Disclaimer: I’m referring the the US medical system, but I imagine people in other countries may encounter similar things.
I cannot be the only one who has had this experience, but all my dealings with the medical industry feel like they were refined by a group of psychologists to exploit the weaknesses of those with ADHD.
The volume of calls, appointments, and paperwork I had to full out to get a diagnosis and prescription for treatment is completely unreasonable to expect someone with poor working memory and attention issues to navigate.
Then, to stay on medication, you need to schedule and make appointments with a psychiatrist every month, for the rest of your life, and if you miss a single one, you will run out of meds (and likely charged a fine), which will make it even harder to remember to make the next one. If you miss too many, that psychiatrist will refuse to see you again and you have to go back to your PCP to get a new referral.
Look, I understand that their time is valuable, but this system couldn’t be designed any other way to be more accommodating to people who clinically forget things?!
It’s like designing a wheelchair ramp that’s actually just stairs that are 3x as steep as the regular stairs. Also, if you fall to the bottom, someone takes your wheelchair until you can climb back up.
You guys don’t have repeat prescriptions?
I just order mine on an app when I get a reminder and then pick it up from the chemist a few days later when I get a ping.
I have to go in every year to get refills on my epi pens and my migraine meds. I have to have a doctor sign off on those and I don’t really know why. I am not on ADHD meds but I imagine that would be the same.
Oh yeah… I should probably refill my epipens…
Your use of “chemist” makes me think you’re out of the US.
Most ADHD meds in the US are “controlled substances” and that means our doctors can only prescribe up to three months at a time. After three months we have to have a follow-up appointment, then they can prescribe three more months of meds.
Plus the federal government decided that too many people were taking medications like Adderall. So their “solution” was to instate a cap on how much Adderall manufacturers can make. Which means there’s now a national shortage of Adderall. And that shortage means folks with ADHD are frequently going without their meds entirely or are forced to call multiple pharmacies in the area to ask who has their meds in stock. (My health insurance through work requires me to use a mail-order pharmacy because it means cost savings for them. But that means I don’t have the luxury of shopping around different stores to see who has my meds in stock - at least, not to fill the prescription through insurance and get the lower price. So if the mail order place is out, then I’m screwed.)
Our healthcare system is so fucked.
Adhd meds here are controlled substances too. It makes it so the prescription lasts only a month. But how many packs of meds you have on this prescription, is only set by your doctor. So I get 4 months refills and have to buy it within one month.
And yeah, med shortage over here is an issue too.
Yeah, the DEA wouldn’t allow that. Where I’m at in the US you can only get one month at a time, and most people have to go to the doctors office in person to pick up a physical prescription.
You only have a 3-4 day window before your pills run out to do this, too, so if your pharmacy is out, you’re fucked because most pharmacies won’t just fill a control if you don’t have other prescriptions with them (if they’re accepting new controls at all). All because they’re afraid of the DEA.
I’ve often day dreamed about starting a class action lawsuit against the DEA for discriminating against the disabled.