Private ADHD care in charts, September 2026

Which total is this a share of?

Different questions have different denominators, and quoting a share against the wrong one is the easiest mistake to make with this data. Every population used on this page is listed here, and each chart states its own beneath the picture.

Two rules for reading every number here. Not stated is not the same as not done: most of these counts record what a clinic publishes, and a clinic that says nothing may still do the thing. Unmatched is not unregistered: a clinic we could not match to a register entry may need no registration at all.

How many private ADHD providers there are, and how fast that is growing

There is no register of private ADHD providers, so there is no true total. What can be counted is companies: those that carry ADHD in their name on the Companies House register, dated from the day that name took effect rather than from incorporation. A company is not a clinic, and every count here is a minimum.

Who checks them

Each of the 342 clinics we list was searched by hand against the register that covers it: the Care Quality Commission in England, and Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales or the RQIA elsewhere. A clinic is counted once. No match is not the same as no registration — a provider that only diagnoses, without any treatment, is outside CQC's scope and needs no registration at all.

What clinics show about who their clinicians are

Every figure here is what a clinic publishes about itself, read from its own website with the sentence stored beside it. It is a count of what is displayed, not a check of whether it is true: we did not verify a single registration, and a clinic that shows nothing may still employ registered clinicians. No accreditation scheme is specific to ADHD assessment, so an accreditation claim points at a general scheme, at a body that runs none, or at nothing named at all.

NHS Right to Choose

Right to Choose lets a patient in England ask their GP to refer them to an approved independent provider for an NHS-funded assessment. It applies in England only and needs a GP referral: the legal right does not extend to self-referrals. These counts come from what each clinic states on its own website, with the quote and the page stored beside it — not from our directory's own field.

What clinics publish, against the published standard

The adult ADHD assessment quality assurance standard (AQAS) sets a total assessment time of "at least 2 hours in most cases", counted as direct consultation, which it defines as face-to-face or remote by video. These charts show what clinics publish about their own appointments. They are a record of what is advertised, not an audit of what happens, and no clinic is graded here.

What clinics advertise about access and payment

These are the clinics' own published claims about how soon they can see someone and how it is paid for. We report that a claim is made and how often; we do not repeat it as a fact, and we did not test whether any clinic can see a patient in the time it advertises. The NHS comparison row counts sites that draw that contrast themselves — it is not a comparison of our own.

How clinics say they assess children

CAAQAS, published by UK clinicians in 2024, sets out the elements of a child and adolescent ADHD assessment. These charts count how many clinics describe each element on their own website, out of those we have evidence see children or teenagers. Describing an element is not meeting a standard, and a clinic that publishes nothing may still do all of it: this measures what a family can find out before booking, which is the thing a family actually has.

From the assessments study, re-surfaced

Three charts from our July and September work on what clinics publish about the assessment itself, repeated here so every figure in this release can be quoted from one page. They are read back from that study's own published figures rather than recomputed, so the numbers on both pages are the same numbers.

What we can see of the appetite for private assessment

There is no national count of people seeking a private ADHD assessment. What we can publish is what one website sees: visits to adhdprivate.co.uk, and how many people complete the questionnaire that matches them to clinics. Both series measure this site's reach — which grew partly because our own visibility in search grew — and neither is a measure of national demand. The official series is NHS England Digital's ADHD Management Information, linked in the method section. Months with fewer than ten people are not published, and no total is published from which one could be worked back.

Using these charts

The charts, the figures behind them and the clinic-level files are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, with two exceptions named in the data package README: material taken from Companies House, the CQC and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales is public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and the Northern Irish RQIA register extract is excluded from our own grant because no reuse statement was published with it.

To credit a chart: “Source: ADHD Private analysis, 24 September 2026”, linking to this page. If you are redrawing a chart rather than using the image, the CSV beneath it holds exactly the rows we plotted.

Questions about method, or a figure you would like checked before you publish it, go to [email protected]. We would rather answer a question than see a number used against the wrong denominator.

ADHD Private is an independent directory of private ADHD clinics. Clinics can pay for a clearly labelled Featured placement, which never changes the order clinics appear in or which clinics a search returns, and we take no commission on bookings or referrals. This page is informational only — it is not medical advice.