NHS ADHD waiting times in Scotland: what the FOI data shows

By ADHD Scot · Updated August 2026

Reviewed by ADHD Scot,

ADHD Scot submitted Freedom of Information requests to all 14 NHS health boards in Scotland on 24 June 2026, asking for the median waiting time and total number of people waiting for adult and child ADHD and autism assessment. Eleven boards have responded. The data is stark.

Board-by-board results

NHS Grampian, 194 weeks (Aberdeen City only)

The longest adult ADHD wait of any board to respond so far. NHS Grampian (Aberdeen City HSCP) reported a median wait of 194 weeks (nearly four years) with 1,823 adults on the waiting list. Adult autism is 130 weeks, with 1,838 waiting.

The picture across Grampian is fragmented. Aberdeenshire HSCP has no adult ADHD or autism pathway at all. Moray HSCP has a waiting list of 567 adults, but the service has been inactive since September 2021, meaning people are on a list for a service that is not running.

Children's data across Grampian could not be split by condition type. There are 682 young people awaiting their first triage appointment across all neurodevelopmental conditions.

Full NHS Grampian pathway →

NHS Ayrshire and Arran, 132 weeks adult ADHD

Ayrshire & Arran provided figures across all four categories. Adult ADHD: 132 weeks median wait, 211 people on the list. Under-18 ADHD: 160 weeks, 470 waiting. Adult autism: 28 weeks, notably short, but with only 21 on the list, so treat that figure with caution. Under-18 autism: 160 weeks, 800 young people waiting.

The under-18 figures represent some of the longest child waiting times of any board to respond.

NHS Fife, CAMHS data provided; adult data refused

NHS Fife provided CAMHS figures but refused adult data under Section 12, citing an estimated cost of £10,710 to extract around 8,570 records, above the statutory £600 limit. For children and young people, the median ADHD wait is 22 weeks and autism 89 weeks, with around 297 young people on the CAMHS list. These figures cover all referral routes, not GP only.

Full NHS Fife pathway →

NHS Forth Valley, no condition-specific pathways

NHS Forth Valley confirmed it does not operate separate ADHD or autism assessment pathways. Adults are seen through Community Mental Health Teams where referral criteria are met, with a 12-week target for accepted referrals, but this is a target, not an actual wait, and it covers all CMHT referrals, not ADHD or autism specifically. CAMHS uses a "Choice appointment" model with a reported median wait of five weeks for 431 young people, covering all CAMHS conditions. All four FOI questions were refused under Section 12. FOI reference: 0010464.

Full NHS Forth Valley pathway →

NHS Western Isles, non-standard pathway

NHS Western Isles operates a combined neurodevelopmental pathway rather than separate ADHD and autism services. Adult ADHD: 52.3 weeks, 277 waiting. Adult autism: 24.9 weeks. Under-18 wait: 2.3 weeks for ADHD, 69.3 weeks for autism (combined ND pathway, not condition-specific). No adult autism assessments have been completed since the pathway launched in August 2024, so no adult autism median is available.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway, no service

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded under Section 17 of FOISA, confirming that there is no adult ADHD or autism assessment service in the board area. There is no waiting list because there is no pathway. Data for children and young people was not provided as it is not held in a reportable format; the response did not confirm whether a CAMHS pathway exists.

Full NHS Dumfries and Galloway page →

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the biggest lists

Scotland's largest board gave figures for all four categories. Adult ADHD: median 111 weeks board-wide, rising to 139 weeks in Glasgow City with 4,907 waiting there; 8,886 adults wait board-wide, the biggest adult ADHD list in Scotland. Adult autism: 65 weeks, 2,641 waiting. Under-18 ADHD is 120 weeks (2,563 waiting) and under-18 autism 105 weeks (4,921 waiting), plus a further 2,060 pre-school children waiting for autism assessment. Under-18 ADHD and autism are assessed together, so those figures cannot be fully separated.

NHS Highland, adult figures only

NHS Highland reported adult ADHD at 38 weeks (433 waiting) and adult autism at 127 weeks (443 waiting). Under Section 17 it does not hold aggregate CAMHS (under-18) ADHD or autism waiting data, as children are not placed on the CAMHS list specifically for a neurodevelopmental assessment. Read the response →

NHS Lanarkshire, combined lists only

NHS Lanarkshire's neurodevelopmental service is not broken down by condition, so median waits for all four types were refused under Section 12. It did provide combined neurodevelopmental waiting-list totals (ADHD, autism and other conditions together): 3,592 adults and 11,094 children waiting.

NHS Borders, no data held electronically

NHS Borders responded but holds no ADHD or autism waiting-time data electronically. It has no digital medical records system, so extracting the figures would mean a manual trawl of paper records exceeding the £600 cost limit. All four categories were refused under Section 12. Read the response →

NHS Lothian, the largest combined lists in Scotland

NHS Lothian cannot separate ADHD from autism, so its figures are combined neurodevelopmental totals covering both conditions. Adults wait a median of 177 weeks, about three years and five months, the longest board-wide adult median reported by any Scottish board, with 12,769 adults waiting. For under-18s (CAMHS) the median is 141.5 weeks, with 12,275 children and young people waiting. In total, more than 25,000 people were on Lothian's combined waiting lists at 22 July 2026. The response (dated 30 July) arrived after the statutory deadline of 23 July.

Full NHS Lothian pathway →

Three boards have not responded

NHS Orkney, NHS Shetland, and NHS Tayside have not responded. The legal deadline under FOISA was 23 July 2026, so all three are now past the statutory time limit, and we have begun the formal escalation process. We are tracking all responses in our FOI tracker.

What these figures mean

Waiting times only count people who have already been referred and accepted onto a waiting list. They do not capture:

  • People whose GP declined to refer them
  • People who did not meet referral criteria and were turned away before reaching a list
  • People who gave up and sought private assessment or no assessment at all

A shorter waiting time in a given area does not necessarily mean faster access. It may reflect stricter referral thresholds that keep the list artificially short. These figures are the most detailed publicly available data on NHS ADHD and autism waiting times in Scotland, but they remain a partial picture.

What to do if you are waiting

If you are currently on a waiting list, or trying to get onto one, the most useful things you can do:

The data on this page is updated as boards respond. You can view the full table, including figures for all 14 boards as they arrive, on the NHS waiting times page.