A psychiatrist is calling for an audit of private psychiatry clinics to assess their “diagnostic practices” in an attempt to curtail the overdiagnosis of ADHD.

Dr Richard Bradlow, a Victorian psychiatrist, said the private practice model was favouring affluent patients able to pay the high medical costs associated with ADHD assessment.

“Given that the assessment of ADHD involves procedures no more complex or time-consuming than assessment of other more complex mental health conditions, it is unclear why ADHD evaluations should be more expensive,” he and his colleagues wrote in The Medical Journal of Australia.

They warned that psychiatrists charging “elevated fees” for assessments could lead patients to expect the diagnosis, with the proliferation of single-session online ADHD clinics offering very limited follow‐up also posing ethical concerns.