GPs can now diagnose ADHD: what Victoria's reform means for women

What just happened

Victoria’s 2026–27 state budget committed $750,000 to train 150 GPs to diagnose and treat ADHD in both adults and children, with training to be delivered by September 2026. The Victorian Government had announced its intent in early 2026; the budget has now confirmed the funding.

The RACGP described the February 2026 announcement as “lifechanging” — that was the exact word the college chose, and it deserves attention. Under the current Victorian model, GPs can continue prescribing ADHD medication to a patient once a specialist has made the initial diagnosis, but that first diagnosis must come from a paediatrician or psychiatrist. A specialist review is also required every two years. The bottleneck is in that initial assessment. In many parts of Victoria, the wait for a paediatric or psychiatric ADHD assessment runs to months or years.

Victoria is not moving alone. In February 2026, the RACGP described similar reforms enabling NSW GPs to diagnose ADHD as “lifechanging for thousands of patients”. The direction of travel is national. Multiple states are converging on the same structural problem: initial diagnosis is rationed by specialist availability, and specialist availability is not evenly distributed.

The both-and

The access argument:

newsGP has documented the ADHD reform as “past due” across multiple advocacy cycles. The diagnostic bottleneck has measurable costs: delayed diagnosis in children means delays in educational support, classroom adjustments, and appropriate management. In adults — and specifically in women — the cost profile is different but at least as significant.

Women with ADHD are diagnosed later, misdiagnosed more frequently, and referred to mental health services for the downstream consequences (anxiety, depression, chronic exhaustion, relational difficulty) rather than for the underlying neurodevelopmental picture. ADHD in women more commonly presents as inattention, emotional dysregulation, and chronic overwhelm rather than the hyperactivity pattern that historically defined the diagnostic criteria. The result: decades of “she’s anxious,” “she’s sensitive,” “she just needs to get more organised” — while the actual architecture of her attention goes unnamed.

The reform that expands who can perform an initial ADHD assessment is directly relevant to the woman now in her 40s who is reassessing a history that — in retrospect — fits a different picture than the one she was given.

The overdiagnosis concern:

Hold the other side too. The Conversation published expert commentary on how to safeguard against overdiagnosis as GP access to ADHD diagnosis expands. The concern is real: ADHD is a diagnosis with real pharmacological treatments and real side effects, and it shares symptom territory with anxiety disorders, depression, sleep disorders, perimenopause, and trauma responses. A GP with a short ADHD training module is not the same as a psychiatrist with extensive differential diagnosis experience.

The counterargument — also documented by The Conversation — is that the existing specialist-gatekeeping model did not protect against incorrect diagnosis. It protected against any timely diagnosis. Many people who went undiagnosed for decades were not well-served by the old bottleneck. The question is not whether to expand access; it is whether the expanded model embeds adequate quality safeguards.

The $750,000 training investment and the curriculum standards the Victorian Government is attaching to the GP training program are the mechanism for that safeguard. Whether the training is sufficient is a question worth watching as the rollout proceeds.

2 cents

If you have been wondering about ADHD — not because of a trending social media format, but because you have been living with a cluster of things that have never quite been satisfactorily explained (the executive function gaps, the chronic difficulty with initiation, the emotional sensitivity that does not fit the anxiety narrative you were given, the exhaustion of compensating for decades) — this reform changes the access landscape.

It does not mean booking a GP appointment tomorrow and expecting a twenty-minute diagnosis. A GP doing this assessment properly will still take a thorough history, review childhood and adolescent functioning, ask about collateral information, and consider the differential with anxiety, mood disorders, sleep disorders, and perimenopause. In complex presentations, a referral to a specialist may still be the right path. What changes is that the queue shortens. The specialist bottleneck is no longer the only path to a properly assessed picture.

If your GP has completed the relevant training, a conversation about reassessing your history is now more practically available than it was before. That is the change the $750,000 is buying.

This is general information. ADHD diagnosis in adults requires a full clinical history including childhood functioning, collateral information where possible, and careful differential diagnosis. The quality of the assessment matters as much as access to one.

Verdict

Verdict: yes — worth knowing about.

Victoria’s confirmed GP-led ADHD diagnosis and treatment — funded, with 150 GPs to be trained by September 2026 — is a structural access reform. Combined with similar changes in NSW and WA, it signals a national direction. The specialist-only initial diagnosis bottleneck is being broken open in multiple states simultaneously. For adults who have been wondering about ADHD but have been stalled by specialist wait times or cost, the practical path has changed. Watch the training quality as the Victorian rollout proceeds — the curriculum standards are the quality gate.

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Sources cited

1. RACGP — GPs praise Victorian budget’s ‘lifesaving’ meningococcal B and ADHD reforms
2. RACGP — Victorian GPs welcome ‘lifechanging’ ADHD reforms
3. RACGP — Enabling NSW GPs to diagnose ADHD will be ‘lifechanging’ for thousands of patients
4. newsGP — ADHD reforms ‘past due’
5. The Conversation — More GPs will be able to diagnose and treat ADHD – and experts say it’s a positive step
6. The Conversation — How to safeguard against overdiagnosis when more GPs treat ADHD