Source: Radio New Zealand
The recurring issue for GPs trying to diagnose ADHD seemed to be the lack of sufficient time. 123RF
Fifteen-minute GP visits are proving to be arguably too short to assess an ADHD diagnosis so one psychiatrist decided to make an app that would make the process more efficient.
Dr Sidhesh Phaldessai has come up with an app that would help people collate the information they need in advance before they head to their doctor’s office.
He said the more recent decision to have GPs or nurse practitioners diagnose ADHD was a good idea “in spirit” but the implementation has been an “up and down journey”.
The recurring issue seemed to be the lack of sufficient time.
“But the real bottleneck, honestly, is time, because anyone in the ADHD sector knows that it takes about two or three hours to diagnose someone.
And I don’t think any GP or nurse practitioner has more than 15 minutes in their day.”
Phaldessai knew all too well what it’s like to be on both sides of a diagnosis, having noticed his own ADHD symptoms as an adult.
He said he’d been treating people for around seven or eight years before noticing his own symptoms.
“That’s how masked ADHD can be.”
“…And you always live with ADHD, so you don’t know any different. It’s only when you start seeing that, well, a lot of this is actually my own experience as well. And then the trauma memories come up.”
Seeing the barriers in diagnosis, he decided to take matters into his own hands in creating a new app designed to help a person gather their lived experiences before heading to a clinician.
A big part of the ADHD experience is trauma and Phaldessai said the app would help patients to sort through these difficult realities in their own time, making their GP visit less stress inducing and more productive.
“Because a lot of the symptoms have a moral tag to it, like you’re called lazy or forgetful or you’re just not trying hard enough.”
“And quite often in clinic, I see people come in and they literally freeze when you ask them to describe their symptoms because they are recollecting trauma memories.”
The app has now attracted worldwide attention, being handpicked to feature at a digital health expo in Melbourne this month.
Phaldessai said in speaking to colleagues across the UK and Ireland the waitlist was over four to five years and even closer to home it wasn’t looking good.
“Across Australia, it’s probably a couple of years at least before anyone gets to see a specialist. And the economic impact of undiagnosed ADHD is huge.
So I’m kind of really optimistic that the tech solves a real world problem.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand