess, diagnose, and commence medical treatment for adults with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
While this announcement is an early step to improving access to ADHD assessments, not all primary care practices will be able to offer assessments. ADHD assessments require specialised staff training and an in-depth interview, questionnaires, background information from school or family, a medical assessment, and ruling out of other conditions. These assessments take several hours to complete. Unfortunately, currently Student Health cannot offer this service.
We know many students are seeking assessment for ADHD, and that getting the right support can make a huge difference to academic success and wellbeing. Because of this, we want to be transparent about what services and support you can obtain from Student Health and the reasons why.
There are two key practical reasons why most primary care practices, including Student Health cannot provide ADHD assessments at this time.
- Access and waiting times for primary care services
- Student Health provides a full range of primary healthcare services to the student community. Our GP appointments are already fully booked throughout semester time, with an average waiting time for a routine appointment of 10 working days.
- When an ADHD assessment is completed according to current guidelines, it takes approximately 4–6 hours. This equates to 12–18 appointments for routine or urgent primary care per ADHD assessment.
- Cost to our patients
- ADHD assessments are not specifically funded in general practice, which means that we would have to charge our patients high fees, as we would need to block out multiple appointments.
What to expect from Student Health:
- Your clinician will help you by listening to your concerns about ADHD, ruling out other issues, and helping you to get to the right specialist services – so you are not navigating the process alone.
- Student Health doctors will prescribe medication for those who have an ADHD diagnosis.
- Student Health offers an ADHD behavioural management group intervention. This group provides evidence based strategies to support participants to manage ADHD symptoms.
- Student Health will not complete ADHD assessments for diagnosis.
Here at Student Health our mission is to provide excellent, holistic primary healthcare for the students we look after. We continually review the services we offer and welcome your feedback.