The ADHD grey zone: why patients are stuck between private diagnosis and NHS care

Sameer Modha knows the ADHD system all too well. He has been diagnosed himself, as have his two children, giving him a clear view of how the system works – and where it breaks down.While his own diagnosis was relatively straightforward, the experience with his daughter was very different. The diagnosis he obtained for his eldest child, after an assessment carried out privately by a “very senior ex-Camhs [child and adolescent mental health service] director, someone who knows the system and has seen a huge amount of this”, was later rejected by the NHS. He was told it was not compliant with guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which sets healthcare standards nationally

Seeing red over the Greens’ advocacy of ‘buy the supply’ housing policy | Letters

I was surprised to see Siân Berry (Letters, 9 January) advocate that Labour “buy the supply” of landlord homes as a way of increasing the stock of social housing. Siân may want to pay more attention closer to home. The Labour council in Brighton and Hove is pursuing exactly that policy, as was featured in the Guardian last year (Right to buy in reverse: how Brighton is tackling its social housing crisis, 26 October).As with many policy areas, the Greens like soundbites and writing letters, but often have vanishingly little interest in actual policy implementation. It was invariably the case when the Greens ran Brighton and Hove city council: a lot of talking about the climate crisis, but little progress in expanding recycling nor city-wide decarbonisation – something that we are now putting right

Great Ormond Street hospital cleaners win racial discrimination appeal

Black cleaners at Great Ormond Street hospital were subjected to “indirect race discrimination” by the wait for NHS pay terms and conditions after their services were brought in-house, a tribunal has found.A case against the London children’s hospital brought by 80 cleaners – the majority of whom are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds – was dismissed by an employment tribunal in 2024.But in a judgment handed down this week in a four-year legal battle, the employment appeal tribunal (EAT) upheld their appeal against the original decision, accepting their claim that they had suffered discrimination in not getting NHS “Agenda for Change” (AfC) pay rates “immediately or shortly thereafter” when their contracts were transferred in 2021.It is understood all staff have now been offered NHS AfC terms. If the hospital does not appeal further, the case is expected to move to discussions over financial remedy

ADHD waiting lists ‘clogged by patients returning from private care to NHS’

Waiting lists for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in England are being clogged by patients returning to NHS care after difficulties with private assessments, a trust has warned.The major NHS trust said people referred by GPs to private clinics using health service funding were increasingly asking to be transferred back after care stalled.These include cases where private clinics are able to diagnose ADHD but their assessments do not always comply with guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or where providers lack staff with the appropriate qualifications to support continued prescribing.The consequences for patients can be severe. Some are facing prescription costs of more than £200 a month after GPs said they could no longer work with private clinics under shared care agreements

Rural and coastal areas of England to get more cancer doctors

Hospitals in rural and coastal parts of England will get more cancer doctors to help tackle stark inequalities that mean people in some areas are far more likely to die from the disease.The plan is part of a government drive to end the “patchy” nature of NHS cancer care, which is characterised by wide postcode lotteries in access to diagnostic tests and treatment.“For too long your chances of seeing a doctor and catching cancer early have depended on where you live,” said Wes Streeting, the health secretary.“That’s not fair and has to stop. Whether you live in a coastal town or a rural village, you deserve the same shot at survival and quality of life as everyone else

‘Manosphere’ influencers pushing testosterone tests are convincing healthy young men there is something wrong with them, study finds

“If you’re not waking up in the morning with a boner, there’s a large possibility that you have low testosterone levels,” an influencer on TikTok with more than 100,000 followers warns his viewers.Despite screening for low testosterone being medically unwarranted in most young men, this group is being aggressively targeted online by influencers and wellness companies promoting hormone tests and treatments as essential to being a “real man”, a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine has found.Researchers analysed 46 high-impact posts about low testosterone and testing made by TikTok and Instagram accounts with a combined following of more than 6.8 million, to examine how masculinity and men’s health are being depicted and monetised online.The lead author of the study, Emma Grundtvig Gram, a public health researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said influencers promoting routine testosterone screening often framed normal variations in energy, mood, libido or ageing “as signs of pathology”