Doctors in England told not to start new patients on ADHD drugs due to shortage

https://lemmy.world/post/6080862

Doctors in England told not to start new patients on ADHD drugs due to shortage - Lemmy.world

From the article: Henry Shelford, the CEO and a co-founder of ADHD UK, said: “ADHD is a disability and the sudden removal of medication is akin to removing a wheelchair from a disabled person that needs it.”

Ok, but you’re still refusing to let another disabled person have a wheelchair in the first place so…

While technically right, Ritalin / Concerta gets prescribed to a lot of people that don’t even need it; pushed by the pharmaceutical companies.
As far as I have followed this issue, this is a US problem. Pharmaceuticals are treated very differently in Europe. For example, there’s no public ads for prescription drugs allowed, meaning that patients usually don’t push doctors to prescribe random stuff they’ve heard about on TV.

Maybe not that way around, but in the EU the pharmaceutical companies take physicians out for dinner, take them on skiing trips etc. to accomplish the same result; push for more of this medication to be prescribed.

People downvoting me probably don’t work in healthcare and have no idea how these businesses work.

This used to be true and perhaps still is in some places, but in some European countries the laws have changed a bit recently which means bad time for pharma companies. They now don’t have enough finances to bribe doctors effectively. (Source: family member in European pharma.)
It’s not about money, they have more than enough of that. It’s about regulations on how they can spend it. They are not allowed to give doctors a mini holliday anymore, they used to to that, but they still have more than enough ways to influence doctors.