00:01There's more than 300 GPs who've now been trained to treat and diagnose ADHD across
00:08New South Wales and many of them will be in regional, rural and remote parts of the country
00:14and that's to really fix up or try to fill in holes with access to care in those parts
00:19of the country because of course it's a lot harder to access any kind of specialist treatment
00:24in regional, rural and remote parts of Australia.
00:28Now, prior to these changes announced by the Mins government previously, to get an ADHD
00:35diagnosis in New South Wales you'd have to go to a specialist like a psychiatrist or a
00:40paediatrician and initial appointments with those specialists usually fall in just below
00:46$1,000 so add in follow-up appointments, the cost of medication, even then the referral
00:53appointments with the GP to get to that specialist, the bill quickly really adds up and that's
00:58just not accessible to a lot of residents in New South Wales so that's what the Mins government
01:04is trying to fix up.
01:06Now, Four Corners, led by Dr Norman Swan, actually looked into this issue earlier this year and
01:12he found that the more disadvantaged an area is in Australia, the lower the rate of prescriptions
01:19are for ADHD are being filled.
01:23So, in that report he found in Fairfield in South West Sydney, which is a more lower socioeconomic
01:28area of Sydney, he estimates with that data that 90% of adults with ADHD in that suburb do
01:38not have a diagnosis and going without treatment or being undiagnosed with ADHD has lots of impacts
01:45on people's lives.
01:47It usually increases the risk of substance misuse as well as financial distress.
01:53So, it's really important for people to get diagnosed and people can find that list of
02:00GPs who are able to diagnose them or treat them for the disorder on the Health Direct website
02:06in about a month's time and as well as the 300 GPs who are now trained in this, there's
02:12another 300 GPs across the state that are beginning training soon.
