The adult ADHD assessment pathway in France

The entry point is the registered family doctor, the médecin traitant. They take stock of what you describe, look at what else could produce the same difficulties, and write the referral letter that opens access to a specialist. Seeing a psychiatrist without that letter is still possible after 25, but reimbursement drops: this is what the French health insurance calls the coordinated care pathway.

That first appointment is worth preparing, and the preparation changes a great deal of what follows. A professional works on concrete situations, not on a list of adjectives. Four things are worth writing down beforehand.

1. Three to five precise, dated situations where the difficulty showed: a meeting you lost track of, a bill forgotten twice, a task pushed back for weeks.
2. What already existed in primary school, from memory or from written traces such as old school reports.
3. What has changed recently: sleep, workload, a life event, any current medication.
4. The result of a self-observation questionnaire, if you took one, presented for what it is: a way of putting words on things, never a conclusion.

The assessment is carried out by a doctor, most often a psychiatrist. The scoping document published by France's national health authority on 6 December 2021 associates other professionals with the adult pathway: general practitioner, psychologist, neuropsychologist, psychomotor therapist, each contributing part of the observation. That same document notes that professional training on the subject remains insufficient in France.

Since 2025 this organisation has had a name. An interministerial instruction of May 2025 created a dedicated care pathway and provided for one accredited resource centre per region, overseas territories included. The ministry describes a first level made up of family doctors, school doctors, paediatricians and child psychiatrists, then regional coordination by those centres, with explicit attention to the transition into adulthood.

The honest answer is the least satisfying one: no national public statistic measures, in France, the time between a first request and an adult ADHD assessment. The ranges circulating online come from commercial sites or from unpublished internal surveys, and they are not comparable with one another. This page repeats none of them, for want of a verifiable source.

What is dated, on the other hand, is the pathway timetable. The roll-out of regional resource centres began in 2025, with 3 million euros committed that year and 6 million euros a year announced by 2027. The ministry puts at 2 million the number of people concerned in France, including 640,000 children and adolescents, and aims to cover every region from 2026.

• Ask for the waiting time when you book and write it down: it is the only reliable figure for your own situation.
• Ask to be put on the cancellation list, most services keep one.
• Accept the first available slot even if it is far off, and give it up later if a closer one appears.
• Do not wait for that appointment to talk to your family doctor about what is difficult now: sleep, anxiety or workload can be addressed straight away.

An assessment does not fit into a single consultation. It rests on an in-depth interview that reconstructs a history: what you live through today, what already existed in childhood, in which settings the difficulty appears and in which it fades. It is that perspective, not a score, that separates an assessment from a questionnaire.

The professional also looks for what could explain the same difficulties differently, and for what may sit alongside them. Outside material is often requested: old school reports, a relative's recollections, written examples. Depending on the situation, attention tasks or additional questionnaires may be proposed. They complete the interview, they do not stand in for it.

The first port of call is not necessarily the most distant one. Public mental health centres are organised by geographical catchment area: you belong to the one covering where you live, you can contact it directly, and the French health insurance states that their consultations are fully covered. It is often the nearest entry point, and the one that requires no money up front.

Remote consultation is a second option, reimbursed at the same rate as a face-to-face appointment and at a slightly lower fee: 50.20 € against 52 € with a sector 1 psychiatrist for a patient over 25, according to the rates published by the French health insurance on 13 January 2026. It does not suit every stage, but it avoids repeated journeys.

One organisational detail is worth knowing: between 16 and 25, the health insurance provides direct access to a psychiatrist without going through the family doctor, while keeping the 70% reimbursement rate. Past that age, referral by the family doctor remains the route that preserves the rate.