I am not a doctor and this is only my opinion but I have had ADHD for over 60 years and have been studying it closely for the last 20. I hope you folks will consider my opinion worth something.

ADHD is so difficult to get diagnosed and treated that people tend to take the first available path to solving the problem and rely on that for the Long haul. This means, in most cases, the school tells you that your kid has ADHD and you go to your family physician or pediatrician for treatment. This is not good enough. For those of you that are skeptics of the medical profession I want to give you permission to leave now. I am going to speak with respect and consideration of the profession that does its best to help us have a healthy life.

Medicine is a huge area of study and every specialty has its own nuances and peculiarities that the typical family doctor will simply find two specialized to be of use to them. ADHD is one of those areas. ADHD is even too specialized for some Mental Health specialists. Every clinician picks their own boundaries and areas of interest for practice. We all need to find our own ADHD specialists to treat us and we all know how difficult that is. For that reason I want to advocate for the idea that it is a huge mistake to rely on a primary care doctor to know the intricacies of ADHD medication. There are dozens of them out there with different profiles of action. Even a psychiatrist, who may spend 80% of his practice treating depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder can find it necessary to open a book to look up details about the ADHD stimulants and non-stimulant treatments. Zoom out to the area covered by the primary care specialty and you can see that there is no way that your family doctor will be familiar with how ADHD meds work.

FIND A PSYCHIATRIST TO TREAT YOUR ADHD. That is the simple message of this post. Trusting a PCP with your ADHD treatment is like taking your brand new Tesla vehicle to a bicycle mechanic. They are just not equipped to handle the technology.