ADHD is measurable in pharmacy data because it has drugs, and uncountable in education data because it has no category: it is absorbed into “social, emotional and behavioural difficulty”. Autism is the reverse: its own exact category in the school census, and no signature in prescribing at all, because no medication treats autism. So the two conditions are visible through different instruments, neither of which sees the other, and Scotland publishes no waiting time for either. Every figure here is drawn from the NHS record; going private is how people leave these queues, and nothing published in Scotland can see it.
* NHS dispensing only. Every prescribing figure on
this page comes from the Prescribing Information System, which records NHS
prescriptions dispensed in the community. Anyone assessed privately and refused a
shared care agreement pays for their own medication and is counted nowhere here.
That applies to all five ADHD drugs equally, including lisdexamfetamine, which is
the one most often prescribed privately. Nothing bought privately is in these
figures.
One distinction matters only for what could ever be recovered, and changes nothing
about what is shown here. Methylphenidate, lisdexamfetamine and dexamfetamine are
Schedule 2 controlled drugs, so a private prescription is written on a PPCD(1)
form and submitted to NHS National Services Scotland: a record exists, and is not
published. That is what the Freedom of Information request in this project's
foi/ directory asks for. Atomoxetine and guanfacine are not
controlled, so no national record is created at all and no request could recover
one.
The direction of the bias is knowable even though its size is not: the people able
to buy their way past a multi-year waiting list are not the people waiting
longest.