NHS ADHD waiting times in Scotland: what the FOI data shows
By ADHD Scot · Updated October 2026
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. All 14 boards have now responded, and the data is stark. The single most telling result: only 5 of the 14 boards could give an adult ADHD waiting time at all. The rest either do not hold it, do not record it by condition, or refused to extract it on cost grounds.
Board-by-board results
NHS Grampian, 194 weeks (Aberdeen City only)
The longest adult ADHD wait of any board in Scotland. 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 dating from September 2021, but the board says there is "currently no service", 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.
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 in Scotland.
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.
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.
The three boards that missed the legal deadline
NHS Tayside, NHS Orkney and NHS Shetland all failed to answer within the 20 working day limit set by FOISA (a deadline of 23 July 2026), and only responded after we began formal escalation. When they did answer, none of the three could give a median waiting time.
NHS Tayside, Dundee only and no median waits
NHS Tayside gave no median waiting times and figures for Dundee only: 632 adults waiting for an ADHD assessment and 885 for an autism assessment. The board says it cannot reliably identify which referrals came from GPs, and its referral system does not record the clinical reason for a referral, so it could not produce a median for either. Angus and Perth & Kinross hold no separate ADHD or autism figures under Section 17, so these counts cover Dundee only, not the whole board, and people in those two areas cannot be told their position on the list. Tayside CAMHS holds no under-18 neurodevelopmental data (Section 17) and stopped accepting new ADHD or autism referrals from children who do not also have a co-existing mental health condition (widely reported in March 2025). FOI reference: IGTFOISA26481.
NHS Orkney, combined counts only
NHS Orkney gave no median waiting times, reporting only combined neurodevelopmental counts because it assesses ADHD and autism together and could not separate them: about 139 adults and 25 under-18s waiting. As a marker of how far behind the service is, in August 2026 it was still assessing adults who had been referred in November 2024.
NHS Shetland, holds no ADHD or autism data
NHS Shetland responded under Section 17, confirming it does not hold ADHD or autism waiting data at all, because its waiting lists are not coded by whether a wait relates to ADHD or autism. The general figures it did give (257 adults in Psychological Therapies at a median of 22 weeks, and 17 in CAMHS at 4 weeks) cover all conditions and are not neurodevelopmental waits. Its response arrived on 19 August 2026, nearly two months past the legal deadline.
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:
- Check your health board's specific pathway on our NHS health boards page
- Complete a validated screener to bring to your GP: our ADHD self-screener or autism screener takes around five minutes
- Understand your private options: the compare providers directory lists private ADHD and autism assessment providers across Scotland with costs, shared care support, and clinician details
- Read our guide on going private if you are considering it
You can view the full sortable table for all 14 boards, with every board's original response document, on the NHS waiting times page and the FOI tracker.