How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea I am so sorry this is what you have to go through.
It's a similar tale over here in the U.S., but to varying degrees in some pain points than others.
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@0xabad1dea Same in Norway.
@tuvix @0xabad1dea i had the same type of experience as @ThePolishDispatch in Norway
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@0xabad1dea In the United States this process is much simpler, shorter, and quicker.
1. Doctor prescribes the medication, and 2. Insurance company denies it because it's not medically necessary.
@snow @0xabad1dea Also, every visit with a real person requires a randomly generated co-pay, every phone call ends up with four transfers each requiring you to repeat your name, birthday, home address, phone number, the 20 digit number on the front of your insurance card, the 36 digit number on the back of the card, your favorite pharmacy, your favorite member of the Three Stooges (Shemp, no really!) and THEN the insurance company denies it.
Shoulda went with Curly. -
@0xabad1dea we have this problem in the UK too where GPs serve no purpose except to deny medical care. It's a mystery to me what society thinks we need them for.
@whimsy I finally got a fantastic one. Except he's a GP, so he can't change my ADHD med doses or prescribe any of the 'hard' psych meds I probably actually need.
He is exceedingly kind and proactive about it tho!
@0xabad1dea -
@Monsieur_Lepetit it’s not limited to psychiatrists — the system as a whole is perpetually understaffed just enough that it clogs but doesn’t collapse entirely. If you have an urgent, life threatening problem, you will receive urgent care; otherwise waiting times stretch into months
@0xabad1dea this feels like it applies to more than just -video games- one country.
@Monsieur_Lepetit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92hcaBJ2a0Q is depressing but yeah -
How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea meanwhile my doctor in California offered me some ADHD meds to see if it will help with fatigue
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@0xabad1dea we have this problem in the UK too where GPs serve no purpose except to deny medical care. It's a mystery to me what society thinks we need them for.
@whimsy@chitter.xyz @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange in the US we have the problem where medical providers just dont respond or tell you to wait months and then it costs way too much money
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea As beautifully portrayed as it is, this seems somehow unrealistic.
An encounter with the Dutch medical system that doesn't feature being fobbed off with paracetomol? -
@0xabad1dea As beautifully portrayed as it is, this seems somehow unrealistic.
An encounter with the Dutch medical system that doesn't feature being fobbed off with paracetomol?@KatS that happened a dozen times in phase one
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea I was lucky enough to be able to make use of my italian prescription here and convince my GP to prescribe me the same medication in the netherlands. however, switching to lisdex from medikinet was months and months of constant appointments which included a lot of pointless ones where we achieved nothing, some that led to getting my dose of medikinet halved, some that led to getting proposed to switch to xr+ir, and some that led to getting reverted to ir multiple times a day. the first time I tried to convince them to switch me over I had given up before I got anywhere, the second time I had enough stashed medication to be able to make it.
I guess the moral of the story is that persistence is the only way to achieve anything medically in this country and that the only accepted currency is time x_x -
@Monsieur_Lepetit it’s not limited to psychiatrists — the system as a whole is perpetually understaffed just enough that it clogs but doesn’t collapse entirely. If you have an urgent, life threatening problem, you will receive urgent care; otherwise waiting times stretch into months
@0xabad1dea @Monsieur_Lepetit Not even that is guaranteed tbh, especially if you're a more complex case. I almost got denied timely help for a suicidal depression because I required a psychologist with expertise in neurodivergence. Got put on a half year waiting list after already calling for months, only got what I wanted (a place in a practice that had space but no funding because of the fucked up funding system) when I went to the complaints department.
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea I managed to get a psychologist's diagnosis of ADHD in Germany in a walk-in session, no appointment, completely by luck and partly because the online form he usually gives as a preliminary is in German, and I don't down German very well, so he did the assessment then and there in English. That was in 2022.
Since then I've made a few attempts at getting a referral from my GP to bring to a prescribing psychiatrist, but I have yet to find one who is taking new patients and the German medic system is confusing to me.
Also, I'm anyway a bit nervous about taking those medications because I've a history of addiction issues with meth/amphetamine...
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea @confluency This sounds very close to my experience. Especially the 'all psychiatrists booked up' thing. Even with a pre-existing diagnosis, it took 3 full years to get into the queue for getting a medication prescription.
Does ADHD centraal still exist? It was a private facility that did a kind of 1 stop diagnosis and medication shop, but was seen as purely money making and medically dodgy. I never went but did recommend to parents of already diagnosed kids a few times.
1/2 -
@0xabad1dea I managed to get a psychologist's diagnosis of ADHD in Germany in a walk-in session, no appointment, completely by luck and partly because the online form he usually gives as a preliminary is in German, and I don't down German very well, so he did the assessment then and there in English. That was in 2022.
Since then I've made a few attempts at getting a referral from my GP to bring to a prescribing psychiatrist, but I have yet to find one who is taking new patients and the German medic system is confusing to me.
Also, I'm anyway a bit nervous about taking those medications because I've a history of addiction issues with meth/amphetamine...
@theWeaver @0xabad1dea
I guess you would need a decent psychiatrist to make sure with that one. AFAIK, not all the classes of stimulant drugs are meth-adjacent.But possibly, those problems you had were you trying to self-medicate.
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@0xabad1dea @confluency This sounds very close to my experience. Especially the 'all psychiatrists booked up' thing. Even with a pre-existing diagnosis, it took 3 full years to get into the queue for getting a medication prescription.
Does ADHD centraal still exist? It was a private facility that did a kind of 1 stop diagnosis and medication shop, but was seen as purely money making and medically dodgy. I never went but did recommend to parents of already diagnosed kids a few times.
1/2@0xabad1dea This is the place: https://adhdcentraal.nl
and this is the investigative journalist article through which I found it:
https://fondsbjp.nl/publicaties/in-de-adhd-fabriek-is-de-diagnose-binnen-een-dag-gesteld/
@confluency -
How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea wow, that is a ride!
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea This is not the first story I have heard of this being a problem in NL. IIRC @tanepiper was challenged on meds and existing diagnosis.
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How to get prescribed ADHD medication in the Netherlands, a guide based on real world success:
1) spend over a year repeatedly trying to tell the GP that it’s not going well and you need help. This will not cost you money, only your precious finite time on this earth. It helps if you have a husband to drag you to the doctor when you’re at your lowest and argue with them
2) finally get escalated to a psychologist who takes a few months to be sure there’s definitely something wrong. She will recommend the GP to prescribe ADHD medication
3) Your prescription mysteriously disappears into the system. After several attempts to follow up that take months, and several confused phone calls from your psychologist to the GP, it turns out the GP refuses to authorize it because *shrug* reasons. Maybe if a psychiatrist also signs off on it?
4) You attempt to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. Every psychiatrist in the Netherlands is booked until 2034.
5) Finally, after a dozen rounds of pleading and nagging, you get a mysterious phone call from an unknown number. They give you an address and tell you to be there at 7 in the evening.
6) You find yourself at the door of a historic art deco mansion in the most exclusive district of Amsterdam. There is absolutely no indication that this is a medical practice. You ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. You wait nervously, and try again.
7) The door creaks open. An elderly man wearing crocs stands before you. He silently bids you follow him up a winding staircase to a parlor filled with a thousand thick and aging books in every tongue of the earth and perhaps a few also of the angels. They concern prophecy, and music, and poetry, and the apocalypse.
In a thin whisper of a voice barely to be heard, he asks your name, and where you were born. He slowly, very slowly, so slowly that you think you have died and this is purgatory, types this into a computer. It is in his lap because his desk is covered with strange devices beyond identification. 9) He tells you the prescription will be ready for pickup tomorrow.
@0xabad1dea Fun fact, once you are diagnosed with autism or ADHD in the Netherlands, you need doctor to approve your driving license when it comes up for renewal. Was big shock. Much pissed.
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@0xabad1dea Fun fact, once you are diagnosed with autism or ADHD in the Netherlands, you need doctor to approve your driving license when it comes up for renewal. Was big shock. Much pissed.
@0xabad1dea Like I passed my driving test just like everyone else before I was diagnosed!!!
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@0xabad1dea Fun fact, once you are diagnosed with autism or ADHD in the Netherlands, you need doctor to approve your driving license when it comes up for renewal. Was big shock. Much pissed.
@SecondUniverse @0xabad1dea
Yup. And medical aid won't refund you for the consultation. Because it's "not compulsory". Fuckwits.BUT - according to Mediant (in 2025), you don't need to disclose this when you apply for your driver's licence.
I managed to get autism group therapy without having to get a diagnosis. And this was one of the questions that came up and they checked it.
